THE TERMS OF THE MARRIAGE

The marriage contract was still warm from the printer when Elena signed her name away. "You don't have to smile," Damian Cole said, sliding the pen back into his jacket like he hadn't just bought a wife. "The cameras are gone." "I wasn't smiling for them." Elena capped the pen harder than necessary and set it down between them like a dropped weapon. "I was smiling because in a year, this ends, and I never have to see you again." Something moved behind his eyes — gone before she could name it. "A year," he agreed, standing, buttoning his jacket in one smooth motion that made the whole transaction look like nothing more than the end of a meeting. "Try not to fall in love with me before then, Mrs. Cole." She almost laughed. Almost. "You'll survive the heartbreak," she said. "I promise." He didn't smile back, but something in his jaw shifted, like he was holding one down. Three days ago, her father had sat her down at the kitchen table — the same table she'd done her homework on, the same table where he used to tell her that Rossi Textiles would still be standing long after both of them were gone — and told her, in a voice she'd never heard him use, that it was over. Forty years of the company he'd inherited from his father, gone in a quarter of debt neither of them had seen coming until it was too late to stop it. "There's one option," he'd said, not meeting her eyes. "Cole has made an offer." "What kind of offer?" "Marriage," he said. "To you." She'd laughed, at first. It had to be a joke — some cruel, exhausted joke born out of a man who'd spent three sleepless weeks trying to find any other way out. But her father hadn't laughed with her, and the silence that followed had told her everything. Damian Cole. She'd heard the name for years, always attached to acquisitions, hostile takeovers, companies that existed one quarter and didn't the next. A man who bought things. Apparently now that included her. She hadn't asked why he wanted her specifically instead of simply buying the company outright, the way he'd bought a dozen others. She'd been too busy trying to figure out how to save her father's life's work to interrogate the shape of her own rescue. Now, standing in the marble-floored office of Cole Industries with a wedding ring already fitted to her finger — measured without her knowledge, sized before she'd even agreed — she found herself wondering for the first time. "Why me?" she asked, before she could stop herself. Damian paused at the door. For a moment he looked like he might actually answer her. "Because your father's company was worth saving," he said instead. "And because I don't do anything by half." It wasn't an answer. It was a wall dressed up as one. "The car will take you home to collect your things," he said. "You'll move into the Fifth Avenue residence by Friday. We have an event Saturday — the Hendricks Gala. You'll need something appropriate." "I have things that are appropriate." "I'm sure you do." His eyes moved over her once, quick and unreadable. "Friday, Elena." It was the first time he'd said her name. It landed strangely, like he'd said it before — somewhere she couldn't place, in a voice she almost recognized and then didn't. He was gone before she could ask what he meant by it.