SOLD INTO HIS ARMS

CHAPTER 2: What I Was Worth

I sat on the cold floor of Victor's study for two hours.

I read every page of that contract. Every clause, every condition, every carefully written line that reduced my life to a number. Fifty million pounds. That was my worth. That was the price my father put on his only daughter, signed and sealed six months before I ever heard Victor's name.

Clause seven: Victor would maintain the marriage for a minimum of three years. Clause nine: my father would surrender all property claims. Clause twelve: I would never learn the truth.

There was a time, reading those words, when I wanted to believe there was an explanation. My father was not a cruel man. He raised me alone after my mother died. He worked two jobs to pay for my schooling. He cried at my graduation. He told me every day that I was the best thing in his life.

But his signature was there. Clear and undeniable.

I pressed my back against the cold wall and tried to remember the day Victor walked into my life. He appeared in the university library on a Tuesday afternoon. He asked about the book I was reading. He smiled with a warmth that made me forget how to breathe. Within a week, he took me to dinner. Within a month, he told me he was falling for me. Within six months, he put a ring on my finger.

Every moment, every smile, every gentle word. Calculated; panned and paid for.

The front door opened downstairs. Heavy footsteps crossed the hallway. I heard Victor's coat hit the hook, his shoes on the wooden stairs, his hand on the bannister. Each sound moved closer until his shadow blocked the light from the doorway.

He looked at me sitting on the floor, the papers scattered around me, and his expression did not change.

"You went through my things," he said.

I held up a page. "My father sold me to you."

Victor walked into the study and sat in his desk chair, calm and unhurried, like a man sitting down to a business review.

"Your father owed my family money he could never repay," he said. "He came to us with an offer. I did not ask for you, Evelyn. He offered you."

"Why would he do that? What debt could possibly be worth his daughter?"

"A debt connected to something much older than money." Victor leaned back in his chair. His dark eyes watched me without blinking. "Your father was responsible for the disappearance of my younger sister fifteen years ago."

I stared at him. He told me about Grace once, early in our marriage. A sister who went missing when she was nine. He spoke of her with such pain that I held him all night afterward. He said she was never found. He said his mother died from grief.

"My father would never hurt a child," I said.

"She vanished from a property he managed. His guards were the last to see her alive. There was evidence on his land. The only reason he walked free was a lack of witnesses."

"Evidence can be planted. My father was a good man."

"Good men do not sell their daughters."

I had no answer for that. The truth of it burned through me like a hot blade.

"So this marriage..." I swallowed hard. "This marriage was punishment. You married me to make my father pay."

"Your father offered you. I accepted. Call it what you want."

"Did you ever love me?"

He did not answer. That silence told me everything.

I pushed myself to my feet, steadying myself against the wall. The contract pages scattered beneath my shoes.

"I told you this morning that I am carrying your child," I said. My voice came out thin and broken. "Does that mean nothing to you?"

He looked at me, and for one brief moment, something cracked in his expression. A flash of something that might have been pain, might have been regret. But it disappeared so fast I could not be sure it was ever there.

"The child does not change the terms of our agreement," he said. "Three years are complete. You are free to go."

"Free." I laughed, and it sounded like a sob. "I dropped out of university to marry you. I have no degree, no job, no savings. My father is dead. My brother is in school. And you want me to just walk away?"

"I will provide a settlement."

"I do not want your money."

"Then what do you want, Evelyn?"

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear apart this room, this house, this man who made me believe he loved me. But more than anything, I wanted answers.

"My father fell from a building two years ago," I said. "The police called it suicide. Did you know about that before it happened?"

Something shifted in Victor's posture. A stiffening of his spine, a tightening of his fingers on the armrest.

"Your father made his choices," he said quietly.

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only answer you will get from me."

I grabbed my bag from the floor. I shoved the contract inside.

"I am taking this with me," I said.

"Take whatever you want. This house has nothing for you."

I walked out of the study, down the stairs, through the hallway. My hands shook so badly that I could barely turn the door handle.

Outside, the night air hit my face like cold water. I pulled out my phone to call Mirabel, and my eyes were too blurred with tears to see the screen properly. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and started walking toward the main road.

A car pulled up beside me. A sleek white vehicle I recognized immediately. The window rolled down, and Tonia's face appeared.

"Evelyn," she said. "Getting some air?"

I kept walking.

"You know," she called after me, "I told Victor to end this sooner. Three years was longer than necessary. But he is a man of his word."

I stopped. I turned slowly.

"You knew," I said. "You knew the entire time."

Tonia smiled. The kind of smile that belonged to someone who had already won.

"Of course I knew, darling. I helped write the contract.”