A VOW FOR VENGEANCE

Chapter Five: Terms and Conditions

Hanna's POV

"Marriage?" he asked, setting the envelope down on the table.

"Exactly. I want us to get married."

He laughed through his nose, gone almost as fast as it came. I did not laugh with him, not quite understanding what was funny about anything I said.

"Wait." He sat forward. "You are serious?"

"I would not have skipped every security guard your assistant put in front of me to sit here and joke with you." I kept my voice low. "I am going to be honest with you. My family betrayed me, and I intend to destroy all of them, one at a time, and I need resources and a name powerful enough that nobody can touch me while I do it. You have both."

He went completely still. "You are asking me to help you take your own family down?"

"I am asking you to marry me for one year. In exchange, you get a stake in Lawson Arts, full control of the arts wing, and one million dollars when the year ends and we divorce. Clean, documented, and over before either of us gets tired of it."

He smirked in a way that suggested he thought I had lost my mind. "I have heard of you," he said. "The Lawson daughter. The good girl who never raises her voice, and does exactly what her family expects." He tilted his head, studying me like he was looking straight through my skin to whatever secret sat underneath. "And yet here you are, proposing marriage like some bored little rich girl throwing herself at a stranger for attention." He smiled. "That is not the woman I heard about."

I did not let the heat rising in my cheeks reach my eyes. Instead, I forced my lips into a slow, calm smile, to show him that his words had not touched me at all.

"Maybe you heard wrong."

"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe the good girl act was never real to begin with."

I let the silence continue for a moment before I answered. "People are not always what you hear about them," I said, smiling just a little on one side. "And it does not matter what you think of me. I will still get my revenge, one way or another."

He picked the envelope back up.

"See, that is where you have got this wrong." He leaned forward, and every trace of amusement was gone. "You do not get to walk in here and tell me what to do. I do not answer to anyone, not even my own father. And certainly not to a woman I just met." He dropped the envelope back in front of me. "Find someone else who will entertain your bullshit."

He lifted two fingers toward the corner of the room, where a man in a dark suit had been standing quietly the entire time.

"Before your security throws me out," I said, "I know your father has been pushing that board seat on you for two years. You turn it down, he backs off for a few months, and then starts again, because he will never stop. On paper, nothing about you has changed to him. You are still the son with no wife, no responsibilities, and nothing to show for your life."

I paused. "Marry me and it solves the problem. Not because you gave in to him, but because it fills the exact blank he keeps pointing at. A settled man with a respectable wife leaves him nothing left to push. You get to keep the life you already have. You just stop having to defend it every few months."

Stefan lowered his hand slowly. "How do you know all that?"

"I did not walk in here without doing my homework."

He went quiet for longer than I expected, turning it over before he spoke again.

"You have got an answer for everything," he said. "That is not a compliment."

"I did not ask for one."

"So you are asking me to hand my name to a woman with a grudge the size of a company, and trust that when this is over, you will not have used it for something I never agreed to."

"A lawyer will review every line before either of us signs anything."

"People like you do not put the real terms on paper."

"People like me? You do not know me."

"I know enough. You walked in here with a speech about my father memorized before you even said hello." He shook his head. "I do not like being managed."

"I am not managing you."

"You are doing it right now."

I did not rush to deny it, because he was not entirely wrong, and scrambling to argue would only prove his point. "Fine," I said instead. "Walk away. Tell your father yes next time he asks about the seat, and watch him ask again in four months anyway, because that is exactly what he has done for two years. Or sign, take the year and the money, and go back to the same life you already have the day it ends. I am not asking you to change who you are, Stefan. I am asking you to be exactly as difficult as you already are, just with a ring on."

He did not move for a long moment. Then he picked the envelope back up, opened it, and read through it a second time, slower now, as though he were still hunting for whatever trap he believed was hiding inside it.

"One condition," he said finally, without looking up. "And it is not up for negotiation, no matter how much homework you did on me."

"I am listening."

"You stay out of my private life. Completely." His voice had gone flat. "No questions about where I go or who I see. No digging into my past or my family. You marry the part of me that shows up at dinners and events, and that is all you get."

"And if I break that?"

"Then it ends immediately. No warning." He said it like it cost him nothing. "I do not bend on that, not for a million dollars and not for anything you think you know about me."

I should have asked why, but I understood the situation of wanting to be left alone, so I let it go.

He read the papers a third time in full while I sat and let him take whatever time he needed. When he finally signed, he did it fast, almost carelessly, as though he had already decided somewhere in that third read and simply did not want to go any further. He slid the papers across without a word. I signed under him, my hand steady, though everything else inside me was not.

"We will need to make this look real," I said. "Dinners, events and photos."

"I do not do photos."

"You are about to."

He did not argue, just looked mildly irritated. He stood, buttoning his jacket, and walked out without a goodbye, only a short nod, the whole room seeming to clear a path for him.

...

The drive home felt shorter than it should have. I kept circling back to his voice going flat over that one condition, and the way his eyes had changed when I mentioned his father, like I had touched something he did not know was still there.

Victoria met me at the door before I had my coat off. "Well?"

"He signed."

Her mouth fell open. "He actually signed?"

"With one condition. I stay out of his private life completely, or the whole thing ends." I started up the stairs. "It costs me nothing to agree to that."

"Hanna." She followed me halfway up. "A man does not protect a door that carefully unless something behind it is worth protecting."

"I know."

I reached my room and shut the door behind me, and it was only then, alone, that I let myself smile properly for the first time all day. The papers were signed. The revenge I had been building in silence for months finally had a name attached to it, and a face, and a fortune large enough to make sure nobody could stop me this time.

I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled off my shoes, replaying the whole meeting from the start. The way he had almost thrown me out and how he had gone quiet the moment I mentioned his father, like I had pressed on something he thought nobody could still reach.

I told myself it did not matter. I had not married him to understand him. I had married him to survive what came next, and whatever he was protecting was his business, not mine, exactly as I had promised.

But as I turned off the light, I found myself wondering. What could a man with nothing left to lose possibly still be so afraid of losing?