HIS OBSESSION MY CAGE

CHAPTER THREE:COLLISION AND FATES

Vanessa's POV

The world stopped.

Not metaphorically. Actually. The hospital doors kept sliding open behind me, cars kept crawling past the intersection, Chris was probably still waiting at the curb. But I couldn't hear any of it. Couldn't feel my own pulse.

I was looking at the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen, and he was looking at me like he wanted me dead.

Chiseled jaw. Dark hair, slightly disheveled. Eyes the colour of a winter sky grey, sharp, absolutely merciless. His suit probably cost more than my mother's entire treatment. His posture screamed old money, old power, old rage.

And he was staring at me like I'd crawled out of his personal grave.

"How dare you appear before me?"

The air between us dropped twenty degrees. His voice was quiet, controlled, the kind of quiet that usually preceded something breaking.

I blinked. "Excuse you?"

"You're excused."

The burly man beside him leaned in, murmured something against his ear. Those grey eyes flickered something shifted behind them, recalibrated. He nodded once.

Something told me I wasn't going to like whatever just got decided.

"Clearly nobody taught you manners," I said. "Your parents really shouldn't have released you onto the streets if they weren't going to train you properly."

His face flushed. Not embarrassment—rage. The kind that lived deep and burned slow.

"How dare you insult me." His voice dropped lower, silk over steel. "You poverty-stricken w***e. Let me guess whoring around didn't pay anymore?"

The word hit me like a slap.

I stepped closer. Not intimidated. Not retreating. I'd spent five years being looked down on, dismissed, reduced to the sum of my circumstances. I was done apologizing for existing in spaces that weren't designed for me.

"Call me that one more time." My voice was very, very calm. "And I'll show you exactly how a w***e behaves."

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe. Respect. Or just the realization that I wasn't going to cry and crumple like he expected.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"None of your damn business."

I turned and walked away. Felt his gaze burning into my back with every step.

"Rude asshole," I muttered.

Chris's car was idling at the curb. I yanked the door open, dropped into the passenger seat, and immediately regretted every life choice that had led me to this moment.

"What the hell was that?" Chris's eyes were wide.

"Rich jerk." I waved a hand. "Thinks the world revolves around him. Don't worry, I put him in his place."

"Clearly." Chris pulled away from the curb. A pause. Then, carefully: "How's your mom?"

"She's fine."

He didn't even bother hiding his scoff. "Yeah, right. Don't make me force it out of you."

I stared out the window. The city blurred past—glass towers, street vendors, people who had never received phone calls that cracked their entire lives open.

"I have to pay the bills." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Or they'll stop her treatment." I swallowed. "They won't operate without it."

The silence stretched. Then Chris exhaled slowly.

"And you didn't think to tell me?"

"Sorry."

"I'm not your friend for decoration, Nessa." His jaw was tight. "I knew something was up when you wouldn't let me follow you upstairs. But you need to lower the goddamn guard. Let me help."

"I know. I just—"

I stopped. Couldn't find the words. Couldn't find anything except the weight pressing down on my chest, the knowledge that every day my mother lay in that bed was another day closer to the end of her.

Chris's voice was barely audible. "You've been different ever since you came back."

The car fell into silence. The kind that wasn't peaceful the kind that sat between two people who knew each other too well to pretend.

Thirty minutes passed. Then:

"When's your interview?"

My brain short-circuited.

*Interview. 1 p.m. Goodluck Industries. The largest corporation in New York. The interview I'd spent three weeks preparing for, the one that could actually, finally, finally pull me out of the financial grave I'd been clawing at for years.

My eyes flew to the dashboard clock.

12:31.

"And you're going the wrong way."

Chris's grip tightened on the wheel. "Alright. I've got you."

He flipped a U-turn that earned us three angry horns and one middle finger. I gripped the door handle and prayed.

---

Twenty minutes later, I was sprinting across the Goodluck Industries plaza.

"Thank you, thank you, I owe you my life!" I blew kisses at Chris, already running backwards toward the entrance. "You're the best, I love you, bye!"

"Just get the job!" he yelled after me.

The lobby was all marble and glass and the kind of hush that came with serious money. Chandeliers dripped from a ceiling so high I had to crane my neck. The reception desk alone probably cost more than my entire education.

I approached it. My shoes squeaked on the polished floor.

"The cleaning staff room is down the other way."

I looked up.

The receptionist was blonde, spray-tanned, and staring at me like I'd tracked mud across her personal rug. Her lip curled with the casual cruelty of someone who'd never had to beg for anything in her life.

I pulled out my ID. "Vanessa Bane. I'm here for an interview."

Something shifted behind her eyes. Interest, maybe. Or malice.

"The elevator's that way." She pointed. "Last floor."

She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes.

I didn't have time to decode whatever game she was playing. I just nodded and walked toward the elevator.

---

The ride took forever. Floor after floor after floor—how high was this building? I smoothed my hair, straightened my blazer, tried not to think about the sweat stains probably blooming under my arms.

You look presentable, I told myself. Barely. But presentable.

The elevator chimed. Doors slid open.

