The silk sheets are worth more than most people's cars.
I know this because I looked it up three months ago, in those first desperate days when I catalogued every expensive thing in this penthouse as evidence in a case I would never get to present. Everything here costs more than it should. The marble floors were imported from Italy, the floor-to-ceiling windows offered a view of Manhattan that people kill for, the kitchen was with appliances I don't know how to use because I've never had to cook for myself. This is a beautiful prison I must admit.
And I am a beautifully kept prisoner.
I stretch in the early morning light, my body protesting in ways that remind me exactly how I spent last night. How I spend most nights now. The space beside me is empty and cold. Damien leaves before dawn, he always has some empire to run, some deal to close, some life to ruin.
My life, as it turns out.
But I didn't know that three months ago when I signed the contract that delivered me here like a package. I thought I was saving my family. I thought I was noble, sacrificing myself for the greater good.
I thought a lot of things that turned out to be lies.
The penthouse is quiet except for the hum of expensive air conditioning and the distant sounds of the city waking up forty floors below. I could stay in this bed forever, surrounded by luxury I really didn't ask for. But staying in bed won't change anything. Won't make me less trapped. Won't make the contract I signed any less binding.
Won't make me stop craving the man who owns that contract and owns me.
I step out of bed, my bare feet finding the heated marble floors. Even the bathroom is an exercise in excess rainfall showers, soaking tubs big enough for two, mirrors everywhere reflecting back the woman I've become. Longer hair because he likes it that way. Softer curves because he feeds me like I'm something precious instead of something he purchased. Shadows under my eyes because sleeping next to your captor, no matter how gentle he is, never comes easy.
The woman in the mirror doesn't look like Elena Castellano, beloved daughter of a business empire. She looks like something else. Someone else.
She looks like him .
I splash cold water on my face and try to remember the last time I made a choice that was truly mine, certainly not since the night I signed the papers. When you grow up as daddy's princess in a world of bodyguards and trust funds, how many choices do you really get to make?
But that night three months ago, I thought I was finally making one that mattered.
Three months earlier
The Castellano estate had never felt so empty.
I found my father in his study at two in the morning, sitting behind the massive oak desk that had belonged to his father and grandfather before him. The same desk where he had taught me to read and write when I was still very young.
Now it was covered with documents I didn't recognize and bottles that were definitely empty.
"Papa?"
Vincent Castellano looked up at me with his eyes red-rimmed and hollow, our world crumbled around us. The media called it a hostile takeover. The lawyers called it aggressive acquisition. My father called it the end of everything, the end of us.
"Elena." His voice was hoarse, broken. "You shouldn't see me like this."
But I have been seeing him like this for weeks. Watching the man who once commanded boardrooms and bent senators to his will shrink into someone I barely knew. Watching our staff disappear one by one. Watching our friends stop returning phone calls.
"Tell me what I can do," I said, moving to perch on the edge of his desk like I had as a child. "There has to be something." omg I was so innocent and concerned.
He laughed, but it wasn't a humorous sound. "There's nothing left to do. He's taken everything. The company, the contracts, the properties. All of it."
"He?" Who is he?
"Damien Cross." My father called the name with so much hatred. "He's been planning this for years, Elena. Circling us like a shark, waiting for the right moment to strike. And when he did..." Vincent gestured helplessly at the papers scattered across his desk. "We never stood a chance."
I have heard the name mentioned in our social circles. Damien Cross, the corporate raider who has built an empire on the bones of other people's failures. Young, ruthless, brilliant. The kind of man people feared and respected in equal measure. I have never met him, but I've seen his picture in Forbes, all sharp angles and cold eyes.
"Maybe we can negotiate," I said, hating how small my voice sounded. "Maybe there's something he wants that we can"
" Actually there is."
The way my father said it made ice form in my stomach.
"Papa?"
He reached for another bottle, the one still half-full, and poured three fingers of amber liquid. "He's offered to let us keep the house. Let the Castellano name mean something other than scandal and failure."
"That's... that's good, isn't it?" "In exchange for you."
The words hit me hard. I stared at my father, waiting for him to take it back, to tell me he was drunk and talking nonsense. But his eyes were steady now, focused in a way they haven't been in weeks.
"What do you mean, in exchange for me?"
Vincent slid a contract across the desk. Thick paper, legal letterhead, more clauses than I could count. But I saw my name. I saw Damien Cross's signature, bold and decisive at the bottom.
"A companion contract," my father said quietly. "Three years. You would live with him, accompany him to social functions, be... available to him."
Available. The word tasted like poison.
"You mean a mistress contract."
"I mean survival." Vincent's voice turned hard. "For all of us. The alternative is prison for me, poverty for you, and the complete destruction of everything our family built. At least this way"
"This way I'm sold like property." I stood up so fast the desk chair rolled backward. "This is the way you pimp out your only daughter to save your own skin."
"Elena"
"How long have you known?" The question tore itself from my throat. "How long have you been planning to trade me like... like stock options?"
"It's not like that."
"Then what is it like?" I grabbed the contract, scanning the legal language. Residence requirements. Social obligations. Physical expectations that made my cheeks burn. "What is this like, Papa? Because it looks like you're selling me to a stranger."
"He's not a stranger." Vincent's voice was barely a whisper. "I know Damien Cross. I know what kind of man he is."
"What kind of man buys women?"
"The kind who keeps his word." My father met my eyes, and I saw something there that might have been regret. Or relief. "Sign this, Elena, and you save us all. Refuse, and we lose everything."
I stared down at the contract in my hands. My name is typed in an elegant font next to a blank line waiting for my signature next to the man's name who would own me for the next three years.
Three years. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like nothing at all.
"And if I sign this, you get to keep the house? Your freedom?"
"Yes."
"And the family name stays clean?"
"As clean as it can be."
I thought about the staff who had worked for us for decades, who would lose their jobs when the estate is sold. I thought about my father who would be broken and forgotten. I thought about the Castellano legacy ending with scandal and shame.
Then I thought about three years with a man who threatened to destroy everything I had ever known. Three years of being "available" to someone who'll see me as just another acquisition.
"Does he know I'm willing?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Vincent's silence was answered enough.
I picked up the pen from his desk, the gold Mont Blanc he had given me for my eighteenth birthday. How fitting that it would be the instrument of my surrender.
"Elena, you don't have to"
"Yes, I do." I signed my name with steady hands, though my heart was breaking apart in my chest. "Because you've made sure I don't have any other choice."
I set the pen down and looked at my father one last time. "When?"
"Tomorrow night. A car will come for you at eight."
"Tomorrow?" I laughed, high and sharp. "God, you really did sell me, didn't you? Like livestock."
"Elena"
But I was already walking away, the contract papers in my hand like evidence of my own execution.
I had one night left as Elena Castellano, beloved daughter and heiress.
Starting tomorrow, I will belong to someone else entirely.
Present day
The memory fades as I finish my shower and wrap myself in a towel. Three months later, I'm still here. Still his. Still trying to figure out how I ended up grateful for the very chains that bind me.
Because that's the truth I can't escape, no matter how much I hate myself for it. Damien Cross may have bought me, but somewhere along the way, I started wanting to be owned.
The penthouse door opens with a soft click, and I know without looking that he's back. Back from whatever business takes him away before dawn, back to the woman who has become his most prized possession.
Back to me.
"Elena?" His voice carries through the penthouse, rich and dark and familiar in ways that make my pulse quicken.
"In here," I called back, wrapping the towel around myself.
Because this is my life now. This is my choice, even if I made it with a gun to my family's head.
Golden chains are still chains.
But God help me, because I'm starting to love the way they feel.