Emilyu Amandat Michael

My aunt called me while I was stationed with the special forces, asking me to come home. She had arranged a blind date for me. The man she described sounded perfect—handsome, and the youngest CEO of a publicly listed company in the city. Before I set off, my captain took the extra step of contacting air traffic control to ensure my information would remain encrypted throughout the trip. I arrived at the airport on time as planned. However, just as I was about to check in through the exclusive channel, someone abruptly yanked me backward from behind. A bundle of cash was then flung directly at my face. "I've bought your spot in the exclusive channel. Take the money and go line up in the regular queue," a woman said, her tone dripping with arrogance. Suppressing the anger rising in my chest, I calmly asked her, "You're neither a soldier nor in an emergency. Why do you think you're entitled to use my lane?" She let out a derisive laugh at my words. "Why? Because I'm Mr. Tanke's personal secretary." She sneered, adding, "Forget the exclusive channel. If the Tanke family wants the entire runway, they'll get it." For a moment, I was stunned. Then I dialed the number my aunt had given me for my fiancé. "Your secretary claims the Tanke family is so powerful that they can bend the world to their will. Is that true?" … The call connected, but before I could finish my sentence, an automated voice interrupted, "Sorry, the number you've dialed has been disconnected…" I hadn't expected this. "Oh, pretending to make a call?" the woman taunted when she heard the busy tone from the other end. She snatched my phone out of my hand. When she saw the voicemail message on the screen, she burst out laughing mockingly. "I thought you might actually be someone important. Turns out you were bluffing with a voicemail!" "You can't even reach Mr. Tanke's private line. Who do you think you are, trying to stop me?" She tossed the phone back at me with a smirk, then turned to slap her boarding pass onto the counter in front of a visibly trembling flight attendant. "Hurry up and check me in! If Mr. Tanke's tasks are delayed because of you, your entire ground crew will be out of a job by tomorrow!" The flight attendant hesitated, clutching the boarding pass with trembling hands. She looked at me, then back at the woman, her voice breaking with distress. "Miss Wadsley, this passenger's access to the exclusive channel is indeed on record. Please don't put us in a very difficult position…" "Difficult?" The woman's expression hardened as she slammed her palm against the counter. "Do you have any idea how much the Tanke Group invests in this airport every year?" "If you can't handle this trivial matter, I'll call your general manager right now!" Watching her bully the staff simply for her own convenience made my blood boil. I stepped forward, firmly grabbing her hand just as she was about to jab a finger into the flight attendant's face. "Do you have any idea what kind of people are allowed to use this channel?" I asked coldly. "You're the first to try and take my spot." "Oh, please!" she exclaimed, clutching her stomach and doubling over with exaggerated laughter. "Wearing camouflage doesn't make you important! Did you eat too many cheap boxed meals and lose your mind?" "Do you even know who I am? I'm the personal secretary to the president of the Tanke Group. You can't afford to piss me off!" I almost laughed out loud. All this commotion, and she turned out to be nothing more than a secretary? By now, the crowd had gathered to watch the scene unfold. Snippets of conversation about the secretary reached my ears. "Is this woman out of her mind? Aubrie is one of Leo's closest confidantes…" "Last month, an airport security officer tried to check her luggage, and the next day, he was reassigned to janitorial duty." It seemed she had a reputation for abusing her position to throw her weight around. Back in the unit, even my commander would greet me with respect. And yet here I was, being disrespected by someone who lived off the scraps of her employer. I let out a cold chuckle and shot back, "If the Tanke family is as powerful as you claim, how did they raise a dog without basic manners?" Her face turned a deep shade of red. "Who are you calling a dog?! You… I'll teach you a lesson today!" She swung her Chanel bag at my head, but I easily sidestepped her and twisted her wrist in one swift motion. A sharp crack echoed as her bones shifted out of place, followed by her screams. The once-arrogant Miss Wadsley was now hopping in pain. "Let go! Ah, it hurts!" she cried out. "Now you're scared?" I leaned in close to her contorted face. "Weren't you just making a lot of noise?" Despite her grimacing in pain, I had actually eased up entirely. If I had truly intended to harm her, she wouldn't have had the chance to scream. The crowd around us grew larger, and before long, several uniformed airport staff hurried over to restore order. Seizing the opportunity, Aubrie pulled away, clutching her wrist and panting heavily. "Once I tell Mr. Tanke about this, let's see how he deals with you!" I crossed my arms and smirked. "Well, I'll be waiting."

