The alpha's contract

What the gala revealed

The phone, in the end, she did not hand over.

"If you take it from me by force," Sienna said, standing very still in the middle of Kael's study with her pulse hammering loud enough that she was certain he could hear it, "you'll have proven every suspicion I've had about this house since I walked into it. I photographed a page of numbers I don't understand, in an office that belongs to my own husband, because I am trying — badly, apparently — to understand what I signed my name into yesterday. That's not betrayal, Mr. Ashford. That's self-preservation."

For a long moment, Kael said nothing. The rain that had followed them home from the harbor the day before had returned, tapping against the study's glass wall in a rhythm that filled the silence between them.

"Delete it," he said finally. "In front of me."

She did — and felt something in her chest twist at the loss of the only physical evidence she'd gathered in two days, evidence Renzo would demand and she no longer had. But the alternative had been worse, and she'd learned enough about Kael Ashford in forty-eight hours to know that a man who watched everything the way he did would have noticed if she'd faked the deletion.

"You're a strange kind of liar," he said, once the phone screen had gone dark. "Most people either commit fully or fold immediately. You did neither. You told me the truth about the photograph, and lied, I suspect, about almost everything else."

"You don't know that."

"I know enough." He moved to the window, hands in his pockets, his back to her in a way that felt, oddly, like a kind of trust she hadn't earned. "There's a gala Friday. Harbor Authority fundraiser — the same officer who tore apart container fourteen will be there, along with half the shipping families in this city, including, I'd wager, whoever benefits from my father's company bleeding cargo out the side without anyone noticing. You'll attend as my wife. You'll smile. And you will not photograph anything else in this house without my permission, or the next conversation we have won't be nearly this civil."

The gala arrived faster than Sienna was ready for. She'd worn expensive dresses before, in another life, at events meant to impress people she'd since learned not to trust — but nothing had prepared her for the particular vertigo of walking into a ballroom on Kael Ashford's arm, every eye in the room recalculating the balance of power in the city's shipping industry in real time.

"Relax," Kael murmured against her ear, his hand resting at the small of her back with a possessiveness that drew stares from at least three women Sienna recognized from society pages she'd scrolled past in another life. "You look like you're waiting for the room to catch fire."

"Given our week, that seems like a reasonable expectation."

The ghost of a laugh — real, this time, surprising them both. It was the first unguarded sound she'd heard from him, and it did something dangerous to the careful wall she'd built around herself since signing the contract.

She spotted Renzo Castellano across the room forty minutes later, and every ounce of warmth the laugh had left behind turned instantly, sickeningly cold.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to risk being seen anywhere near her, not with an operation this delicate, not with Kael Ashford's eyes sweeping the room every ninety seconds like a man running a perimeter check. But there he was, in a tailored suit that made him look like exactly the kind of man who belonged at a harbor authority fundraiser, lifting a glass of champagne in her direction with a smile that was equal parts warning and demand.

She excused herself to the powder room three minutes later, heart in her throat, and found him waiting in the hallway outside it exactly ninety seconds after that — which meant he'd been watching her more closely than she'd realized, which meant this entire "chance encounter" had been planned before she'd ever walked through the ballroom doors.

"You've had two days and you've given me nothing," Renzo said quietly, his smile never wavering for the benefit of anyone who might glance down the hallway. "Your sister's next round of treatment is scheduled for Thursday. I'd hate for the hospital to suddenly discover a billing irregularity."

"I found something. A page of numbers in his office. I had to delete the photo — he caught me."

Renzo's expression flickered, the first real crack she'd seen in his composure since the night he'd shown her the photographs of Mara's hospital bracelet. "He caught you and you're still standing in this hallway in one piece? Careful, Sienna. Men like Kael Ashford don't let go of people who lie to them. They let go of the lie once it's no longer useful — and take the liar down with it."

"I need more time."

"You have until Thursday." He straightened his cuffs, already turning to leave, already reassembling the smile he'd worn walking in. "Find the ledger, or I stop being the only danger in your life."

He was gone before she could answer, swallowed back into the ballroom's glittering crowd — and when Sienna turned back toward the lights and the music, she found Kael standing exactly ten feet away, in the shadow of a marble column, his face unreadable in a way that told her, with absolute certainty, that he had seen every second of the conversation she'd just had.