The hallway was empty. Quiet. Just polished floors and recessed lighting and a single door at the very end.

The elevator's that way. Last floor.

This had to be it.

I walked. My reflection trailed me in the glossy marble. I looked smaller than I felt. Younger. More breakable.

Stop it. You need this job. You are going to get this job.

I stopped at the door. Inhaled. Exhaled.

Knocked.

"Come in."

Flat. Disinterested. The voice of someone who'd conducted a thousand interviews and remembered none of them.

I pushed the door open.

The office smelled like cedarwood and musk—rich, warm, undeniably masculine. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the entire city, Manhattan spread out like a kingdom below. The desk was massive, dark wood, not a single paper out of place.

And behind it, facing the window, was a leather chair.

"You're late."

The voice came from the chair. I couldn't see the face just the back of a dark head, the broad line of shoulders.

"I'm sorry, sir." I forced my voice steady. "Traffic was bad. Just give me a chance please. I won't be late again."

A pause.

Then the chair began to turn.

"I'm very good at my job. I work hard. I learn fast. I just need someone to actually look at my application and see—"

The chair faced me.

"—me."

The words died in my throat.

Grey eyes. Chiseled jaw. The face of the man I'd verbally eviscerated less than an hour ago.

He leaned back. A slow, predatory smile spread across his features.

"Well, well." His voice was honey and broken glass. "Who do we have here."

My blood turned to ice.

No. No, no, no—

"Good morning, sir." My voice came out remarkably steady, considering my entire future was crumbling in slow motion. "Vanessa Bane. Here for the interview."

I walked toward him. One foot in front of the other. Refusing to show fear.

His gaze tracked me like I was prey that had wandered willingly into his territory.

"Take a seat."

I blinked. "Sorry?"

"Are you daft?" Flat. Dismissive. Like I was already beneath his notice. "Sit down."

I swallowed every word I wanted to say. Sat. Clasped my hands in my lap to hide their shaking.

He slid a document across the desk.

"Read this. Sign it."

I looked down.

MARRIAGE CONTRACT

The words blurred. I blinked. They stayed the same.

Bold. Black. Unmistakable.

"Sir." My voice was careful. Controlled. "I think you've given me the wrong document."

"No." He didn't even look at me. "Those are the right ones."

Silence.

I read it again. Marriage Contract. The undersigned, Vanessa Bane, agrees to enter into a legally binding matrimonial union with Charles Goodluck.....

The paper crumpled in my fist.

"Either this is a mistake," I said, very slowly, "or you're simply delusional."

His gaze rose to meet mine. Lazy. Unbothered. Like I was a mildly interesting insect he'd found crawling across his desk.

Goosebumps erupted across my arms.

I stood. The chair scraped against the floor. I threw the crumpled contract at his face.

It bounced off his chest and landed on the floor between us.

"You must be insane if you think I'm going to feed whatever delusion this is." My voice was shaking now not with fear. With fury. "Go find some desperate woman on the street and offer her this garbage. Maybe you'll actually find someone willing to marry you."

I turned. Walked toward the door. My heart was a war drum in my chest.

"You have two days, Nessa."

His voice followed me. Cool. Certain. Like he already knew I'd come back.

Like he was counting on it.

I didn't turn around. Didn't acknowledge it. Just kept walking, out the door, down the hall, into the elevator that would carry me back down to my real life.

But his voice echoed in my head all the way to the ground floor.

Two days.

---

Chris was waiting in the lobby. He took one look at my face and stood up slowly.

"That bad?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"He offered me a marriage contract."

Chris blinked. Once. Twice.

"...What?"

I sank onto the leather bench beside him. My legs didn't feel like they belonged to me anymore.

"I don't know." I pressed my palms against my eyes. "I don't know what just happened. I don't know who he is or why he hates me or why he thought—" I laughed, hollow and broken. "Marriage. He wants me to marry him."

Chris was very, very quiet.

"Nessa." His voice was strange. Careful. "Who was he?"

I lowered my hands.

"I don't know his name."

A lie. I'd seen it on the contract, bold and black and unmistakable.

Charles Goodluck.

The man I'd cursed on the street. The man who'd called me a w***e. The man who now held my entire future in his manicured, merciless hands.

I should tell Chris. He was my best friend. My anchor. The only person who'd stayed through all of it Aria's disappearance, my mother's illness, the slow erosion of everything I'd once believed about the world.

But if I said it out loud, it became real.

So I said nothing.

Chris studied me for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly, let it go, filed it away for later. That was the thing about Chris—he always knew when to push and when to wait.

"Come on," he said. "I'll buy you coffee. You look like you've seen a ghost."

I almost laughed.

Not a ghost, I thought, as we walked out into the fading afternoon light.

Something worse.

A man with grey eyes who looked at me like he knew me.

A man who'd been waiting for me to walk through his door.

A man who'd just given me two days to decide if I was desperate enough to sell him my life.

I didn't know what Charles Goodluck wanted with me.

But I knew with a certainty that settled into my bones like ice water that this wasn't over.

It was only beginning.