The cage smelled like rust and sweat and the perfume of women who had stopped crying. I was number fourteen. They'd written it on my collarbone in black marker, right above the neckline of the white dress they'd forced me into. The dress was cheap. The number was permanent. Both were designed to make a point. You are their product now. There were eleven of us left. Three had already been walked through the curtain to the other side, where the men were chatting. I hadn't heard any screaming. And that was worse than screaming. The woman next to me — barely a woman, maybe nineteen — was shaking so hard her teeth clicked. I reached over and held her hand. She gripped back like I was the last solid thing in the world. 'Number fourteen,' the handler called. My hand went cold. And I stood. My legs worked. That surprised me. Everything from the waist up had gone numb about two hours ago, somewhere between the blindfold and the van and the realization that no one was coming. No one knew where I was. My stepmother had made sure of that. The curtain opened. The room on the other side was dark except for the stage. Warm lighting, the kind you'd see in an upscale restaurant. Leather chairs arranged in a semicircle. Cigar smoke curling toward the ceiling. And men — maybe thirty of them — sitting in those chairs like they were waiting for the opera. I walked to the center of the stage because I knew too well my sole other choice was being dragged over there, and I had decided three hours ago that no one in this building would ever see me dragged. The auctioneer started talking. I didn't listen to the words. I looked at the men instead. Their faces. Their hands. The way some of them leaned forward and others stayed back. I was cataloguing. I was always cataloguing — it was the thing my father had taught me before he died, the thing that had kept me alive through four years of my stepmother's house. Watch the room. Know who's dangerous before they know you're watching. They were all dangerous. The bidding started at two hundred thousand. It climbed fast. Voices I couldn't see. Numbers that went up in increments of fifty thousand like they were bidding on a painting, not a person. My chest was tight. The white dress was too thin. The lights were too hot. Five hundred thousand. Seven hundred. One million. At one million, most of the voices dropped out. Two remained. One was somewhere to my left — older, from the sound of it, with the particular cadence of a man who was used to getting what he paid for. The other was silent. I turned toward the silence. Back row. Last chair on the right. He sat in the shadow where the stage light didn't reach, and I couldn't see his face — just the shape of him. Tall. Still. The kind of still that large predators have before they move. He raised one hand. Didn't speak. Just lifted his fingers from the armrest. 'Five million,' the auctioneer said. The room went quiet. The older voice to my left made a sound — disbelief, or maybe disgust — and said nothing else. 'Five million, going once' 'Five million, going twice.' The gavel came down. Sold. In the end, the man in the back row stood. He walked toward the stage, and the crowd parted the way water parts around stone — not because they chose to, but because he was the kind of thing you moved away from on instinct. He stepped into the light. My breath stopped. He was young. Early thirties. A face like architecture — sharp jaw, dark eyes, cheekbones that could cut. He wore a black suit that fit like it had been sewn onto his body, no tie, and he moved with the quiet, absolute authority of a man who had never once in his life been told the word, no. He stopped at the edge of the stage. He looked up at me. Something crossed his face. Fast. Barely visible. Like a crack in a wall that seals itself before you can trace it. Then he took off his jacket, reached up, and draped it over my shoulders. 'Mrs. Ashford,' he said. His voice was low. Calm. Completely controlled. 'It's time to go home.' I stared at him. 'I'm not Mrs. Ashford,' I said. 'You are now.' He held out his hand. 'I just bought you. The least you can do is take my name.' My mouth opened. Nothing came out. He waited. Patient. Certain. Like he had all the time in the world and had already calculated exactly how this conversation would end. I didn't take his hand. But I followed him out. Because the only thing worse than leaving with a stranger was staying in that room. And because — in the half-second before he'd locked his expression down — I had seen something in his eyes that didn't belong in a man who had just purchased a woman at auction. Recognition. He knew me.

