He studies me for a long moment, slate-grey eyes reading my face like he’s doing a threat assessment. Then he moves to the window, staring out at the Brooklyn skyline like it holds answers.
"On one condition," he finally says.
Hope flares in my chest, sharp and dangerous. "Name it."
"You live with me." He turns back, and there's no compromise in his expression, nothing soft or negotiable. "Mila has a routine. Her school, her friends, her puzzle nights with me. I won't disrupt that. If we're doing this, you move into my place. You become part of her life, part of the illusion that we're real."
The thought of living with him sends panic and heat through my veins simultaneously. Sharing space with Sergei, seeing him every day, sleeping under the same roof where his daughter lives, pretending to be something I'm not.
This is insane.
"Okay," I hear myself say.
His eyebrows rise. "Just like that?"
"Just like that." I cross the space between us, stopping so close, I can feel the heat radiating off him like he's burning from theinside. "I need this, Sergei. And despite what you think, I'm not trying to buy you. I'm trying to survive."
He reaches out, fingers tangling in my black hair, tilting my head back. For a second, I think he's going to kiss me and my lips part automatically, traitorously. But he just studies my face, searching for certainty I don't have.
"You have no idea what you're getting into," he murmurs.
"Then show me."
His grip tightens, just shy of painful. "I'm not a good man, Isabelle."
"Good." I press closer, feeling his heartbeat through our clothes, proof he's not as controlled as he pretends to be. "I don't need good. I need dangerous."
His control breaks. His mouth crashes against mine, hot and demanding, and tasting like a mistake I want to make again. I melt into him because, apparently, I'm incapable of good decisions. This kiss is different from the desperate collision at my penthouse. This one tastes like promises and threats and the beginning of destruction.
It will probably destroy us both.
I'm walking toward it anyway.
When he pulls back, we're both breathing hard, like we've been fighting instead of kissing.
"We marry," he says against my lips, "and then what?"
"Then we figure it out." I trace the scar bisecting his eyebrow, the one I tasted three nights ago. "Or we don't. But at least I'llhave my inheritance. At least you'll have ammunition for your custody case."
"And if it gets messy?"
"Everything in my life is already messy." I step back, smoothing my dress, trying to look composed when blood pounds in my ears and my lips are probably swollen, and I can still taste him. "At least this way I'm choosing the chaos."
He watches me for another beat, then moves back to his desk. He pulls out a contract from a drawer, scribbling notes in the margins with decisive strokes.
"My lawyer will draft something official," he says. "Terms, conditions, exit clauses. This stays professional."
"Of course."
"We tell Mila it's real. No confusion, no instability."
"Understood."
"And no one, not your mother, not your uncle, no one, knows this is fake."
"Agreed."
He signs the bottom of his makeshift contract, then slides it across the desk. I sign without reading it, because what's the point? I'm already in free fall.
