Grace had read the contract seventeen times.
Each time, the words looked the same. Each time, they meant something different.
One year. The number seemed impossible and also inevitable, like she'd been moving toward this moment her entire life. Public appearances required. She could do that. She was excellent at appearing. Compensation upon completion: $500,000. That number made her dizzy. She'd never had money before. Her father had controlled everything, doling out allowances like she was a child. With five hundred thousand dollars, she could disappear. She could start over. She could breathe.
No emotional involvement. Those four words were underlined in the contract.
Grace read them again and again, trying to understand what they meant. Were they rules for him or rules for her? Did Sebastian Sterling not want her to develop feelings for him, or was he telling her not to expect feelings from him? Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the distinction was meaningless when nobody wanted her to have emotions in the first place.
She sat on her childhood bed in the dark, the contract papers scattered across her lap like a diagnosis she didn't know how to treat. Outside her window, Manhattan glittered. Somewhere out there, Marcus was probably with Vivian. Somewhere out there, her father was probably celebrating the four million dollars of the Sterling investment that had already been transferred to Reed Industries.
Somewhere out there, people were getting what they wanted.
Grace's phone rang at 11 PM.
She knew it was Lily before she answered. Lily was the only person who called her at night, the only person who'd ever called her at all just to hear her voice.
"Hey," Lily said, and Grace could hear the concern behind the casual greeting. "How are you holding up?"
Grace wanted to lie. She wanted to say she was fine, that everything was under control, that she had a plan. That's what she was supposed to do. That's what people who cared about other people's comfort wanted to hear.
"I'm signing the contract tomorrow," Grace said instead.
There was a pause. Lily didn't fill it with sympathy or judgment, which was why she was the only real friend Grace had.
"Tell me you're not serious," Lily said finally.
"I'm serious."
"Grace, no. Absolutely not. Listen to me. You can stay with me. Fly to California tonight. Bring nothing but a suitcase. We'll figure out the rest later. You don't have to do this."
Grace closed her eyes. She could picture Lily's apartment in Sacramento, the one with the messy kitchen and the pile of throw pillows on the couch. She could picture starting over in a place where nobody knew her name, where nobody expected her to be anything. It sounded like a fantasy. It sounded like a dream she didn't deserve.
"I have nowhere else to go," Grace said quietly.
"You have me," Lily said. "You always have me."
"And then what?" Grace's voice cracked. "I move in with you and become your dependent? I get a job, and you help me pay rent while I rebuild my life? How long before I'm a burden, Lily? How long before you resent me?"
"That's not going to happen."
"It always happens," Grace said. She wasn't arguing. She was just stating facts the way she understood them. "Everyone gets tired of taking care of me. Marcus got tired of me. My father got tired of me. Even you eventually will, and I can't handle that. I can't handle another person leaving me because I'm not enough."
Lily's voice changed when she spoke again. It got quieter, more serious. "Grace, you're worth more than this. You know that, right? You're brilliant and kind and you deserve someone who chooses you first. Not a contract. Not a transaction. You deserve real love."
Grace thought about that word. Real. What did it mean anymore? Real was Marcus's lies. Real was her father's cruelty disguised as business necessity. Real was the way Vivian smiled while stealing things that belonged to Grace.
Maybe fake was better. Maybe a contract with clear rules and a defined end date was the most honest thing anyone had ever offered her.
"I'm tired," Grace said. And she meant it in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. "I'm tired of being invisible. I'm tired of trying to be good enough. I'm tired of running. At least with Sebastian Sterling, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. No surprises. No disappointment. Just one year of following the rules."
"You deserve better than that."
"I don't think I do," Grace whispered. "I think this is exactly what I deserve."
Lily didn't respond for a long time. When she did, her voice was soft and sad.
"I'll be here whenever you realize you're wrong about yourself," she said. "I'll be here, Grace. Always."
After they hung up, Grace sat in the dark and let herself feel the weight of what she was about to do. She was twenty-six years old, and she was choosing to spend the next year with a stranger because the alternative was admitting that she had value beyond her usefulness to other people.
She wasn't ready to do that yet.
At midnight, Grace got out of bed. She found a pen in her desk drawer, one she'd used for writing essays in college. Back when she thought her mind was her greatest asset. Back when she believed that intelligence and effort could get her somewhere.
She'd been wrong about so many things.
Grace pulled the contract toward her. The signature line waited at the bottom of the last page. Thirty-eight pages of legal language summarizing her decision to become someone's property for three hundred sixty-five days.
She positioned the pen above the paper.
Her hand shook. She couldn't tell if it was fear or relief.
Grace Eleanor Reed. She wrote her name slowly, each letter deliberately formed. When she finished, the signature looked like it belonged to someone else. Someone braver. Someone more broken. Someone who'd already given up.
The ink dried quickly. Permanent. Real in a way that nothing in her life had been for a long time.
She had signed away her freedom.
She had signed away her right to say no.
She had signed away the last remaining possibility that someone would fight for her, would choose her, would love her in the way that mattered.
But she'd also signed away the crushing responsibility of trying.
Grace placed the pen down and stared at her signature. It looked like a prison sentence. It looked like surrender. It looked like the most honest thing she'd ever done because it was the first time she'd admitted out loud what she'd always known to be true.
She was worthless without her usefulness to someone else.
She might as well get paid for it.
Her phone buzzed. A reminder set for tomorrow: Sterling Enterprises, 2 PM.
Grace took a screenshot of the signed contract and sent it to her father with a single message: "It's done."
His response came immediately. One word: "Good."
Not thank you. Not I'm proud of you. Not I'm sorry I had to do this to my daughter.
Just good. Like she'd completed a task. Like she'd fulfilled her only purpose.
Grace placed the contract in a folder and set it on her nightstand. Tomorrow she would walk into Sebastian Sterling's office and sign the official papers. She would become Mrs. Sterling on paper, at least. She would move into his penthouse and learn to disappear in a new location.
She would survive.
But at 3 AM, lying awake in her childhood bedroom for the last time, Grace finally let herself cry. Not for Marcus or her father or the life she'd lost. She cried for the girl she'd been before all of this, the one who'd thought love was something that could be earned through compliance and silence.
She cried for the woman she was becoming, the one who'd already learned that it couldn't.
She cried because she was about to meet a man who'd bought her like furniture, and she was grateful for it.
And that broke something in her that she was afraid would never heal.