5. Karissa
Chapter five
Karissa
The office is everything the lobby promised.
Floor-to-ceiling windows. Manhattan spread out below like it's been arranged for him. Dark wood, clean lines, nothing out of place. One photograph on the desk in a silver frame, turned so only he can see it. Everything else is control, turned into a room.
Noah Easton stands at the window with his back to me, and for three seconds I let myself look.
Tall. Broader than I registered yesterday. The kind of still that isn't relaxed. It's practiced. Like a man who learned a long time ago that stillness reads as power.
Then he turns, and whatever thought I was forming disappears.
"Miss Linford." He gestures to the chair across from his desk. "Sit."
Not please. Not thank you for coming. Just sit, like I'm a quarterly report he needs to get through.
I sit. I keep my face neutral.
He settles into his chair and opens a folder. "I have a proposal for you. It requires discretion and your time through the spring gala."
"You said that on the phone."
"I'm saying it again." He doesn't look up. "I need a fiancée. Specifically, I need someone who is not from my world, has no stake in my business affairs, and will not complicate things when it ends."
I wait.
"You fit those criteria."
"Why do you need one at all?" I ask. "You're a hedge fund billionaire. I assume you could have anyone."
Something tightens at his jaw.
"My ex-wife has spent two years telling a very specific story about our marriage. About me. It plays well at dinner parties. It plays even better with the people who write checks to my mother's foundation."
"Your ex-wife."
"Diane." He says the name like it costs him something.
"The spring gala isn't just an event. It's the foundation's largest fundraiser of the year, and half the board is already asking questions about my stability that have nothing to do with the fund's performance.
A fiancée fixes the optics. It closes the story she's telling before it closes any doors that matter. "
"That's the most flattering offer anyone's ever made me."
He does look up then. Something moves through his expression, not quite amusement, but close.
"You'd be compensated. Generously."
"How generously."
He names a number.
I keep my face still. It takes work.
"In exchange," he continues, "you attend approximately twelve public events between now and the spring, culminating at the foundation gala.
You present as my fiancée to the board, to investors, and at the gala itself.
You are cordial, you are believable, and when the engagement ends, you say nothing to the press. "
"And what do I tell people in my actual life?"
"Whatever you like. The story we present publicly is that we met through the catering arrangement and things developed quickly." He pauses. "It's not entirely implausible."
I should be flattered by that, probably. I'm not.
"No." I stand. "I appreciate you thinking of me for your fraud, but I'm going to pass."
"Miss Linford."
"The answer is no." I pick up my bag. "I have a business to run and a brother to raise and zero interest in being someone's prop. You want a fiancée, try an actual dating app."
"Sit down."
"I really won't."
"I pulled your financials."
I stop.
The room goes quiet.
I turn around slowly. "Excuse me?"
"Your business finances. I pulled them before our first meeting. Standard due diligence when I'm considering a vendor." He's still completely calm. "I know about the debt."
My chest goes tight. "That's not—"
"Sixty thousand dollars. Originally filed under your name six years ago. You disputed the majority of it, but there's a remaining balance." He closes the folder. "And your bakery's current operating margin suggests you're approximately four months from a serious conversation with your bank."
I don't say anything.
I can't.
Because he's right, and the fact that he knows, that he sat across from me yesterday and grilled my proposal and already knew, makes me feel like the floor has tilted three degrees to the left.
"The amount I'm offering," he says quietly, "clears it. All of it. With enough remaining to stabilize your operating costs through the end of next year."
"You did a background check on me."
"I do background checks on every vendor."
"I'm not a vendor."
"You were, at the time." A beat. "I'm not using it as leverage. I'm giving you full information so you can make an informed decision."
"That is leverage." My voice comes out steady. I'm proud of that. "You know exactly what that number means to me, and you're holding it up like a carrot. Don't dress that up as information."
Something shifts in his expression. Not guilt, I don't think Noah Easton does guilt. But maybe recognition.
"Fair," he says.
Just that. Fair.
I hate that it lands differently than I expected.
"I need to go." I'm already walking. "Don't call me again."
He doesn't try to stop me.
The frame is still turned away from the room. I don't ask.
***
The subway home is loud and too warm, and I stare at the floor for fourteen stops without seeing any of it.
Sixty thousand dollars. Not an abstraction. Not a rough shape I've learned to live around. My mother's disaster, my name, my credit destroyed in a single night when I was twenty-one and didn't know yet that love could be a financial instrument.
I fought most of it. I've been paying the rest by hand ever since, every month, on time, for six years.
And then I borrowed money I didn't have to start a bakery because I needed something that was mine, something no one could sign their name to, and I've been building it from the ground up for four years while also raising a teenager and pretending it's fine.
It's mostly fine.
Except for the four months thing. Which I knew, roughly. Which I was handling.
***
Theo is on the couch when I get home, textbook open, doing homework for once. He looks up.
"You look like someone canceled your standing croissant order."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're doing the thing where your jaw goes tight."
I drop my bag, drop onto the other end of the couch. I don't say anything for a minute.
"A man offered me a lot of money to pretend to be his fiancée."
Theo puts down his textbook. "Okay. That's not what I was expecting."
"He's a hedge fund guy. He needs someone for appearances. Through the spring, twelve events, then it's over." I pull my knees up. "I said no."
"How much money?"
I tell him.
He stares at me.
"Kari."
"I know."
"And the bakery could—"
"Theo. I know." I press my fingers against my eyes. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to let some controlling billionaire buy months of my life so he can check a box for his investors. It's humiliating."
Theo is quiet for a second. He does this sometimes, this thing where he's sixteen but sounds like someone much older and much calmer than me.
"Is it humiliating," he says finally, "or is it scary?"
I look at him.
"Because those aren't the same thing," he says. "Humiliating would be if you needed it. Scary is if it might work out and then what."
"That's not—" I stop.
He raises his eyebrows.
"You're sixteen."
"I'm also right."
I stand up because I can't sit still anymore. I go to the kitchen. I fill a glass of water I don't want.
The number sits in my chest like a stone.
Four months. Maybe five if I'm careful. And then a hard conversation with a bank that has already been patient longer than banks are supposed to be.
I think about Diego and his delivery ultimatum. I think about the espresso machine. I think about Theo's tuition next year and the fact that I haven't let myself think about it directly in three weeks.
I think about Noah Easton saying fair like it cost him something.
I'm scared.
Theo is infuriatingly right, and I hate him a little for it.
I put down the glass.
I pick up my keys.
"Where are you going?" Theo calls from the couch.
I'm already at the door.
"To make a very bad decision," I say. "Don't wait up."