Nadia
I haven't eaten in two days.
I know I should. I can feel it in the way my hands won't stop trembling and my head swims when I stand up too fast. But every time I try to put food in my mouth, my throat closes like a fist and the nausea rolls through me so hard I have to grip whatever's closest just to stay upright.
Kyle's messages have been coming in every few hours.
Relentless. The five thousand I couldn't pay has turned into threats I can't ignore.
Screenshots of our old text conversations.
Thumbnails of photos blurred just enough to make my skin crawl.
A countdown. Seventy-two hours, he said yesterday.
Then your daddy gets an email he'll never forget.
I sent him everything I had. Eight hundred and fourteen dollars.
Every cent from my checking account, my tip jar at home, the emergency twenty I kept folded in my glove compartment.
I told him I needed more time. He told me time was a luxury I couldn't afford and I should go to my father for the money.
Now I'm standing in front of my bathroom mirror trying to make myself look like a woman who has her life together, because in forty minutes I'm meeting my future husband for dinner.
The face staring back at me is barely recognizable. My skin is gray. The circles under my eyes have circles of their own. I've lost weight I didn't intend to lose and my collarbone juts out above the neckline of the black dress I picked because it's the only nice thing I own that still fits.
I put on concealer. Then more concealer. Foundation over that. It helps, but only the way a fresh coat of paint helps a house with a cracked foundation. The structure underneath is failing.
My phone buzzes on the edge of the sink. I flinch so hard I knock my makeup bag onto the floor. Blush compact, mascara, lip liner, all scattering across the tile.
It's just my dad.
Have a wonderful evening, sweetheart. Be yourself. He's a good man.
I stare at the message until my vision blurs. Be yourself. I don't even know who that is anymore. I've spent three years being a hostage to my own mistake, performing normalcy for everyone I love while the real me sits in a bathroom and shakes.
I type back: Thanks Dad. Love you.
Then I pick up my makeup, fix my face one more time, and drive to the restaurant.
It's a hotel restaurant downtown. White tablecloths and low lighting, and the kind of menu that doesn't list prices because the people who eat here don't need to ask. Liam Orlov's choice, according to my father. Neutral ground.
I'm ten minutes early because I couldn't sit in my apartment any longer.
The hostess seats me at a corner table and I order water while trying to keep my hands still in my lap.
They won't cooperate. The tremor is constant now, a low vibration that runs from my fingers up through my wrists.
I press my palms flat against my thighs under the table and breathe.
I can do this. I can sit through a dinner. I can smile. I can be polite and pleasant and whatever version of myself this man is expecting to meet.
Then I'll go home and figure out how to survive the next twenty-four hours.
He walks in at seven on the dot.
I know it's him before the hostess even gestures toward our table.
He moves through the room the way men like him always do.
Aware of everything, hurrying for nothing.
He's tall. Dark hair, a little wilder than I expected, pushed back from a face that's all sharp angles and serious eyes.
He's wearing a dark suit with no tie, his collar open.
There's something about the way he carries himself that makes the other diners glance up and then quickly look away.
He's younger than I expected. My father said twenty-six, but I'd pictured someone harder.
Older in the way these men tend to age, with violence and authority stamped into every line.
Rafferty Orlov looks like he could be sitting across from me at a coffee shop.
Like he could be someone I'd meet in a normal life.
Except for his eyes. His eyes are watchful and sharp as they land on me from across the room with a focus that makes my breath catch.
He reaches the table and I stand because it feels like the right thing to do, and immediately regret it when the room tilts sideways. I grip the edge of the table and smile. Force the muscles in my face to cooperate.
"Nadia." His voice is low. Steady. He holds out his hand and I take it, praying he can't feel the tremor. His grip is warm and firm. He lets go before it becomes anything and pulls out his own chair. "Rafferty."
"It's nice to meet you." The words come out thin. I sit down too quickly and the chair scrapes against the floor. Smooth, Nadia.
He studies me as he settles across the table.
I can feel the assessment. He's reading me the way I imagine he reads everything, quickly, precisely, filing away details most people wouldn't notice.
I wonder what he sees. The concealer that's too thick.
The way my collarbones cut shadows under the restaurant lighting.
The edge of the table I'm gripping like a lifeline.
"Have you ordered?" he asks.
"Just water."
He nods and picks up the menu without pushing me toward one. A waiter appears instantly, the way they do for men like him, and Rafferty orders a whiskey and something from the menu I don't catch because the buzzing in my ears has gotten louder.
"You're not eating?" He says it casually. No judgment in it.
"I'm not very hungry. Busy day." I take a sip of water and will my hand not to shake. It shakes anyway. I set the glass down too hard and water sloshes onto the tablecloth. "Sorry."
