I slide from my stool and wrap my arms around her. “Thank you, Marta. Having you here has made whatever this is a little bit easier to handle.” I am speaking the truth.
I’m alone once again in the vast emptiness of the penthouse with nothing but my thoughts and the growing restlessness that's been building beneath my skin for two weeks.
I wander through the rooms like a ghost, trailing my fingers over expensive furniture and priceless artwork, searching for something I can't name. My feet carry me to Rafael's office without conscious decision, and I stand in the doorway for a long moment before stepping inside.
Rafael's office is unlocked, which either means he trusts me or does not care what I find.
His desk is covered in papers, neat stacks organized with the precision I'm coming to associate with everything he does. I know I shouldn't snoop. I know this is a violation of the tentative trust we've been building in the quiet hours when he holds me and I pretend to sleep.
But I'm so fucking tired of not knowing where I stand.
I move behind his desk and slide the first file free from a stack of documents. It is a corporate takeover, the acquisition of a shipping company, and the terms are ruthless in their precision. It’s dense with legal jargon that makes my eyes cross.
The second file is different. A contract between a woman whose name means nothing to me and a man I have never heard of. He wants an heir and a pretend wife. She wants financial security. The price of her womb is listed in a column beside stock options and property transfers. The arrangement is clinical and cold. Every aspect of their fake marriage is negotiated down to the number of public appearances she'll make and the timeline for producing the required child.
Something inside my chest folds in on itself as I read the terms a second time, slower now, letting the reality of this poor woman’s future settle into my bones. This is what marriage means in this world. Not love or partnership but transactions conducted between consenting adults who have decided that loneliness is worse than selling pieces of themselves to the highest bidder.
My stomach turns as I read through the provisions for dissolution, the clauses about discretion, the addendum specifying that romantic attachment is neither expected nor desired by either party.
Is a version of this what Rafael has planned for me? Am I just another column in another contract, my value measured in the heir I can produce and the leverage my last name provides?
I close the files with trembling fingers and leave his office with the taste of ash coating the back of my throat, because the girl I used to be still believes in love stories, and that girl is getting harder to protect with every contract I uncover in this beautiful, cold empire.
I press my palm against my churning stomach. I always knew that marriage in my world was more transaction than romance, but seeing it laid out in black and white, reduced to bullet points and signature lines, makes something inside me crack.
I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved. To love someone in return. Stupid, childish dreams that have no place in the life I was born into.
By the afternoon the walls are closing in. The sun calls to me through the windows, and I escape the office before I can find anything else that breaks my heart.
I find a swimsuit in the closet, a sleek black one-piece that does nothing to cover my scars, but the pool man isn’t due yet nor is the maid. I look at the clock. If they stick to their schedule, I have an hour all to myself.
The summer sun is warm against my skin as I settle onto a lounger on the private terrace. The terrace wraps around the south side of the building, complete with an infinity pool that seems to pour directly into the sky and enough greenery to make you forget you are thirty-two stories above the city.
The Chicago summer heat soaks into my skin and feels like forgiveness, like something soft and unearned pressing against the tension I have been carrying since the night my father sold me. I close my eyes and let the warmth do what it will and for the first time in two weeks my shoulders drop from where they have been living near my ears.
I could leave. The thought surfaces like it does every afternoon, quiet and persistent and entirely without a plan. I could wait for the elevator when the security rotation shifts, walk through thelobby, and disappear into the city. I know how to slip through cracks. I have been mapping exits my entire life.
But Magnus is out there, and men like Magnus do not accept losing what they believe is theirs. My father would hand me back the moment I surfaced. I have no money, no resources, no allies who are not attached to someone else’s agenda.
I am not staying because I cannot leave. I am staying because the devil I am sleeping next to is the safest option I have. And maybe because in the darkest hours of the night when he wraps himself around me and breathes my name into my hair, I feel something I have not felt in as long as I can remember. Wanted. Not for what I can give. Just wanted.
Maybe Rafael is as lonely as I am.
The poolman and the maid come and go. I skip dinner because my stomach has been living on anxiety for so long that hunger has become background noise.
I shower again to wash away the chlorine from the small pool and the sweat from the sun, then dress in a light robe and curl up on the couch with a book I can't focus on. The words blur together as the afternoon fades into evening, and eventually I give up and go to bed, my body heavy with an exhaustion that has nothing to do with physical exertion.
By the time I climb into bed, the penthouse is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
I'm drifting in the space between sleep and waking when I feel the mattress dip beside me.
Rafael's scent reaches me first—cedar and smoke and something clean, like he's freshly showered.
His arm slides around my waist, pulling me back against his chest with a familiarity that makes my breath catch, and I feel the hard length of him pressing against my ass through the thin silk of my nightgown.
Two weeks of this. Two weeks of being held and wanted and utterly untouched.
I try to turn in his arms, desperate to see his face, to understand what's happening between us, but his grip tightens and his lips brush against my ear.
