The last line of the agreement felt like a branding iron against Elara's retinas.
"Husband agrees to cover all medical expenses for Mariam Vance for the duration of the agreement."
It was the only sentence in that entire cold, legal document that didn't feel like a death warrant. It was her mother's breath. Her mother's heartbeat. And it was now in the hands of the man who looked at Elara as if she were a smudge of dirt on a pristine marble floor.
"You're insane," the words escaped before she could stop them, echoing through the cathedral-like silence of the office.
Adrian's smile was thin, sharp, and entirely devoid of warmth. "Probably. But I'm also the only person standing between your mother and a morphine drip until she dies in a crowded county facility."
He picked up a pen—solid gold, engraved with his initials—and held it out. It wasn't an offer; it was a leash. "Sign it, Elara. Or walk out that door and listen to her scream in pain for the next three months. I imagine pancreatic cancer isn't a particularly quiet way to go."
Elara's hands were shaking so violently she had to press them between her knees. The air in the room felt thick, heavy with the scent of his expensive sandalwood cologne and the looming shadow of her own ruin.
"Why?" she whispered, her voice cracking. "Why would you want to marry me? You hate me. You've spent the last two years dismantling everything my father ever loved. Isn't that enough?"
"Yes," he said, the word dropping like a stone. He stood up and walked toward the window, his back to her. "This isn't about desire, Miss Vance. This is about justice. Your father's negligence didn't just cost money. It cost lives. My mother was on that plane. She didn't die instantly, you know. I read the autopsy. She was alive when the fuel tank exploded. She felt the heat. She burned."
Elara flinched as if he'd struck her. The tragedy of Sophia Blackwood was a headline she'd tried to forget, a shadow that had eventually pushed her father to put a gun in his mouth.
"My father swore the landing component wasn't faulty," she pleaded, though she knew it was useless.
"And yet, he's dead, and my mother is ashes," Adrian cut her off, turning back to face her. His eyes were like shards of ice. "Sign. Or don't. But decide now. I have a board meeting in ten minutes, and your mother's life is currently losing its value with every second you waste."
Elara looked at the paper. Thirty-six months. Three years in a cage with a man who wanted to see her spirit ground into dust. She thought of her mother's skeletal hands, once capable of playing Chopin, now bruised and purple from failed IV starts. She thought of her father's last words: "Take care of your mother, Lara. No matter what."
The pen felt like a lead weight as she took it from his hand. Her fingers brushed his—just for a second—and the contact sent a jolt through her that felt less like chemistry and more like a warning.
She leaned over the desk. The gold nib scratched against the thick, expensive paper. The sound was obscenely loud, a rhythmic rasp that marked the end of her life as a free woman.
Elara Marie Vance.
She finished the signature with the same flourish her father had taught her when she was seven. Then, she dropped the pen as if it had burned her.
Adrian picked up the document, examining her name with a clinical nod. "Good. You've made the only logical choice. Isabella will handle the transfer for the hospital bills tonight."
"So, that's it?" Elara stood, her legs feeling like they were made of water. "I'm just... yours now?"
"Not yet," he said, walking around the desk. He stopped inches from her, caging her in with his sheer height. He reached out, his thumb catching her chin and forcing her to look up. "The wedding is Saturday. Ten a.m. My penthouse. Wear white. I want the world to see exactly what I've bought."
He let go of her as if she were something he'd scraped off his shoe. "And Elara? Don't bother with a packing list. Everything you own from your current life belongs in a dumpster. You'll wear what I provide. You'll speak when I allow it. And you'll remember every single day that you are here to pay a debt."
He turned his back on her, effectively dismissing her.
Elara stumbled out of the office, past Isabella's smug, frozen smile, and into the elevator. The sixty-seven-floor descent made her stomach lurch, or perhaps it was just the realization that she had just sold herself for a dollar and a medical bill.
In the lobby, the rain had intensified. She stood under the Blackwood Tower awning, the contract's words burning behind her eyes.
Thirty-six months.
One dollar.
His punishment.
Her hands came up to cover her face, and for the first time since her father's funeral, Elara Vance didn't just cry. She broke. Great, heaving sobs shook her body, her tears mixing with the rain that blew beneath the canopy.
But when she finally lowered her hands, her eyes weren't just red. They were cold. Something had shifted in the wreckage of her soul.
Adrian Blackwood thought he'd bought a victim. He thought he'd purchased a broken thing to torment. He didn't know that the Vance women were built for survival.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, looking up at the penthouse levels of the tower.
You want to break me, Adrian? she thought, her heart hardening into a diamond. Fine. But I'm taking pieces of you with me when I go.
Saturday, she would become his wife.
Saturday, the war would begin.
She made herself a promise right there in the pouring rain: She would survive him. But first?
She would find his heart. And she would make it bleed.
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