Tamed by the Ruthless Billionaire

Elena The ballroom at the top of the Renaissance Center smells like money. Champagne has gone flat in crystal flutes orchids have flown in from a place that's not Michigan and beneath all this a faint mineral taste comes from the river forty stories below. I can see it through the window behind the string quartet: black water runs between the lit-up towers carrying barges that no one in this room has ever touched with their hands. I adjust the clasp on my mother’s bracelet—the only Vance jewelry my stepfather has not sold—and try to remember why I let Richard persuade me to come tonight. "You look thin," Richard says, appearing at my elbow as if he had been called by my discomfort. He is wearing a rented tuxedo. I can see that his shoulders sit half an inch too wide. "Eat something. You look like you are about to collapse and tonight of all nights I need you standing." "Standing for what?" I ask. He does not answer. He pushes me by the elbow—not gently—toward the side of the room. The crowd thins out into a reverent half-circle around a man I recognize before I see his face because everyone in the room recognizes Cassian. The air changes near Cassian the way it changes before a storm moves through—a pressure drop you feel in your teeth. Cassian Drake. I think of Cassian Drake. I have seen him in the Free Press on billboards off I-75 and in the mouths of men at galas like this one who say his name like they say God or the IRS—equal parts reverence and dread. Drake Advanced Mobility and Tech owns the building we are standing in the shadow of owns half the Packard corridor and, according to my stepfather’s drunken mutterings last Christmas, owns the paper on this family. He is taller than I expected. Not gym-tall—he is tall in a way, as if his body was made for a purpose other than standing in ballrooms. Dark hair, cut with precision. A jaw that could cut you . . . Eyes the color of the river outside—gray, moving and giving away nothing. He is not looking at me yet. He looks at Richard and something in that look makes the fine hair on my arms stand up. It is the look you give to a man you have already beaten and are waiting to watch fall down. "Cassian," Richard says. His voice does what it does when he is afraid and trying not to show it—he raises the pitch a little. His words get faster. "You remember my stepdaughter. Elena." I put my hand out because my mother taught me manners even after she could no longer raise me in ways. "Mr. Drake." Cassian looks at my hand a second long before Cassian takes it. His palm is rough—calloused in a way that does not match the cufflinks—. His grip is exactly as firm as it needs to be, not a bit more. Everything about Cassian is. That is somehow worse than if he had crushed my fingers. "Elena Vance " he says. Elena’s name in his mouth sounds like a fact he is confirming, not a greeting. "Elena’s father built half the plants Elena's father used to run parts through." "My stepfather," I say, before I can stop myself. Something moves behind Cassian’s eyes. Not warmth. Interest, like a man who is interested in a crack he has found in a wall he has stared at for years. "Richard," Cassian says, still looking at me, "give us the room." It is not a request. Richard’s hand leaves my elbow fast you would think it had caught fire, and then he is gone, swallowed into the crowd near the bar. I am standing alone in front of a man whose net worth could buy the zip code I grew up in abandoned. "You didn't know," Cassian says. "Know what?" "Why you are here tonight?" The quartet shifts into a key. Somewhere behind me, glass clinks. I keep my spine straight the way I trained myself to do in rooms, like this one years ago when standing straight was the only thing I could control. "Enlighten me." "Your stepfather owes forty-seven million dollars to three funds in which I have a controlling stake," stepfather says it in a tone to a man talking about the weather. "Stepfather has been selling what remains of the Vance holdings for eighteen months in an effort to cover the debt. Tonight stepfather ran out of items to sell." The floor does not move at all but something in Elena’s chest does. A slow sick drop, like an elevator cable slipping half an inch before the brake stops it. "So, stepfather is here to beg Elena for time." "He is here," Cassian says, "to offer Elena to me." Elena laughs. Elena’s laugh comes out wrong. Sharp too loud and a woman near the canapé glances over. Elena lowers her voice. "I am sorry, are we? Is this a joke? Because if this is a joke it is not a good one." Stepfather says, I do not make jokes. Stepfather has not blinked, Elena realizes. Stepfather had not blinked once since stepfather and Elena began talking. Stepfather says, "Marry me. The debt disappears. Stepfather keeps the house in Bloomfield Hills, keeps his car, keeps whatever remains of his pride. Elena receives my name and my protection for long as the contract runs." "And if Elena says no?" "Then, in six weeks, the funds call the debt the house gets. Stepfather finds out exactly how fast people in this city stop returning stepfather’s calls." Stepfather tilts his head studying Elena the way one studies a spreadsheet for an error. "Elena already knows that though. Elena had done the math in Elena’s head since the word forty-seven million left her stepfather’s mouth." Stepfather is right. That is the part. Elena had done the math in the second it took her stepfather to say the number. The mortgage staff member, Richard, refuses to let go of them because letting them go would mean admitting what is happening in the storage unit where what remains of Elena’s mother’s things sit gathering dust because there is no house left with room for them. "Why Elena?" Elena says. "Stepfather could buy the debt back from her stepfather's funds and never have to look at any of us again. Why does it have to be a wedding?" For the time, something flickers across that carved, unreadable face. It disappears before Elena can name it. Elena catches the edge of it. Old and cold and personal. "Because Elena’s family destroyed Elena’s family," her stepfather says, quiet now, the volume dropping but the weight of the words increasing. "Stepfather sat on the board that liquidated her stepfather’s father’s plant out from under her stepfather. Stepfather signed the papers himself. Stepfather’s father died eleven months later in an apartment two miles from a factory that used to have's name over the door." Stepfather lets that sit in the air between stepfather and Elena like smoke. "Stepfather does not want Elena’s stepfather’s money, Elena. Stepfather has more money than his stepfather has ever seen. Stepfather wants to watch stepfather hand Elena the one thing stepfather has left and smile while stepfather does it." The band changes songs again. Far below stepfather and Elena, a barge sounds its horn, low and mournful, rolling up off the black water and through forty floors of glass. Elena says, You want a trophy. Stepfather says, I want a wife who will not cry in front of stepfather. Stepfather finally looks away from Elena’s face out toward the window toward the river like stepfather is already bored of watching Elena process the collapse of Elena’s life. "Most women in Elena’s position would be sobbing by now. Elena is doing math." Would crying change stepfather’s mind? Stepfather says, No. Then stepfather will not waste the tears. That is when stepfather looks back at Elena. Really looks, for the time since Richard walked away. And Elena understands, in the space of that look, exactly what kind of animal Elena had just agreed to lie down next to. Not because Elena said yes. Elena has not said yes yet . . . Because some door in stepfather has already opened and whatever is behind it is looking at Elena, like Elena might, against every calculation Elena has made, actually be interesting. "I will have the contract sent to your stepfather's house tomorrow," he says. "Read it yourself. Do not let a man summarize it for you." "Why would I trust the paperwork of a man who just told me he wants to destroy my family?" "Because I will not lie to you about what this’s" he says. "Everyone else in your life has." "I would think you would find that refreshing." He turns to go. Dismissing me the way you would close a laptop . . . I stand there in the ballroom light with the river glittering cold and endless behind the glass and I understand that whatever I say tomorrow some version of me has already said yes, the moment I did the math, in my head and did not flinch.