CRASHING INTO YOU

EPISODE TWO: DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

CHAPTER TWO: Deal with the Devil

I turned him down.

I don’t know if it was pride, fear, or some tiny sliver of dignity still clinging to my broken bones, but I told Damian Black no. No to his paper marriage. No to his fortune. No to the cold gleam in his eyes when he offered me a way out.

“I’m not for sale,” I told him, voice hoarse but firm.

He didn’t argue. He just nodded once, like he respected the answer but knew better. Like he’d seen women like me before — proud, poor, and too exhausted to think straight.

“I’ll give you a few days,” he said quietly. “You’ll change your mind.”

I hated how certain he sounded.

I was discharged two days later.

The nurse wheeled me to the front entrance like I was made of glass, but no one waited for me outside. No cab. No flowers. No familiar voice calling my name.

I had nothing but a thin coat, a hospital envelope, and a bruised soul.

The walk to the subway nearly killed me. I limped through downtown traffic with my wrist still wrapped and my ankle weak. The city didn’t pause for me. No one offered help. I was invisible — a ghost of the woman who’d once had a home, a career, and people to love.

I made it to my old job first, hoping against hope.

The receptionist didn’t recognize me.

“Oh,” she said, eyes flicking to the bandages. “Leah. Yeah, I heard about the accident. HR assumed you’d resigned.”

“I didn’t,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Well…” She glanced at the glass doors. “Your position’s been filled. We’re… moving on.”

Just like that.

No calls. No messages. Seven years of loyalty gone in a voicemail I never got.

Next came the apartment.

Ryan had changed the locks. The security guard said my name was no longer on the lease. I didn’t argue. I didn’t even cry. I just walked away, numb and tight-lipped, like a shadow of myself.

By the time I reached the shelter downtown, the ache in my ankle had flared back into stabbing pain. They had a cot and a meal, but nothing permanent. Nothing safe.

I curled up that night in a borrowed hoodie, my mind drifting to the only person I had left.

Dad.

He was in a small elder care home outside the city — not fancy, but kind. The only place I could afford after his stroke last year. I called the next morning to check on him.

“Miss Park,” the manager said gently, “we’ve been trying to reach you. Your payment’s three months overdue. We’ll have to discharge him if it’s not settled this week.”

Discharge. That was the word they used for everything these days. Like I was some expired product, rotting in the wrong place.

I stared at the wall for a long time after that call.

And then I did what I swore I wouldn’t.

I called Damian Black.

He didn’t sound surprised when I asked to meet. He didn’t gloat. Didn’t even ask what changed my mind.

We met at a private suite in one of his buildings — floor-to-ceiling windows, expensive silence, and the air of a deal already half-signed.

“I’ll do it,” I told him, voice steady but low. “But on my terms.”

His brow lifted slightly. “Let’s hear them.”

I swallowed, shoulders squared. “Separate rooms. Separate lives. No touching. No feelings. This isn’t real, and it never will be.”

He watched me for a long moment. Then nodded once.

“Done.”

Just like that.

I should’ve been relieved. Instead, I felt hollow.

The next few days were a blur of transformation.

Damian brought in a stylist, and a fabricated backstory. I became Leah Park, only child of a wealthy shipping family with a private education and a degree from some European university I couldn’t pronounce.

It felt like playing dress-up in someone else’s skin.

I watched in the mirror as they altered me — hair trimmed, makeup flawless, scars hidden under silk. They removed Me, the real woman, and built a fantasy in her place.

“She needs to impress my grandfather,” Damian explained, handing me a file. “He hates social climbers and gold diggers. He thinks old money’s the only money worth trusting.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My throat felt tight from the lies I was being wrapped in.

The wedding came quickly.

It wasn’t grand or romantic. Just cold and calculated — like everything else about this arrangement.

It was held in Damian’s grandfather’s library, a cavernous old room with velvet drapes and antique portraits glaring down at us like we were frauds. Maybe we were.

There was no white gown. No bouquet. Just a pale blue designer dress someone else picked for me, and a faint trace of perfume that didn’t feel like mine.

His grandfather, a sharp-eyed man in his eighties, wore a tailored suit and a faint smile. The officiant looked bored.

Damian stood beside me in his three-piece suit, unshakable and unreadable.

“Do you, Damian Black, take Leah Park to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the officiant asked.

“I do,” he said without pause.

“And do you, Leah Park, take Damian Black—”

“I do,” I whispered.

There was a silence that followed. An echo of a life I didn’t ask for.

A kiss was expected, but Damian only took my hand and gave it the briefest, coldest brush of his lips.

The old man clapped, pleased. “Finally. I’ll be dead before the year ends — I want great-grandchildren, not headlines.”

I smiled thinly, like a woman who had everything.

But inside, I was screaming.