THE CONTRACT WIFE

The envelope had been sitting on the kitchen table for three days. Aria hadn't opened it. She didn't need to. The bold red letters stamped across the front — FINAL NOTICE — told her everything she needed to know about where her life currently stood. She pressed her fingers against the cold ceramic of her coffee mug and stared at it the way one stares at a car crash — unable to look away, unable to do a single thing about it. Four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. That was the number her father had left behind when his heart gave out six weeks ago. Not savings. Not investments. Debt. Loans taken from men whose names didn't appear on any legal document, men who had already sent two very large, very unfriendly representatives to her door last Tuesday. She had exactly eleven days. Her phone buzzed against the table. Unknown Number. She almost didn't answer. But desperation, she had learned, had a way of making a person do things that dignity would never allow. "Miss James." The voice on the other end was smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man who had never once been told no. "My name is Marcus Reed. I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Damien Cross." Aria set down her mug very slowly. Everyone in this city knew that name. You couldn't open a newspaper, pass a billboard, or scroll through a news feed without Damien Cross staring back at you — sharp jaw, colder eyes, the kind of face that made people either want to impress him or run from him. Usually both at the same time. "I'm not interested in whatever he's selling," she said. "He's not selling anything, Miss James. He's offering a solution." A pause, perfectly timed. "To a problem of roughly four hundred and seventy thousand dollars." The blood drained from her face. "How do you—" "Mr. Cross makes it his business to know things. He'd like to meet with you tomorrow. 9 a.m. Forty-second floor, Cross Tower." Another pause. "He says to tell you that the offer expires in twenty-four hours. After that, he won't be able to help you with your father's... associates." The line went dead. Aria sat in the silence of her tiny apartment — the apartment she would lose in two weeks if she didn't find the money — and stared at nothing for a long, long time. Then she picked up the envelope, finally opened it, and read every brutal word. By the time she set it back down, her hands had stopped shaking. She had stopped shaking. She thought about her younger sister, Maya, who was only seventeen and had nobody else in the world. She thought about the men who had knocked on her door and smiled at her in a way that wasn't friendly at all. She thought about four hundred and seventy thousand dollars and eleven days and no options left. Then she thought about Damien Cross. Cold. Ruthless. The kind of man who collects people like assets and discards them just as easily. She reached for her phone and set an alarm for 7 a.m. If the devil himself was offering a deal, the least she could do was hear the price. She just didn't expect the price to be her heart. TO BE CONTINUE.