Elena's POV
The Bentley cut through the night like a blade. The city lights smeared past in streaks of gold and neon, laughter and music floated up from the streets like another life.
I watched it all through the window and felt impossibly distant from it, like an island in glass and metal, carried to a mansion where I would sleep under ceilings that had never known obvious pain.
Alexander didn't speak the entire drive. He sat forward, hands on his knees, jaw tight, eyes fixed on some invisible horizon. I wanted to ask him what this was to him, the marriage and the arrangement but the words felt ridiculous in my mouth.
I had signed a contract because the numbers on a hospital bill had frightened me into action. I had shaken hands with a man whose smile had never been for me. I had traded the few prideful scraps I had for the promise that my mother would still breathe tomorrow.
We arrived at the tower and moved through the lobby that smelled faintly of orchids and expensive soap. The attendants bowed with the trained deference of people who'd been taught which faces to flatter and which to ignore. I kept my chin lifted.
The ring on my finger looked absurd in the bright lobby lights, too small against the enormity of the building, and too cold against my skin. A woman glanced at it and then at me, curiosity and pity mingled on her face before she looked away as if to save herself embarrassment.
The elevator ride felt long. Reflections bounced and refracted around me, a ghostly triple of me, all in a line, that were starting to seem less and less of myself.
When the doors opened, the penthouse swallowed us with a hush of cold air. The space smelled of lemon oil and leather, as though it was polished to a clinical perfection that kept memory and mess out.
"This way," Alexander said. He guided me down a long corridor lined with abstract canvases, expensive shapes in colors I wasn't sure I could guess, toward a suite that would supposedly be mine.
The door opened to reveal a room made for sleeping and nothing else, the walls were painted in neutral tones and the bed was the size of a small island, with linens folded on it with ritual precision.
A vase with fresh white lilies sat on the dresser, someone had chosen them for their anonymity.
"You'll take the east suite," he said. It wasn't an invite, it was an instruction and he expected me to obey. "It's quiet."
I wanted to tell him I needed to be where my mother could reach me, where the phone would be within arm's length, but restraint sat on my chest like a weight. I manage a small nod. "Thank you," I said, and meant none of it.
He paused by the doorway, looking down at me the way a man would read an unfamiliar document. It was quite similar to staring at an insect. "Make no mistake, Elena. This is an arrangement and I expect that we would be professionals in this."
His words are like a scalpel that doesn't miss. "I understand."
He left without another glance. The door whispered close behind him, and suddenly the room felt like a cell with silk sheets. I walked to the window and watched the city breathe. The lights glimmered on, indifferent to the small catastrophes of any single life.
I lay awake for hours, counting the ticks of a clock I could not see. My mind ping-ponged between the hospital room, with its antiseptic smell and my mother's thin hand, and this place with its antiseptic wealth. Both smelled the same to me in the night, like gruesome sadness.
When sleep finally evaporated from my eyelids, fatigue hollowed them out. I dressed in a sweater and slippers and wandered the hallways, pretending I had somewhere to be. The house around me moved in a composed silence, there were distant footsteps, some whispers of clothes being moved around, practically evidence of life.
I paused outside Alexander's study. The door was cracked open and a thread of light escaped beneath. There was the soft vibration of a phone and then the murmur of a voice I'd come to recognize very easily.
I pressed myself to the frame and listened. Alexander's voice, low and even: "Isabella."
My heart folded in on itself. The name had a softness that made me irrationally ache.
"Alex," said a voice laced with the confidence of someone who's always been given what she wanted. "How does it feel to have your kingdom restitch itself? To have a convenient bride in place while everyone applauds your cleverness?"
A hollow laugh echoes in the room. "It's business."
"Is it?" she purred. "You sounded so possessive earlier tonight, even if you refused to kiss her. It was theatrical, Alex. The papers will have a field day."
His response was blade-smooth. "I did what had to be done. We have to control the narrative."
Control. The word landed cold and heavy. I pressed my back against the wall. My pulse beat in my throat. He had rehearsed narratives. He had choreographed public perception. I imagined a room somewhere where people in suits trimmed the truth to fit a tidy headline, where human beings were rearranged like props on a stage. Humans like me.
Isabella's laugh thinned. "Promise me you'll remember I exist."
"I don't make promises for amusement."
The conversation wound down and I crept away like a thief bearing proof of betrayal. My knees trembled with a mix of fury and humiliation. He'd married me, but he had not given me a place in his life, he'd simply added another element he could move around at will.
I wandered into a sitting room and found a tray with a forgotten teacup and, tucked beneath it, a small photograph. It was faded at the edges, worn by handling. It showed a younger Alexander with a woman I didn't know, their arms were thrown across each other in laughter.
There was something disarming about seeing his face freed from that corporate calm, loose hair, and real teeth. For a second, the man in the photograph seemed human, an illusion of warmth that contradicted everything I'd seen.
I smoothed the paper and then replaced it where I'd found it. I wasn't trying to soften him, only to understand why the world had been so eager to let him stay cruel. Why do people love to lock away the wounded parts of powerful men and worship the polished surfaces instead.