"Don't be." He leans back in his chair and looks at me with an expression that’s too close to curiosity for my comfort. "How much has your father told you about all this?"
"Enough. The Council made the match. Two weeks." I try to smile. "Fast timeline."
"Very fast." He watches me for a moment. "You don't seem thrilled."
"Are you?"
Something shifts in his expression. The corner of his mouth twitches. "I was in Dublin two days ago handling something I'd rather have kept handling. So no. Thrilled isn't the word I'd use."
"What word would you use?"
"Resigned." He picks up his whiskey when it arrives and takes a slow sip. "You?"
Terrified. Drowning. Trapped. "Adjusting," I say.
He nods like he hears every word I didn't say hiding behind the one I did.
The food arrives. His, not mine, because I didn't order. A steak, medium rare, with something green beside it. He cuts into it without ceremony and eats efficiently, without performance.
"I'm going to be honest with you," he says between bites. "I don't know how to do this. The dinner. The small talk. My brothers are better at it. Liam would have brought flowers. Aidan would have had a speech prepared. I don't have either."
"I don't need flowers." I offer with a shrug and a half smile.
"What do you need?"
The question feels like a thumb pressed into a bruise. Unwanted pressure on something that's already sore. I look down at my water glass and watch the surface tremble from the vibration of my hands against the table.
What do I need? I need Kyle to stop blackmailing me.
I need three years of my life back. I need to not feel sick every time my phone buzzes.
I need to sleep for more than two hours without waking up in a cold sweat.
I need someone to help me and I have no one to ask, because asking means explaining, and explaining means facing a shame I don’t think I can handle.
"I don't know," I say. My voice cracks on the last word.
Rafferty sets down his fork and looks at me. His eyes narrow this time as he assesses me with the kind of look that doesn't slide across the surface but pushes through it. I feel myself unraveling under the weight of it.
"Nadia." His voice is quiet. "Are you okay?"
I open my mouth to say yes. To smile. To lie. To be the version of me that everyone expects. Only I can't. The word won't come. My eyes burn and I blink hard, fast, but it's too late. A tear slides down my cheek and lands on the white tablecloth, a tiny dark circle on all that clean linen.
"I'm fine," I whisper in broken sounds. I'm not fine. I haven't been fine in three years.
He doesn't push. He doesn't reach across the table. He just sits there, steady, watching me fall apart in a hotel restaurant over a dinner I can't eat with a man I'm supposed to marry in two weeks.
"You don't have to do this tonight," he says. "The dinner. The bullshit. Whatever you think I'm expecting, I'm not."
I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand. My make-up smears. I probably look insane. A trembling, crying, starving woman in a black dress pretending she's capable of being someone's wife.
"You should find someone else," I manage to say.
He goes still. "What?"
"For the marriage. You should tell the Council you want someone else.
" I force myself to look at him. His expression hasn't changed.
Still calm. Still watching. "I'm not what you think I am.
I'm not what my father told you I am. And if you marry me, you'll find that out, and it will be worse for both of us.
" Another tear slips out and lands on the tablecloth before I can swipe it away.
The silence stretches between us. The restaurant hums quietly around us. Silverware on porcelain. Murmured conversations. A world going on as normal while mine cracks down the middle.
"What do you think your father told me you are?" Rafferty asks.
A wet bubble of laughter pops from my mouth. "Someone worth marrying."
His jaw tightens. Something moves behind his eyes.
It looks like anger. But it isn't pointed at me.
"Finish your water," he says. "Then I'm driving you home."
"I have my car."
"Then I'm following you home. You're not driving like this alone."
"Rafferty, I'm trying to tell you—"
"I heard you." He holds my gaze. "And you're wrong. About all of it. But we're not having that conversation tonight, because you haven't eaten and you can barely hold your glass. So we're going to get you home, and you're going to eat something and sleep, and we'll talk tomorrow."
I stare at him. This isn't how I expected this to go. I expected him to agree. To see the mess in front of him and walk away. That's what any other man would do.
He stands up and leaves cash on the table without looking at the check. Then he comes to my side and offers his hand. Open palm, steady fingers, waiting for me to make a choice that feels like it will change my life one way or another.
I take it.
His hand is warm and solid, and he doesn't let go as we walk out of the restaurant. He doesn't let go in the lobby. He holds on all the way to the parking lot, and when we reach my car, he finally releases my fingers and steps back.
"Can you drive?"
"Yes." I offer a nod as I dig my keys from my purse.
"I'll be behind you the whole way."
I get in my car and watch him walk to his while my heart does something it hasn't done in a very long time.
It hopes.
I pull out of the lot and his headlights appear in my mirror, steady and close, and I drive home with Rafferty Orlov following me through the dark like a promise I'm too afraid to believe.