If he signs, we’re bound not just by marriage vows but by a legal web designed to strangle us the moment it tightens.
I understand what Silas must have discovered.Why they needed forgers “auditioning,” and it wasn’tjustfor the pill mill.
Every signature he's about to scribble will tie us—legally, permanently, retroactively—to everything Marquez has ever touched.Every front business.Every shell company.Every dirty transaction that's been run through those operations for years.
The marriage license will already be filed—witnesses in place, county clerk probably paid off or threatened.The corporate transfers are likely queued up, ready to go live the second we sign.Board minutes backdated.Operating agreements rewritten.Our names slotted into every position of legal responsibility.
Bank accounts will open under our signatures.Property deeds will transfer.Power-of-attorney documents will activate.And somewhere, photos and videos from tonight—smiling, celebrating, looking every bit like eager participants—will be carefully archived as proof.
If the Feds come knocking, they'll find us.Not Marquez.Not Valentina.Us.
Jagger's hand moves.The pen touches paper.
I have to do something.Send him a signal no one else in the room will pick up on.
My hand rests on the polished mahogany.My fingernail finds the wood grain and taps.Once.Pause.Three times.Pause.Once.Pause.Three times.
S-O-S.
Again.Deliberate.Precise.
Tap.Tap-tap-tap.Tap.Tap-tap-tap.
Jagger’s eyes flick down to my hand, then back up to my face.
Our eyes lock.
For a heartbeat, nothing moves.Not him.Not me.Not the air between us.
Then, slowly—so slowly the movement feels like it takes years—he sets the pen down.
Marquez straightens.Valentina's smile freezes.
Everything happens at once.
The fire alarm screams—sudden, deafening, splitting the air like a siren.Sprinklers burst to life overhead, raining down in violent sheets.Water soaks through my dress, my hair, plastering fabric to skin.The smoke detectors shriek in harmony with the alarm, a cacophony of chaos that makes my ears ring.
Jagger explodes.His fingers close around Marquez’s wrist before he can clear the shoulder holster.In one fluid motion, he wrenches the gun free.
Valentina's mouth opens—to shout, to scream, to call for guards—but I'm inside her space before sound can form.I drive the heel of my palm toward her sternum, not gentle, not controlled.Her breath escapes out of her lungs in a satisfying gasp.
I pivot, using her own momentum, and bring her down hard.Her knees buckle.Her body crumples like someone cut her strings.
The notary bolts for the door.
Jagger's voice cracks like a whip."Don't move."
The startled notary freezes mid-step, hands half-raised, eyes wide and terrified.
Marquez is breathing hard, staring at his own gun in Jagger's hand like he can't quite process how it got there.His face darkens—rage, humiliation, the shock of losing control in a single second.
"You've made a catastrophic mistake," he says quietly.
"Maybe," Jagger says."But we're leaving.Now."
"Where's the exit?"I ask.
"Service corridor," Marquez says, his voice dripping venom."But you won't make it fifty feet."