I thought of my mother. I thought of the pile of unpaid invoices and the smell of the hospital. That was what had brought me into his orbit, a desperate trade that consisted of numbers and fear. I hated how easy it felt to reduce myself to a ledger and I tell myself that I would not be a footnote.
In the guest room the tears came, small but fierce. I tried to breathe through them until the sobs drained and left me raw and jerking profusely against the pillows.
Morning found me with traces of salt on my cheeks and an anger with the taste of iron. If the world wanted to make me a minor character in a story line I hadn't agreed to, I would become a minor character who knows the script and can improvise when needed.
At breakfast, the staff moved like clockwork. Plates slid across the marble table, soft-spoken stewards took my coat immediately I stepped into the room and walked away with very polite bows.
Alexander ate with concentration as he spoke in short, controlled sentences with his legal advisor, Bennett.
He was a man with a round face and a smile that was all teeth. He had probably cooked up her contract with that look on his face.
Their conversation was clipped and professional, although he was majorly listening while Alexander spoke. I caught the edge of a phrase as I shoved some omelet in my mouth: "...no leaks...strategic alliance...family stipulations..."
Family stipulations. The words lodged in my mouth like a stone. I remembered the draft clause at the bottom of the contract, something about inheritance and heirs. Then, it had seemed almost unimportant but now I was realizing that there was a chain.
What family? Whose heirs? I had become part of a ledger entry to be balanced, and there were terms attached to the balancing. I wanted to know.
After the meal, feeling braver and more foolish than either emotion warranted, I walked back to the study under the pretense of asking where the laundry was. The door was ajar and papers lay around the mahogany desk in a careful disarray, folders labeled MERGERS, FOUNDATION, LEGACY.
In a neat pile, a glossy envelope waited with a company logo stamped in silver. It was addressed to "Media Release - Immediate." The top of the envelope was unsealed.
Against my better judgment, I slid a hand inside and drew out a photograph the size of a postcard. The flash had caught me in a profile I didn't recognize. My hand is holding what looked like a champagne flute, my mouth curved into a laugh. The timestamp at the bottom corner read last night. My breath hitched so hard I felt the world tilt.
I was at the hospital last night. I hadn't been to any party or event. My stomach dropped into a place where I felt I might not find it again. How could there be a photo of me that was taken where I hadn't been?
I looked at the glossy image until it blurred into shapes of someone I didn't know playing at being me. My fingers shook and I almost dropped it, Bennett's name stared at me from the corner of the folder like an accusation: BENNETT - MEDIA COORDINATION.
A hand fell on my shoulder so suddenly that I inhaled sharply. Alexander's breath was close enough to warm my ear. He didn't speak, he only regarded me with a look that I couldn't read for the life of me, something closer to pity.
"You weren't supposed to see those," he said finally, his voice low.
"I…" My voice came out thin. "What is this?"
He took the photograph gently from my fingers as if removing a splinter. "Damage control," he said. "The board likes certainty and narratives. A strategic misdirection keeps competitors quiet and our investors steady."
"Strategic misdirection?" The words tasted like bile. "You're going to let them print fake photos of me?"
He shook his head, quick and sharp. "Not fake. Staged. It paints the right picture. It shows me with the right social map and shows you as part of the frame."
"As part of the frame?" My knuckles went white around the photograph. "So I'm expected to be the actress in whatever performance you choose?"
He watched me without pity. "You are what this company needs you to be right now. A wife with an alibi."
"A wife with an alibi." The phrase crawled under my skin and lodged there. "And if I don't want to be?"
He considered me for a long moment, then said, "You don't get to choose everything."
The chill of those words could have frozen the river. I felt both enraged and oddly clear. The pieces clicked into shape: the contract, the photos in the boardroom, Isabella's presence. I was the visible asset in a strategy that had been drawn up long before I'd been summoned to sign my name.
I pulled my hand back and left the study before he could say more. The corridor felt narrower now, the paintings on the wall like eyes watching. I held the photograph at my chest like a talisman of something I could no longer ignore.
Someone was building a story with me in it, and they would sell that story to anyone with a camera and a deadline. If I wanted to survive and protect my mother, I had to be smarter than the script they'd assigned me.
At the threshold of the guest suite I paused and looked back once. Alexander stood in the doorway of the study, his silhouette sturdy as usual. For reasons I couldn't explain, the sight made my chest ache with an odd mix of something like grief and an unexpected, dangerous resolve.
I would not be a pawn without teeth. If the world wanted to set a stage, then I would learn the stage directions. I would learn to speak in the right tones and I would learn the names of the men who pulled strings. But I would also learn to pull a string or two of my own.
The photograph burned in my palm. Outside, the city went about its indifferent business but inside Kane Tower, alliances were being made and stories were being sold. My name was suddenly a headline waiting to happen.
The thought made my stomach turn, but it also made something else click, something stubborn and alive. I would fight.