Ruthless Vow

Chapter Five

The Contract

The contract was already on the desk when I walked in, with my name typed at the top of it.

I picked it up, looked at it, and put it back down.

"I'm not signing that."

Damian Cross didn't look up from the folder he was reading. "Good evening to you too."

"You typed my name on a contract before I agreed to anything."

"I typed it this afternoon, after you called to confirm you were coming." He turned the page without hurrying. "If you'd canceled, it would have gone in the shredder. The shredder is by the door."

I looked at the paper again. *Elena Marchetti.* Same font as everything else in the document.

"Read it first," he said. "Then tell me what you're not signing."

I sat down. I read all seven pages. It took thirty minutes and he didn't rush me once.

"Do I get a key to my own room?"

"Yes."

"Can anybody walk into it besides me?"

"No."

"Can I lock it from the inside?"

"Yes."

"Do I keep my phone?"

"Yes."

"Can Sofia come to the building without an appointment?"

"Yes."

"Can I leave whenever I want, even in the middle of the night?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"One year."

I turned back to the first page and read the line again. *The arrangement shall run for a term of one year, beginning on the date of signature.*

"Why a year?"

"Because I need long enough to find out who left your name at my club. I can't do that if you're somewhere I can't reach you." He said it flatly. "Six months isn't long enough. Anything past a year and I'd be asking for something I have no right to ask for."

One year. I'd be twenty-seven. Mia would turn eighteen and I'd miss her birthday dinner unless he let me out of the house for it. My shift at the diner would go on without me either way.

One year of my life, in exchange for the life of my sister's.

"Okay," I said.

He answered every other question in under six words. He didn't blink once.

I came in with three conditions, written on the back of my notebook in pencil. I'd read it in the car so many times the words had worn off half the page.

"One," I said. "I keep both jobs. My shifts, my car, my schedule. If your rules get in the way of my rent, I'm done."

He opened the folder to the second page and turned it toward me. "Fourth line down."

I read it. *Family and existing contacts are exempt from the approval clause. My sister, Sofia, my employers, Mia's doctors. Written in plain language, no tricks, exactly what he'd just said.

I hated that he was right.

"Two. My sister never meets you. Not once."

"Agreed."

"Three. I move in after the money clears. Not before."

"That's the one I'd push back on."

"Why."

"Because it clears tonight either way, and I'd rather know where you are between now and tomorrow." He said it without any weight. "Somebody has been following you. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you not to sleep one more night in a building with a broken lobby lock."

I stood there with my list in my hand and watched my third condition fall apart on its own.

"Fine," I said. "Tomorrow."

"Ten o'clock."

"Ten o'clock."

He pushed the folder across the desk and set a pen on top of it. "There's a copy on the last page. Yours."

I got to the signature line and stopped.

"What do you get out of this?"

"Your signature."

"No." I put the pen down without picking it up. "A hundred women in this city would sign this tonight for half the money. You didn't want them. You wanted me. So before my name goes on anything, I want to know why."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he stood and walked to the window and put his hands in his pockets and stood there with his back to me, and I thought, that's the end of it. That's the last I'll hear about this tonight.

"Nine days ago I thought somebody was using you to get to me." He didn't turn around. "That's happened to me before. Twice. Both times it was about money. I assumed this was the same, and I filed it the same way — something to watch, something to contain, nothing personal."

He was quiet for a second.

"Then you walked in, and you sat in that chair, and you didn't ask me for anything except the truth. So I don't have a good answer for you. Not yet. I had a plan for this week, and you weren't in it in any form I recognize."

It was the longest thing he'd ever said to me.

I picked up the pen and signed both lines.

He signed underneath mine, fast, without reading it again. Then he slid my copy across the desk and closed his folder.

I stood and got to the door before I turned around.

"You told me you were in the hallway the night my mother died."

"I was."

"Who else was there?"

"One man," he said. "Silver hair. Glasses. He stood at the end of the hall for about a minute, then he left." He set his pen down. "I never saw him again."

Sofia was already on the sidewalk when I pulled up. Still in her scrubs, hair loose down her back. She never wore her hair down after a shift. She got up off the stoop before I'd even stopped the car.

"What are you doing here?"

"I called you four times." Her voice was flat, the way it got when she was holding something back. "You didn't pick up. So I came."

I checked my phone. Four missed calls.

"A man came to the hospital tonight." She said it before I could ask. "Older. Silver hair. He sat with Mia for twenty minutes."

My keys were still in my hand. I didn't move.

"Yolanda called me the second he left. He signed in at the desk under a name that didn't check out. By the time anybody thought to look twice, he was gone."

"Did he hurt her?"

"No. He just sat there and talked to her." Sofia's arms were crossed tight against the cold. "He told her he knew your father. He asked about her heart. He asked about you. He asked about your mother."

I stood on the sidewalk and didn't say anything.

Silver hair. Glasses.

The same description Damian Cross had just given me for the man at the end of the hospital corridor three years ago, standing there while my mother died.

"He left something for you." Sofia reached into her jacket and pulled out a small brown envelope. Lab-slip size. Unsealed. "Yolanda didn't want it sitting at the nurses' station overnight."

I opened it under the streetlight.

One photograph. Small, bent at the corner.

A hospital room, lights low, one lamp beside the bed. My mother was in bed with the blanket pulled up to her chest. Taken from the doorway, at an angle.

I turned it over.

Blue ink. Small, neat handwriting. The same as the note at the club.

*I was standing in the hall because you weren't. Ask Mr. Cross what he heard.*

I looked at the photograph again.

My mother's eyes were open.

She wasn't asleep. She was looking at the camera — straight into the lens, from the bed, at that hour — and whoever held it had been standing close enough that she could see their face.

She knew who was in her room.

The same man had been sitting beside my sister tonight, twenty minutes, in a chair, with a name that didn't check out.

Sofia was saying my name. She said it twice. The second time, she said it like she was worried about me.

I got back in the car and put the key in the ignition.

"Where are you going?" she said.

"Back to the club."

"Elena—"

"He heard something in that hallway." I pulled the door shut. "And I'm not going to sleep until I know what.”