stunned her more than a lie would have.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “To enjoy watching me fail?”
“No. I am here to offer a solution.”
He crossed to her desk, pulled out her chair, and sat. The arrogance of it was breathtaking. In her own office, he made her feel like a visitor.
“I need a wife,” he said.
For several seconds, Clara thought she had misheard him.
“What?”
“A wife. Publicly. Contractually. For two years.”
She stared at him. “You are insane.”
“I am practical.”
“You want to buy me.”
“I want to employ you.”
“That is a disgusting distinction.”
“Perhaps. But it is an accurate one.”
He opened a folder and slid it across the desk. Inside were legal documents, crisp and organized, as if he had not just proposed turning her life into a transaction.
“The agreement is simple,” Nathaniel said. “We marry. You appear beside me when required. You do not discuss the arrangement. You do not involve yourself in my business. After two years, we divorce quietly. Your brother’s debt disappears immediately. Your father receives full medical care. At the end of the marriage, you receive two million dollars.”
Clara looked at the folder, then at him.
“You expect me to believe this is about appearances?”
“Yes.”
“Men like you don’t need wives. You need lawyers.”
For the first time, something almost like amusement touched his mouth.
“I have those.”
“Then why me?”
His eyes sharpened. “Because you are desperate enough to agree and decent enough to be believed.”
The words hurt because they were true.
Clara should have thrown the folder at him. She should have called security, though she doubted security would have moved one polished shoe of Nathaniel Crane’s bodyguard. She should have told him no.
Instead, she thought of James’s photo circled in red.
She thought of her father pretending his pain was not worsening because he did not want to cost her more money.
She thought of her mother’s earrings on black velvet.
“And if I refuse?” she asked.
Nathaniel stood and buttoned his suit jacket.
“Then I leave. Your brother’s creditors proceed without interference.”
“You mean they hurt him.”
“I mean they collect.”
Clara’s hands curled into fists.
“You are a monster.”
Something flickered behind his eyes, too fast to name.
“Possibly.”
The wedding happened six days later.
There was no church, no aisle, no flowers. Just a courthouse with marble floors, a clerk who did not look surprised by anything, and two witnesses who worked for Nathaniel. Clara wore a cream dress delivered to her apartment that morning in a garment bag with no note.
Her father cried when she told him she was marrying a wealthy man who wanted to help.
James did not attend.
Clara did not know whether she was relieved or heartbroken.
Nathaniel slid a diamond ring onto her finger with steady hands. It was beautiful, of course. Square-cut, cold, and brilliant beneath the courthouse lights. Clara wondered how many women would have dreamed of a ring like that.
To her, it felt like a lock.
Outside, reporters waited at the bottom of the steps. That was the first time Clara realized this arrangement would not stay quiet.
Nathaniel’s hand settled at the small of her back.
The gesture looked intimate.
It
