COLD TERMS

EPISODE FOUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS

known since the elevator. The important thing was to go back in with good questions and a clear head. To negotiate what needed negotiating, read what needed reading, and enter whatever this was with both feet planted and her name signed in full.

She folded the contract neatly, tucked it into her bag, and went home to write better questions.

She came back with six questions written in a notepad.

She had written them carefully, in the order of importance she'd assigned them after two full reads of the contract and one conversation with Jade and one very long shower where she'd done most of her actual thinking. She had not written the other questions — the pink-section ones — because those were not questions she was asking Damian Crest. Those were questions she was going to keep asking herself quietly until they stopped feeling relevant, at which point she was going to stop asking them and move on.

She had dressed differently this time. Still professional — she didn't have another mode for this building — but the blazer was different, the one without the fraying cuff, the one she'd been saving for something. She wore her hair down. Not because she'd decided to; just because she'd run out of time to put it up and hadn't found a reason to care enough to fix it.

The same woman in the charcoal suit met her at reception. Still didn't smile. Still said follow me. Aria followed.

This time in the elevator she didn't look at herself in the mirrors. She looked at the floor numbers ascending and thought about her six questions and the specific order she'd arranged them in.

He was sitting at the desk this time when she walked in.

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

She sat down. She held up the notepad. She said: 'I have six questions.'

He looked at her and then at the notepad. He said: 'Go ahead.'

'I'll hold it so you can read them yourself. Save time.'

Something crossed his face — the same thing as before, that ghost of almost-amusement that came and went before she could fully see it. He leaned forward slightly in his chair. He read. She watched him read her questions. It took about forty-five seconds. He didn't ask her to turn the notepad around so he could see it more easily. He just read it from his side of the desk, upside-down, which meant he was either very good at reading upside-down or he'd done this before.

She suspected the former.

'Question one,' he said. 'Early termination.'

'The clause says mutual agreement only. That means you could refuse to let me exit if I wanted out.'

'That means you could refuse to let me exit as well.' He tilted his head, a small, precise movement. 'It protects both parties.'

She hadn't considered it from that angle. The protection running both ways. If he wanted to end the arrangement on his terms — if the acquisition completed early, if his grandmother changed her position, if something made her inconvenient — the mutual clause meant he'd need her agreement to end it too.

She hated that he'd gotten there first.

'The clause needs an arbitration mechanism,' she said. 'If one party requests termination and the other refuses, we need a process. Not just deadlock.'

He considered this for two seconds. 'I'll have my legal team add a thirty-day mediation window before any early termination dispute escalates.'

'Agreed.'

'Question two,' he said. 'Public affection parameters.'

'The contract says we need to present a genuine and convincing marital relationship. That's not a legal standard — it's a subjective one. I need a definition.'

He looked at her for a moment. Something shifted in his jaw — she'd started noticing these micro-movements, the places where his composure admitted things it didn't mean to.

'My grandmother,' he said, 'is perceptive. She will look for hesitation. She will watch how we move around each other, how we respond to each other, whether the proximity between us looks habitual or staged. She has been watching people perform politeness around her for seventy-four years and she can identify a performance in under thirty seconds.'

'So you need me to not flinch when you're close.'

'Yes.'

'And what does close mean, specifically?'

He considered. 'At events: hand contact when appropriate, proximity that implies comfort rather than tolerance, the capacity to have a conversation with each other in a room full of people that does not look like a deposition.' He paused. 'Nothing that crosses the personal boundaries outlined in clause seven.'

She wrote a note. 'I want that specification added to the contract. Not the general description — a defined parameter. No clause seven crossings, no more than what is reasonable for a couple of six months.'

'Our story will need to account for timeline.'

'We've been together eight months,' she said. 'Kept it quiet because of the acquisition. Married quickly because of a private decision.' She looked up. 'That's a story I can tell.'

He looked at her with that filing-away look. 'Eight months. Agreed.'

'Question three: my own account.'

'You want financial independence maintained.'

'I want my own account, separate from any household account you maintain. My earnings go there. The three hundred thousand goes there. I want no financial entanglement that could create a dependency interpretation.'

'Agreed.'