SIGNED OF BLOOD
“You have five minutes to decide. After that, the offer disappears.”
The man in the grey suit stared across the small café table, his fingers drumming casually against a leather briefcase as if this wasn’t the moment that could alter the entire course of Selena Raye’s life.
Selena swallowed hard. Her throat burned from too much cheap coffee and too little sleep. Her hands trembled, hidden beneath the table, as her eyes flicked to the envelope between them the one containing the contract. The one that promised half a million dollars upfront.
Half a million… for marriage.
Her chest tightened. The word itself didn’t feel real. She was twenty-three, broke, and working two jobs just to pay rent much less the mountain of medical bills piling up from her brother’s sudden collapse. She was tired. Desperate. Cornered.
But marriage?
To a stranger?
She bit the inside of her cheek and glanced up. “Why me?”
The man’s expression didn’t shift. “You’re healthy, you’re discreet, and most importantly… you’re available.”
“What’s wrong with him?” she blurted.
He smiled faintly. “Nothing that concerns you.”
Selena’s skin prickled. “So I just… sign the papers and become someone’s wife? What, tomorrow?”
“Tonight.”
Her pulse spiked.
The man tapped the table. “One year of your life. Pretend to be a wife. No physical obligations unless you agree. In exchange, your brother’s surgery gets paid for, your debts erased, and you walk away a very rich woman.”
Selena looked down at her hands. Her fingers curled around the edge of the table like a lifeline.
She wanted to scream no.
She wanted to run.
But she thought about her brother’s face in that hospital bed. The machines. The bills. The calls she stopped answering because she had nothing left to give.
Slowly, she reached for the pen.
⸻
The wedding took place in a room colder than any church she’d ever stepped into. No flowers. No friends. Just papers, a priest she didn’t know, and a man who didn’t look at her once.
Luca Moretti.
He stood in front of her in a tailored black suit, his hands buried in his pockets like he didn’t care about anything happening around him. His face was carved from ice sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, and dark eyes that held no emotion.
She couldn’t read him.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
When the officiant asked him to repeat the vows, Luca’s voice was deep, smooth, and terrifyingly calm.
“I do.”
Two words. Then silence again.
When it was her turn, she said the words like they were written in fire on her tongue. “I… do.”
The priest pronounced them husband and wife.
Luca didn’t look at her.
⸻
The car ride to his estate was quiet.
The house or rather, mansion sat on a cliff overlooking the sea. All glass and stone, cold and modern, the kind of place no warmth could live in.
A butler opened the door. Staff bowed. She followed her new husband up a spiral staircase, past rooms bigger than her entire apartment.
He didn’t speak until they reached a set of double doors.
“This is your room.”
Selena blinked. “You mean our—?”
He turned to her. “I don’t share space.”
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t cruelty.
It was… nothing.
“Dinner is at seven. Do not be late. Do not speak to anyone unless I tell you to. Do not leave this house. You’re here to follow the contract. Nothing more.”
She stared at him. “And if I don’t?”
Luca leaned in, his voice barely above a whisper. “Then the deal is off. And your brother’s treatment ends.”
Her stomach dropped.
He straightened and walked away, his footsteps vanishing into silence.
⸻
Selena sat on the edge of the massive bed in her room, staring at the wedding ring on her finger.
She had sold herself to a man who didn’t even want her.
She had married the devil in a suit.
And somehow, the real hell hadn’t even started yet.