My three-year-old daughter was dying on the operating table when my husband's mistress walked into the hospital wearing my stolen wedding ring. She wasn't alone. She had a camera crew behind her, livestreaming everything. "Found her!" she screamed, pointing at me. "This is the woman who's been stealing my husband's money to pay for some random kid's surgery!" I was sitting in the hallway outside the ICU, covered in my daughter's blood, when she shoved a phone in my face. The chat was blowing up with comments. "Expose her!" "Drag that homewrecker!" "She deserves to lose everything!" I stared at the ring on her finger. My mother's ring. The one Ethan swore he'd never take off. "That's my ring," I said quietly. The woman — his secretary, Megan — laughed so hard she nearly dropped her phone. "YOUR ring? Honey, my fiancé bought this for me last week. Ten thousand dollars. You think a broke single mom could afford this?" Behind the glass wall of the ICU, the red light was still on. My daughter Lily was still in surgery. She had a rare heart condition. The surgery cost six hundred thousand dollars. I had paid every cent myself. Because I was not the broke single mom Megan thought I was. I was Vivian Ashford. Sole heir to Ashford Pharmaceuticals. Net worth: 2.3 billion dollars. And Ethan? My so-called husband of four years? He was nobody. A man I pulled out of debt and gave a VP title to because I loved him. A man who was now telling his mistress that my dying daughter's medical bills were "charity fraud." Megan turned the camera back to herself. "My fiancé is too kind. He felt sorry for this woman and her sick kid, so he helped pay some bills. But she kept asking for more and MORE. She's draining him dry! And now she's using a fake emergency to guilt-trip him again!" I looked at the operating room door. The red light was still on. I had been sitting here for six hours. Alone. Because Ethan said he had an "emergency board meeting" and couldn't come. Now I knew what the emergency was. I turned back to Megan with ice in my veins. "You said Ethan is your fiancé?" "Yes!" She flashed the ring again. "We're getting married next month. So whatever you had with him, it's OVER." "Interesting," I said. I pulled out my phone and opened my banking app. The last transaction: $600,000 to City General Hospital, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Unit. Paid by: Vivian Ashford. Not Ethan. Not his charity. Me. Every single dollar came from my account. But I didn't show her. Not yet. Because at that moment, the ICU door opened, and the surgeon walked out. His face told me everything before he spoke. "Mrs. Ashford, your daughter made it through surgery. But the next forty-eight hours are critical. She's asking for her father." My heart cracked. Lily always asked for her daddy. She worshipped him. She didn't know that her daddy was outside planning a wedding with another woman while she was fighting for her life. Megan heard the surgeon's words and rolled her eyes at the camera. "See? She even got the doctor to call her 'Mrs. Ashford.' Girl, my fiancé's last name is Ashford. Stop pretending." The surgeon frowned and looked at Megan. "Ma'am, I need you to lower your voice. This is an ICU." "Don't tell me what to do!" Megan snapped. "My fiancé pays more in taxes than your annual salary!" Then she turned to me. "Call Ethan right now. Tell him to stop funding your scam, or I'll make sure your little brat never sees the inside of a good hospital again." The hallway went dead silent. She just threatened my daughter. My dying daughter. I slowly stood up. The blood on my shirt was still wet. "You want me to call Ethan?" I said softly. "Fine. Let's call him together. And let's see who he really belongs to." I dialed his number on speaker. It rang three times. When Ethan picked up, the first thing he said made Megan's face turn white. "Baby, how's Lily? Is our daughter okay?"

