The pen looked wrong in my hand.
Too gold, too heavy, the engraved G catching the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows like it knew I didn’t belong here.
“Ms. Brooks.” His voice slid across the conference table—cool, precise, impatient. “We don’t have all afternoon.”
I lifted my eyes.
Adrian Gray sat at the head of the table like he’d been carved from the same glass and steel as the Manhattan skyline behind him. Dark suit, darker tie, posture relaxed but somehow coiled. His expression didn’t change when our gazes met, but something in the air shifted, tightening around my ribs.
I’d seen his photo in a dozen finance articles, always with that same controlled half-smile, the one that made journalists call him the Icy Wolf of Manhattan. In person, he didn’t bother to pretend warmth. His face was all clean lines and sharp edges, pale eyes so light they looked washed in winter.
And I was about to marry him.
“Right.” My voice cracked. I nudged the glass of water away before my shaking hand could knock it over. “Just…reading.”
“It’s the same agreement you received last week,” he said. “No changes.”
Easy for him to say. He had an army of attorneys. I had my friend’s printer and a highlighter.
The conference room door clicked shut behind his assistant, leaving us alone. The city hummed beyond the glass, taxis and sirens a distant buzz. My thrift-store blazer felt two sizes too small under the weight of his attention.
He watched me like I was a problem to solve. Or a risk to quantify.
“The judge will see the marriage as legitimate?” I managed. “You’re sure?”
His jaw flexed once. “You’ll be Mrs. Gray. You’ll live in my townhouse. You’ll have a joint account. The optics are everything the court expects from a ‘stable family environment.’” He even air-quoted, the briefest flicker of contempt. “Your attorney approved the language.”
I didn’t say that my attorney was a harried legal-aid lawyer juggling twenty other cases, or that the word approved had come with a wince and, You know this is extreme, right, Lily?
Yes. I knew.
“It’s one year.” I stared down at the final page, where our signatures were supposed to go. “No romance. No…marital duties.” The words from the clause tasted like dust on my tongue.
“No romance,” he confirmed. “No expectations of intimacy. No claim on any Gray Group assets after the term concludes. You walk away with the agreed-upon sum. I retain my inheritance.”
“A clean transaction,” I said, my laugh coming out thin. “Just how every girl dreams of her wedding.”
Something flickered in his expression—gone before I could name it. Not quite amusement. Not quite pity.
“Do you want the money or the custody, Ms. Brooks?” he asked quietly. “Because right now, you have neither.”
The words stung because they were true.
Mia’s face flashed in my mind, sullen and sixteen, eyeliner too thick as she sat in that cramped family courtroom, pretending she didn’t care where she ended up. The social worker’s report had been a polite evisceration: Inadequate income. Unstable housing. Emotional trauma unresolved.
They were going to take her from me.
My hand steadied.
“I want my sister,” I said. “The money is just…insurance.” Insurance against a life of juggling three jobs and still coming up short. Against food stamps and eviction notices and the constant, gnawing fear that I was failing her.
