Chapter 5
1049 Words
The contract was twelve pages long.
Twelve pages of carefully worded clauses, sub-clauses, and conditions that essentially boiled down to: you belong to me in public and to yourself in private, for exactly three years, and when it's over we both walk away like none of this happened.
I read it three times. My attorney, a sharp-mouthed woman named Patricia who charged by the minute and had absolutely no interest in my feelings about any of it, read it twice, made seven amendments, and slid it back across her desk with the energy of someone who had seen worse.
"It's watertight on your end," she said. "Unusually so."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning whoever drafted this was more interested in protecting you than protecting him." She tapped the last page. "That's either very generous or very calculated. With men like Blackwood, assume the latter until proven otherwise."
I signed it anyway.
…………
The first morning as his contractual fiancée felt identical to every other morning except that it wasn't, and my body knew it even if my face didn't. I dressed carefully, told myself it was just another day, and walked into Blackwood Enterprises at 8:55 with my badge, my coffee, and absolutely no indication that anything had changed.
It took forty minutes for the whispers to start.
I heard my name twice before I even got to my desk, caught two colleagues doing that thing where they stop talking the moment you come into earshot, which is somehow louder than if they'd just kept going. Mark was already at his desk when I walked in. He looked up with an expression that said he'd already heard something but was too decent to lead with it.
"Morning," he said carefully.
"Morning."
I opened my laptop and pretended not to notice the way he was choosing his words, or the way he kept almost saying something and then didn't.
"Miss Hartwell." Claire's voice was smooth and unbothered as always. "Mr. Blackwood would like to see you."
I felt Mark go still beside me without looking at him. I closed my laptop, stood, and straightened my jacket.
"Tell him…" I stopped and caught myself midway. "I'll be right up."
Mark said nothing but his silence was loud enough.
………….
Blackwood didn't turn around when I entered, but he held up one finger, which I was beginning to understand was his version of acknowledgment. I sat down without being asked, crossed my legs, and looked around his office properly for the first time. It was the kind of space that told you everything and nothing simultaneously. No photographs, no personal effects or a single thing on his desk that wasn't work related.
He ended his call and turned around.
"You changed three of my attorney's clauses," he said without preamble.
"My attorney changed three of your attorney's clauses," I corrected. "There's a difference."
"The media clause…"
"Gives you too much control over my public narrative." I held his gaze. "If I'm doing this, my story is mine. Your PR team doesn't get to rewrite me."
He looked at me for a moment, something moving behind his eyes that I couldn't quite name, and then he nodded once. "Fine."
Just fine, like I hadn't spent two days fighting Patricia on that particular clause.
"The timeline amendment…"
"Stands," I said. "Three years starts from the public announcement, not the signing date. Those are different things and you know it."
"Elene."
The sound of my first name in his mouth stopped me cold. He said it the way you said something you'd been holding carefully, like a word that had been waiting for the right moment to be used. My expression didn't change but something underneath it did.
"The amendments are reasonable," he said quieter. "I'm not here to argue them."
I blinked. "Then why am I here?"
He moved to his desk and picked up a sealed envelope. "The announcement goes out Friday. Internal first, then external by end of day." He held it out. "I thought you should hear it directly rather than find out with the rest of the building."
I took it. Turned it over in my hands and felt the weight of what Friday actually meant.
"You could have emailed that," I said.
"I could have."
"So why didn't you?"
He held my gaze. "Because you deserved to hear it directly."
The office was very quiet. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, New York moved the way it always did, loud and relentless and completely indifferent to the fact that my entire life was being restructured forty-two floors above it.
I stood. "Is that everything?"
"One more thing." He reached into his desk drawer and produced a second envelope, larger, navy blue, and set it on the desk between us. "This came through legal this morning. It was flagged because it references the contract, and because we have no record of who sent it."
I picked it up and turned it over.
My name was on the front, handwritten in old-fashioned cursive, in ink that had faded slightly at the edges like it had been written a long time ago and kept even longer.
My stomach did something I didn't have a name for.
"Who sent this?" I asked.
"We don't know. It came through internal mail with no sender information." He was watching me with that particular stillness, like he was waiting for something, like this moment meant more than he was willing to say out loud. "You don't have to open it here."
"Why not here?"
Something crossed his face. "Because whatever is in that envelope, I think you'll want to be somewhere you can sit with it. Not in this office."
The air between us shifted in a way I didn't have words for.
I put the envelope in my bag, picked up my things, and walked to the door.
"Blackwood."
He looked up.
"If this blows up my life," I said, "I'm holding you personally responsible."
The corner of his mouth moved. "I'd expect nothing less, Mrs. Blackwood."
I walked out fighting a smile. Mrs Blackwood. I shouldn't be feeling this way but the feel of it on my tongue left my buds wanting more.
And in my bag, against my hip, that envelope felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
- Writer