"Get out. You were never really our daughter." My mother said it while pinning a diamond brooch onto another girl's chest. I stood frozen in the marble foyer, my suitcase still in my hand, my graduation gown still folded over my arm. Twenty-two years. Twenty-two years I'd called these people family. "Mom." My voice cracked. "What are you talking about?" The girl beside her—soft brown curls, wet doe eyes—turned and gave me a trembling smile. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I never wanted to take your place." The DNA results sat on the glass table between us. I didn't need to read them twice. Not a biological match. "The hospital made a mistake twenty-two years ago," my father said, not even looking up from his phone. "Vivian is our real blood. You—" he finally glanced at me, like I was a stain on his shoe, "—you can keep your name. Out of charity." Charity. I'd given them charity my whole life. I'd skipped meals so they could afford Dad's failing company's last loan. I'd worked two jobs through college so they wouldn't worry. I'd loved them with everything in me. And now a stranger with prettier tears was wearing my mother's brooch. "Where am I supposed to go?" I asked. I hated how small I sounded. "That's not our problem anymore." My mother turned her back to me. "Vivian, darling, your room is upstairs. The pink one." My room. The one I'd painted myself. I felt something inside me go very, very quiet. Vivian walked past me toward the stairs, and as she passed, she leaned close enough that only I could hear. "Took you long enough to figure it out," she breathed, smiling sweetly. "I switched those results myself." My head snapped up. But she was already gliding away, calling out, "Mommy, can we go shopping tomorrow?" She'd switched them. I opened my mouth to scream the truth—but my father's bodyguard was already gripping my arm, dragging me toward the door. "Wait—WAIT—she's lying, the results are fake—!" The door slammed in my face. Rain hit my cheeks the second I stepped outside. No coat. No money. No family. Just a suitcase and the echo of you were never really our daughter. I sank onto the cold stone steps and let myself shake. That's when a black car pulled up to the gate. The window slid down. And the most dangerous man in the city looked at me like he'd been searching for me his entire life. "Get in," he said quietly. "You don't belong out here in the cold." I didn't know him. But God help me—he knew my name. "Come home, Adeline," said Damian Cross. "We've waited long enough for you."

The pregnancy test was still warm in my pocket when I walked into Damien's office to surprise him for our anniversary. Two pink lines. After three years of marriage and two years of trying, I was finally pregnant. My hands hadn't stopped shaking since I'd seen the result in the bathroom of the restaurant downstairs, where our anniversary dinner reservation was waiting. I didn't knock. I never knocked. I was his wife. The door swung open, and the first thing I saw was her red-soled heels on his desk. Then her legs. Then the rest of her, perched on the edge of the mahogany surface I'd helped him pick out, her skirt hiked up to her hips. Damien stood between her thighs, his mouth on her neck, his wedding ring catching the light of his desk lamp as his hand gripped her waist. Serena. His executive assistant. The woman who'd smiled at me at every company event, who'd called me "Mrs. Cole" with that sweet, deferential voice while she complimented my dress. Time stopped. My body understood before my brain did—my lungs forgot how to work, my vision narrowed to a single, searing point. Damien looked up. The color drained from his face so fast it was almost comical. "Elena—" "Don't." The word came out broken, barely a whisper. Serena didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. She slid off the desk, smoothing her skirt with calm, practiced hands, and glanced at me with something worse than guilt—pity. "I'll give you two a moment," she murmured, slipping past me like a ghost. Her perfume—jasmine and something musky—clung to the air and made my stomach heave. Damien moved toward me, his hands raised like I was a wild animal he might spook. "It's not what it looks like." A laugh ripped out of me, ugly and raw. "It's not what it looks like? That's what you're going with?" "She means nothing. It was a mistake—" "How long?" He hesitated. That hesitation told me everything. "How. Long." My voice was ice now, the shock crystallizing into something sharp and dangerous. "Elena, please sit down. Let me explain—" "Eight months," said a voice from behind me. I turned to see Serena standing in the hallway, her arms crossed, her expression