Bound to Mr. BLACKWOOD

The thing about ambition is that it doesn't care how tired you are. I was running late, which wasn't new. What was new was realizing halfway down the street that my purse was still sitting on the kitchen counter like it had decided today was its day off. I almost went back for it, but the clock on my phone said 8:47 and my supervisor, Mrs. Johnson, had the memory of an elephant and the patience of someone who had none, so I kept walking and told myself I'd figure it out. The morning was sharp in that particular way that made New York look like a movie set nobody asked to be in. I pulled my jacket tighter and walked faster, heels clicking against the pavement in that rhythm that meant I was one inconvenience away from losing my mind. I didn't hear the car until it stopped. It was black and sleek. The window lowered with the quiet efficiency of something very expensive, and I slowed without meaning to, because my body apparently made decisions before my brain could intervene. I recognized him immediately, which wasn't surprising. Everyone at Blackwood Enterprises recognized John Alexander Blackwood. You didn't need to have met him personally to know exactly who he was. He was the kind of man a room rearranged itself around, tall and sharp-jawed, with dark eyes that had the unsettling quality of looking at you and through you at the same time. He was rarely seen outside the executive floor before ten. He was certainly never seen on the quiet residential street where I lived. Yet here he was. "Miss Hartwell." He knew my name. He actually knew my name. "Get in." I blinked. "I'm sorry?" "The car," he said, with the faint irritation of someone repeating themselves for the last time. "Get in." Every sensible thought I had said no. CEOs did not show up unannounced outside their employees' homes offering rides like it was normal. But the clock said 8:49, my purse was still on the kitchen counter, and I had never heard a single story of someone disobeying John Blackwood and walking away fine. So I made the decision I was probably going to regret and got in. The inside of the car smelled like leather and cedarwood, clean and expensive in a way that made me suddenly very aware of my three-year-old blazer. The driver didn't acknowledge me. Blackwood didn't so much as glance in my direction. He sat with one arm resting against the window, eyes ahead, like he hadn't just pulled over to collect one of his HR managers off the street like a package. I waited for him to speak. He didn't, so I did. "Mr. Blackwood," I started. "We'll talk in the office." Four words, and somehow they closed every door I'd been about to open. I pressed my lips together, looked out the window, and spent the rest of the ride convincing myself this was fine, that powerful men did slightly unhinged things sometimes and it didn't have to mean anything. By the time we pulled up to the building, I almost believed it. But then he didn't take me to HR. He took me to the top floor. I had been on that elevator exactly twice in three years, both times for company-wide executive briefings surrounded by thirty other people. This time it was just us. The space felt smaller than it should have, and he stood close enough that I could feel the quiet authority coming off him like a second presence. I watched the floor numbers climb and breathed through my nose and said nothing. His office was exactly what I expected. Monochrome, all dark wood and cold steel, not a single thing out of place. A space designed to remind you who held the power before anyone sat down. He closed the door, turned, and looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes. "Marry me." The silence that followed was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. "I'm sorry," I said, because apparently that was my line today. "What?" "A contract marriage," he said, already moving to his desk with the calm of a man discussing quarterly projections. "Three years. You'll appear at public functions, maintain complete discretion, and outside of agreed terms, your personal life stays untouched. In exchange, your family's situation is handled completely." I stared at him. "My family's situation." "Yes." "What situation are we talking about?" "Are you in multiple situations at the moment?" Something shifted briefly in his expression but it was gone before I could even process it. "Elene, I'm not here to banter. Are you in or not?" "I'm an employee," I said carefully. "Not a… I don't even know what this is, Mr. Blackwood. Whatever you think you know about my family, this isn't something I can just…" "It isn't a discussion," he said, not unkindly, which somehow made it worse. "It's an offer. You have until close of the day." "I don't want time, I want to know how you even…" "Miss Hartwell." He met my eyes, and there was something in his gaze, something that looked like a weight I didn't understand yet. "Go back to your floor. Think about it." I left his office with my hands shaking and my jaw tight and absolutely no idea that my life had just been divided cleanly into before and after. Mark was at his desk when I walked in. He took one look at my face and pulled out my chair. "Sit," he said. "I'm fine." "Elene, sit." I sat. He slid a coffee across without a word, covered my morning stack without being asked, and didn't ask a single question until I was ready, which was one of the things I genuinely loved about him. "I'll take the afternoon," I said finally. "Already handled." I picked up my coffee and stared at nothing and thought about a man on the top floor who knew things about my family he had absolutely no business knowing, and the two words he'd said like they cost him nothing. Marry me. God help me.