THE MAID'S FORCED VOW

Chapter Two

One email was waiting when I unlocked my phone. No sender name. Just a subject line.

MARRIAGE AGREEMENT. SEVENTY TWO HOURS TO RESPOND.

My thumb hovered over it, hands still trembling.

This isn't real, I told myself. This is some sick joke.

But Micah's face flashed behind my eyes. His stupid grin. The way he still slept with the hallway light on since our mother's funeral. I knew, with a certainty that made me sick, that I was going to open that email.

I tapped it open. A contract. My name already printed beside a blank signature line. Beside it, his. Damon Cross. Like it had been waiting for me all along.

I scrolled through pages of legal language I barely understood, my eyes catching on phrases like binding union and full compliance and immediate effect. Whoever had written this had planned it carefully, long before my phone had ever rung.

Somewhere three floors up, the man I'd spoken maybe eleven sentences to in three years was probably dismissing a meeting, running a world he didn't know had just collided with mine.

I didn't understand yet why anyone would kidnap my brother just to force me into marrying a man who didn't even know my name.

Unless someone wanted me a lot closer to Damon Cross than a marriage certificate could explain.

And unless Damon Cross already knew exactly why.

I closed my eyes, pressed my palm flat against the cold stairwell wall, and made myself breathe. Whatever this was, whoever was behind it, I had seventy two hours to understand it. And exactly one way to buy my brother more time.

I opened my contacts, found the internal directory I wasn't technically supposed to have access to, and typed a single name into the search bar.

Damon Cross.