almost bored. "Eight months, Elena. Since the company retreat in Aspen. The one he told you was canceled." The Aspen trip. The weekend I'd spent alone, painting the nursery a soft yellow because I'd been so hopeful that month. The weekend I'd called him twelve times and he'd texted back: In meetings all day. Miss you. Damien's face contorted with fury—not at himself, but at Serena. "Shut your mouth—" "No," I said, and my voice didn't sound like mine anymore. It sounded like someone who had already left. "No, let her talk. Apparently she knows more about my marriage than I do." My hand found the pregnancy test in my pocket. I'd imagined this moment a hundred different ways—tears of joy, Damien lifting me off my feet, calling our parents together. Instead, I pulled it out and set it on his desk, right where Serena had been sitting. "Congratulations," I whispered. "You're going to be a father." Then I walked out. Behind me, I heard Damien's voice crack as he called my name, but I was already gone—past the glass offices, past the curious stares of late-working employees, into the elevator that carried me down forty-two floors while I held myself together through sheer willpower. The second the lobby doors opened, I shattered. I made it to the sidewalk before my knees buckled. The pregnancy test was still upstairs. My anniversary dinner reservation was still waiting. And somewhere above me, the man I'd built my entire life around was probably already rehearsing his next lie. My phone buzzed. Damien. I declined the call. It buzzed again. And again. I was sitting on the curb outside Cole Industries, mascara running down my face in the freezing November air, when a black car pulled up. The window rolled down, and a pair of steel-gray eyes regarded me with quiet intensity. "You look like you need to get out of here," said Adrian Blackwell—my husband's biggest rival, the man Damien hated more than anyone alive. I should have said no. I got in the car.

The night I flatlined on Dr. Adrian Blackwell's operating table, he wasn't even in the room. He was three floors up, in his private office, having dinner with his ex-girlfriend. I know this because the security footage leaked six months later. Timestamped. Undeniable. At 9:47 PM, while a junior resident was screaming for the attending surgeon and my heart monitor was shrieking a single flat tone, my husband was pouring Château Margaux for Vanessa Hale and laughing at something she said. His hand was on her knee. My blood was on someone else's floor. We had been married for two years. Secretly. No announcement, no ring on his finger in public, no photo on his desk. He said it was to protect me from the media, from the pressure of being tied to the Blackwell name. The Blackwells owned half the private hospitals on the East Coast. Adrian was the golden son. Chief of surgery at thirty-one. Magazine covers. Charity galas. The kind of face that made nurses walk into walls. And me? I was the ghost who lived in his penthouse and never got introduced to anyone who mattered. But I loved him. God, I loved him so much it made me stupid. I had first fallen for Adrian when I was seventeen and he was the young surgeon who operated on my mother's heart. He didn't save her. But he sat with me in the hallway afterward, still in his scrubs, and held my hand while I cried. "I'm sorry," he'd said, his voice low and steady. "I'll carry this. You don't have to carry it alone." I built my entire life around that sentence. I went to nursing school because of him. I transferred to his hospital because of him. When he proposed, clinical and brief, more like a contract negotiation than a love confession, I said yes before he finished the sentence. For two years, I arranged my existence around Adrian Blackwell like furniture arranged around a fireplace. Everything pointed toward him. Everything existed to keep him warm. And then I died on his table, and he wasn't there to bring me back. The junior resident saved me. Dr. Caleb Blackwell. Adrian's younger half-brother. The one the family treated like a stain on their legacy because his mother had been a nobody. Caleb had been passing through the surgical wing when he heard the code. He sprinted in, took over, and spent forty-seven minutes pulling me back from the other side. When I opened my eyes in the ICU at 4 AM, the first face I saw was Caleb's. He was sitting in the chair beside my bed, still in bloodstained scrubs, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his knees. He looked like he'd been in a war. "Welcome back," he said quietly, without looking up. "You scared the hell out of me." "Where's Adrian?" My voice was a wreck. It hurt to breathe. Caleb finally