Chapter 4 The Contract
“I’m sorry.”
Alex stared at Elena.
For a few seconds, he genuinely wondered if he had heard her correctly.
“Marry you?”
Elena didn’t flinch.
“That’s the clause, yes.”
Alex let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
He looked at Reyes, waiting for the older man to correct her. To say there had been some misunderstanding. Perhaps the documents had been mixed up. Perhaps Julian Voss, for all his wealth and influence, had simply lost his mind during the final years of his life.
Reyes only looked back at him.
Elena took the empty seat across from Alex without waiting to be invited. She folded her hands neatly on the table, calm and composed, just as she had been upstairs.
“Not immediately,” she said. “And not permanently, according to the terms. It’s a contractual engagement. Twelve months. Publicly maintained.”
Alex stared at her.
“Twelve months?”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“The contract ends.”
“And we just go our separate ways?”
“That is the basic idea.”
Alex leaned back in his chair.
Nothing about this felt basic.
His entire life had changed in less than twenty-four hours. Yesterday, he had been a man struggling to make rent and wondering whether he could afford groceries before his next paycheck.
Now he was sitting in a room with lawyers, executives, and the family of the richest man in the country, being told he was expected to become engaged to a woman he had met only an hour ago.
It was ridiculous.
It was impossible.
And somehow, it was apparently legal.
Elena glanced at Reyes.
“I assume Mr. Reyes was working his way toward that detail before I saved him the trouble.”
“I was,” Reyes admitted.
“You knew about this?” Alex asked.
He looked directly at Elena.
“Before I did?”
“I’ve known for three weeks.”
Alex blinked.
“Three weeks?”
“Yes.”
“And you just…waited?”
“I was trying to understand it.”
Something flickered behind her calm expression.
“I’ve had three weeks to be angry about it in private,” she continued. “You’ve had one day. So I’d ask you to give yourself a little time before deciding what you’re supposed to feel.”
Alex looked down at the papers in front of him.
He wanted to tear them apart.
He wanted to walk out.
More than anything, he wanted to wake up and discover that the last twenty-four hours had been some elaborate misunderstanding.
“This is absurd.”
Margaret’s voice came from the head of the table.
“My father dies, and instead of leaving behind a company, he leaves a matchmaking scheme. For a stranger and a girl he took in out of pity.”
The room went quiet.
Elena’s jaw tightened.
Alex noticed.
Before he could say anything, Reyes spoke.
“That’s enough, Margaret.”
His voice remained calm.
That somehow made it worse.
Margaret looked toward him.
For a moment, it seemed as though she might argue.
Then she fell silent.
At least for the moment.
Reyes gathered the documents in front of him.
“The conditions are what they are. Mr. Tailor, Ms. Marchetti, I suggest you discuss the terms privately before we proceed. This is considerably easier to accept in theory than it is in practice.”
Alex almost laughed again.
There was nothing easy about any of this.
Still, he stood.
Elena followed.
The room they were given was smaller and quieter.
It was a glass-walled conference room two floors down, with a view of nothing but the building across the street. The city moved beyond the windows, completely unaware that Alex’s life had just been turned upside down.
Elena closed the door behind them.
Then she turned to him.
Her arms were crossed.
She still looked composed, but up close, Alex could see the tension around her eyes.
She was holding herself together.
“I want to be honest with you,” she said.
Alex said nothing.
“I think you deserve at least that much, especially considering how badly everyone upstairs is about to complicate your life.”
He leaned against the edge of the table.
“Go ahead.”
Elena took a breath.
“I don’t want this any more than you do.”
That surprised him.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
She gave a small, humorless smile.
“If anything, I’ve had more time to hate the idea.”
Alex studied her face.
“I’ve spent ten years building a career at this company on my own terms. I worked for everything I have. I earned my position. I made mistakes and fixed them. I built relationships without using my family name.”
She paused.
“Now I’m being told the only way to keep any of my position, my work, and the parts of this family I actually care about is to pretend to be engaged to a man I met an hour ago.”
Alex folded his arms.
“Then why agree to it?”
Elena looked away.
“Because Julian asked me to.”
Her voice changed when she said his name.
For the first time, her composure cracked.
She sighed softly, and Alex saw the grief there.
Or perhaps something more complicated.
“And because he never asked me for anything in ten years that wasn’t eventually for a reason.”
She looked back at him.
“I don’t know what that reason is yet.”
Her eyes moved briefly toward the door.
“But I intend to find out.”
Alex remained silent.
Elena continued.
“And I’d rather find out from inside this than watch it happen to some stranger who doesn’t understand what he’s walked into.”
There was something in the way she said it that made Alex believe her.
He had spent six years learning how to read people.
Not because he had wanted to.
Because he had needed to.
He knew which supervisors would cover for you when you made a mistake.
He knew which ones would throw you under the truck to save themselves.
He knew which coworkers actually meant it when they said they had your back and which ones were simply waiting for an opportunity to use you.
Everything he had picked up from Elena told him the same thing.
She was telling the truth.
Or at least, the truth as far as she understood it.
Alex straightened.
“If we do this, I want ground rules.”
Elena nodded immediately.
“I expected that.”
“I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not for people I’ve known for one day.”
“Fair.”
“I’m not going to lie to anyone who doesn’t need lying to.”
“Also fair.”
“And whatever this is between us, fake or not, I want it to be something I can look at myself in the mirror after.”
Something shifted in Elena’s expression.
She seemed less guarded now.
“Those are fair terms.”
She paused.
“I’ll add one of my own.”
Alex waited.
“Whatever we tell the family, whatever we tell the press, you and I tell each other the truth.”
She held his gaze.
“Always.”
Her voice softened.
“I’ve spent too much of my life around people who don’t. I won’t do it again.”
Alex considered her words.
Trust was not something he gave easily.
Especially now.
Not when everyone around him seemed to know something he didn’t.
Not when Julian had apparently planned half his future without ever meeting him.
But Elena was offering him one thing he desperately needed.
An ally.
He looked at her hand when she extended it.
“Not even for a trillion dollars.”
Alex almost smiled.
“Not even for a trillion dollars.”
He took her hand.
Her grip was firm.
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
They released each other.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Elena leaned back against the table.
“Welcome to the family, Mr. Tailor.”
There was the faintest hint of amusement in her voice.
“I hope you know what you just signed up for.”
Alex shook his head.
“I don’t.”
He glanced toward the glass wall and the enormous city beyond it.
“Not even a little.”
Elena followed his gaze.
“No.”
For the first time, she almost smiled.
“I don’t think you do.”
She turned back to him.
“But you will.”
And somehow, Alex knew she was right.
