Chapter One #2
"Why are you telling me this," she said, "instead of the FBI."
Something moved behind his eyes, gone almost before she registered it. "Because I have a use for you that doesn't involve your brother in a courtroom."
"A use."
"I need a wife." He said it the way another man might say I need a coffee , and the sheer administrative flatness of it was somehow more insulting than if he'd leered.
"My grandfather's will requires me to be married before my thirty-fifth birthday to retain controlling interest in this company.
I turn thirty-five in ninety days. If I fail to meet that condition, control reverts to a trust my cousin currently has significant influence over, and I have no intention of watching him dismantle five generations of my family's work because of a marriage clause I've spent my whole life resenting and never once needed to think about until now. "
"So marry someone who wants to marry you." Her voice came out sharper than she intended, which she decided she didn't regret. "There must be a line."
"There is." No hint of vanity in it, just fact. "None of them are you."
"Why me?"
"Because your name still means something to the people whose opinion actually protects this company right now.
" He leaned back, and for the first time something like strategy crossed his face openly, like he'd decided honesty was more efficient than performance.
"There are people in this industry, old families, board members with long memories, who never fully accepted how Castellan International acquired the Belmere a decade ago.
My marrying a Marchetti closes that question publicly in a way no press statement ever could.
It's optics. It's also, frankly, the fastest solution available to me with the least legal exposure. "
"You want to use my name to launder your father's reputation."
"I want to use your name to protect five hundred employees and a company my grandfather built from nothing, from a cousin who would sell off every property in this portfolio to the highest bidder within two years of taking control.
" His jaw tightened, the first genuinely human thing she'd seen from him.
"I'm not going to pretend that's a noble motive dressed up as something else.
It's exactly what it looks like. I need something.
You have something I can use to make you give it to me.
I'd rather be honest about the mechanics than insult you by pretending this is anything but what it is. "
Elena stood, because she needed her body to be doing something other than sitting still under the weight of what he'd just said.
She walked to the window he'd been standing at when she came in, looked down at the city the way he had, and understood for one disorienting second exactly why a person could stand at a window like this and start believing the whole world was a spreadsheet you could balance if you just found the right number to move.
"And if I say no."
"Then the file goes to the U.S. Attorney's office by end of business Friday, and I find another solution to my own problem.
" He said it without threat in his voice, which was somehow the most threatening thing about it.
"I'm not going to pretend I need you to agree, Ms. Marchetti.
I have other options. I'm telling you this exists because you strike me as someone who'd rather know the truth and make a choice than be managed into one without realizing it.
That's the only courtesy I'm offering you here. Take it or don't."
"That's not a courtesy. That's you telling me you'll ruin my family either way and calling it respect."
Something almost like approval flickered across his face, gone as fast as it came. "You're not wrong."
She turned back to him, and for one long moment neither of them said anything, and in that silence she became aware, with a kind of nauseated clarity, of exactly how good looking he was up close, how unfair it felt that the man holding her family's future in a manila folder also had the kind of face that made her stomach do something complicated and unwelcome, and she hated him for that too, filed it in with everything else she was going to hate him for by the time this conversation ended.
She made herself sit back down, not because she wanted to, but because her legs had started to feel unreliable and she refused to give him the satisfaction of watching her sway on her feet in front of his window.
"Tell me what this actually looks like. The marriage.
If I said yes right now, what would you expect from me. "
Something in his posture shifted, a fraction more attention, as though he hadn't expected her to ask practical questions this early and had recalibrated to account for it.
"A public marriage, legally binding, for a minimum term of one year.
Joint appearances where required, a shared residence, a plausible story for how we met that doesn't involve the word blackmail in any version told to the press.
In exchange, the file on your brother stays sealed for the duration of the marriage and is destroyed entirely at the end of the year, along with a settlement to cover your mother's firm during the transition. "