lifted his head. His jaw tightened. Something dark and furious moved behind his eyes, and then he locked it away. "He's not here, Sophie." Three words. And I understood everything. I turned my face to the wall and closed my eyes. The heart monitor beeped on. Steady and mechanical and completely indifferent to the fact that the woman it was tracking had just realized her entire marriage was a lie. Adrian showed up at 7 AM the next morning, carrying flowers. White lilies. My favorite. He knew that. He walked in looking immaculate. Fresh suit, fresh shave, not a single crease anywhere. Like nothing had happened. Like his wife hadn't coded on a table eight hours ago while he was three floors away feeding wine to another woman. "Sophie." He set the flowers on the nightstand and reached for my hand. "I came as soon as I heard. I was caught in an emergency consult. I couldn't get away." A lie. Delivered with the same steady hands that performed surgery. Precise. Practiced. No tremor. I looked at his face. This face I had loved for over a decade. And for the first time, I felt nothing. "Adrian," I said. "Who is Vanessa Hale?" The air in the room stopped moving.

I caught my husband in our bed with my best friend on our first anniversary. So I walked next door and slept with his brother. If you won't honor our vows, I'll find someone who will. When my husband finally came crawling back the next morning, reeking of her perfume, he found me at the breakfast table — in his brother's shirt. "Sienna, what the hell are you doing here?" he snarled at me. As if I were the one who'd done something wrong. I sipped my coffee and smiled. "I live here now." His brother, Dominic, appeared behind me, shirtless, his hand resting casually on my shoulder. The hickey on his collarbone was impossible to miss. "Morning, little brother," Dominic said, his voice low and unbothered. "Coffee?" The look on Marcus's face? Priceless. Let me back up. I'm Sienna Cole, only daughter of the Cole banking dynasty. I married Marcus Ashford eight months ago in what the tabloids called "the wedding of the decade." Two hundred guests. A custom Vera Wang gown. A ten-tier cake that cost more than most people's houses. Everyone said we were perfect together — the golden couple of Manhattan's elite. Everyone was wrong. Marcus had been distant for months. Late nights at the "office." Canceled dinners. A phone he guarded like state secrets. I told myself I was being paranoid. I told myself that marriage takes work. I told myself all the pretty little lies women tell themselves when they already know the truth. Then came our anniversary. I'd planned everything — his favorite restaurant, a private room, a gift I'd spent weeks choosing. A vintage Rolex from 1962, the year his grandfather's company was founded. I thought it would mean something. But Marcus never showed. After waiting two hours at the restaurant alone, humiliated in front of the waitstaff, I drove home with a knot in my stomach. The house was dark except for our bedroom. I could hear them before I opened the door. My best friend, Chelsea. The woman who'd held my hand through every fight with Marcus. The woman who'd told me just last week, "He's so lucky to have you, Sienna." She was in my bed. On my sheets. On our anniversary. Marcus saw me first. His face went white. "Sienna — wait — this isn't—" "Isn't what it looks like?" I finished for him, my voice so calm it scared even me. Chelsea scrambled to cover herself with my duvet — the one I'd picked out, the one Marcus had said was "too expensive." Funny how he didn't mind using it now. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just stared at the two of them, memorizing every detail, burning it into my brain so I would never, ever forget what betrayal looked like. Then I turned around and walked out. I drove with no destination, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. The city blurred past me — lights, buildings, strangers living their unbothered lives. My phone buzzed. Marcus. I declined the call. It buzzed again. Chelsea. I blocked her number. Then a third call came through. A number I hadn't dialed in months. Dominic Ashford. Marcus's older brother. The black sheep of the family. The one they whispered about at parties — too dangerous, too unpredictable, too intense. The one who had looked at me on my wedding day like I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I answered. "Sienna?" His voice was rough, like he'd been sleeping. "It's midnight. What's wrong?" "Can I come over?" A pause. Then: "Door's unlocked." I made a U-turn. And that's how, on my first wedding anniversary, I ended up at Dominic Ashford's penthouse — and didn't leave.

