The words land exactly where my father’s had—sharp, painful, but honest in a way the Laurents never are.
My shoulders sag. “I wish….” I swallow hard. “I wish I hadn’t been born into the Laurent family.”
Elara actually lets out a soft laugh—warm, sympathetic, a little bitter. “Tell me about it,” she says. “You’re talking to someone who had her entire life mapped out by other people. All we can do sometimes is hope the man we end up with is a good one.”
I make a small, disbelieving sound. “Hope? That’s all I get now? Hope?”
She squeezes my hand. “You deserve more. I know.”
But that isn’t enough for me. Not today. Not ever.
I shake my head, fire curling low in my stomach. “No. I’m not signing anything without knowing who he is. I don’t care what my father thinks—I’m done being a pawn. Not again.”
Elara’s eyes sharpen, approval flickering across her face.
“Good,” she whispers. “Then we start there.”
Chapter 3 – Dimitri
The Metropolitan Club is a cathedral of old money: mahogany walls, oil paintings of dead men, candles flickering against chandeliers designed to make lesser men feel small. It’s perfect. The kind of place the wealthy trust. The kind of place where they think they’re safe.
The kind of place where I love to take everything from them.
I sit at the long, polished table with three of their lawyers—gray-haired, self-important men who think they understand power because they’ve breathed secondhand wealth their whole lives. They straighten their ties every five minutes and keep glancing at the documents in front of me like they expect me to kiss the pages.
If only they knew.
The marriage contract sits between us. Thick. Heavy. Stamped with the Laurent crest. The price listed at the top is laughable—at least compared to what I offered.
I waited, of course.
I let everyone else fight over her like dogs snapping at scraps. Watched the highest bidder—some Swiss aristocrat with too much ego and not enough spine—place his offer.
Then I tripled it.
The room went silent.
The bid was accepted.
The lawyers congratulated themselves.
Henri Laurent must be celebrating right now, thinking he’s secured his little empire’s salvation.
He has no idea. The name on the bid wasn’t mine. I forged it so Henri would never suspect it was me. A Rusnak. I lookdown at the stack of documents now being pushed toward me with reverent hands.
“Mr. Volkov,” one of the lawyers says—the alias I used. “If you’ll sign here, we’ll finalize your acquisition of the marriage contract. The family will be notified within the hour.”
Acquisition.
Marriage.
Same word, different spelling.
I pick up the pen, twirling it between my fingers. The air feels heavy with expectation. With victory.
Slowly—deliberately—I press the pen to the signature line.
And I sign my real name.