The marriage certificate had my name on it. My signature. My thumbprint. My photo. Married to: Damien Blackwell. I stared at the document, my hands trembling so violently the paper rattled like a leaf in a hurricane. "This isn't real." My voice came out hollow. "This can't be real." The nurse adjusted my IV drip and gave me a pitying smile. "Mrs. Blackwell, your husband stepped out to take a call. He'll be right back." Mrs. Blackwell. I wanted to vomit. Three days. I had been unconscious for three days after the car accident, and somehow in that window of darkness, I had become the wife of the most dangerous man in New York City. Damien Blackwell. Billionaire. CEO of Blackwell Industries. The man every tabloid called "The Devil in a Suit." The man whose enemies had a habit of disappearing. The man I had never spoken a single word to in my entire life. "There has to be a mistake." I tried to sit up but pain shot through my ribs and I collapsed back against the pillows, gasping. "Don't move too much, sweetheart. You have three fractured ribs, a concussion, and your left wrist is sprained." The nurse checked something on her clipboard. "Your husband made sure you received the best care. Private suite, top surgeons. He hasn't left this hospital in three days." My heart was hammering so hard I could hear it on the monitor beside me. The beeping accelerated, matching my panic. The door opened. And there he was. Damien Blackwell stood in the doorway like he owned the room — because he probably owned the entire hospital. Tall. Devastatingly handsome in a way that felt almost offensive. Dark hair pushed back from a face that belonged on the cover of a magazine, sharp jaw, cheekbones that could cut glass. His charcoal suit probably cost more than my apartment. But it was his eyes that stopped me cold. Steel grey. Calculating. Completely devoid of warmth. He looked at me the way a lion looks at something it has already decided belongs to it. "You're awake." His voice was deep, smooth, terrifyingly calm. He walked in and closed the door behind him. "Good. We have things to discuss." "Discuss?" I choked out. "You married me while I was unconscious!" Damien loosened his tie with one hand — casual, unhurried — and sat down in the chair beside my bed. He crossed one leg over the other and looked at me with an expression that was almost... bored. "Correct." "That's illegal!" "It's not." He reached into his jacket pocket and placed another document on my lap. "Your father signed the consent. Legal guardian authorization, given your incapacitated state. Everything is binding." My father. The air left my lungs. My father, who owed gambling debts to half the city. My father, who I hadn't spoken to in two years. My father, who apparently sold me to a billionaire while I was lying in a coma. "Why?" The word came out cracked, broken. "Why would you marry me? You don't even know me." Damien studied me for a long, suffocating moment. His grey eyes traced my face — the bruises, the bandages, the IV lines — with clinical precision. Then he leaned forward, close enough that I could smell his cologne. Cedar and smoke and something dangerously intoxicating. "I know everything about you, Aria." He said my name like he'd been saying it for years. "I know where you work, where you live, what you eat for breakfast. I know your mother died when you were fifteen and your father pawned her wedding ring three days after the funeral." My blood went cold. "I know you cry in the shower when you think no one can hear you." His voice dropped lower. "And I know that the man who ran your car off the road three nights ago wasn't a stranger." I stopped breathing. "He was sent by someone who wants you dead, Aria. And the only reason you're still alive right now is because you became my wife." The heart monitor was screaming now, beeping wildly. Damien leaned back, his expression unreadable. "So here's how this works. You stay married to me. You live in my house. You follow my rules." His jaw tightened, the first crack in his composure. "And in return, I keep you breathing." I stared at him, my chest heaving, tears burning behind my eyes. "And if I refuse?" Damien's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Then the people who tried to kill you will finish the job. And this time, I won't stop them."