Sophie Pov
I laughed.
Because men at that club said ridiculous things all the time and I had learned to handle it without showing anything on my face. I put the laugh out there like a shield, a sound that said I had heard worse and this did not move me.
Franklyn Kemore did not react to it.
He sat there with his hands on the table and his eyes on my face and he waited for me to finish. His expression did not change. He did not smile, he did not get defensive, he did not lean in the way men did when they were trying to convince someone of something. He simply waited.
"You are serious," I said when the laugh ran out.
"I do not make offers I am not serious about," he said.
I sat down across from him because my legs wanted to and because standing was making me feel like the one at a disadvantage. I put his card on the table between us. "You walked into a club to offer a stripper a marriage contract."
"I walked into this club to find you specifically," he said. "The marriage is the arrangement that works best for what I need."
"What do you need," I said.
"A wife," he said. "Present at specific public engagements. Photographed with me at industry events. Legally married on paper for the duration. Three years and then a clean exit with compensation that would allow you to start any life you choose."
I looked at the table. Then back at him. "Where did you get my name."
"Does it matter."
"It matters to me," I said.
He picked up his glass and drank from it and set it back down. "I have known your name for longer than tonight," he said. "That is all I will say about that right now."
The cold feeling at the back of my neck got louder.
"No sexual contact," I said.
"That is negotiable," he said.
"It is not negotiable for me," I said. I held his eyes when I said it. "If that clause is not in the contract then this conversation ends here."
Something moved in his expression. Very brief, very controlled. "Then we write it in the contract," he said.
"I want it in clear language," I said. "Not lawyer language that means something different in court. Plain language."
"Agreed," he said.
"I want a lawyer to review it before I sign anything," I said.
"You can have a lawyer," he said. "I will give you forty-eight hours."
I looked at him for a long moment. He did not shift under the attention. He held it the way someone held something they had practiced holding. I had met men who were comfortable with silence, usually because they had enough money that silence could not threaten them. This was different. This was a man who was comfortable with silence because he used it as a tool.
"Why me," I said.
"Because you fit what I need," he said.
"That is not an answer," I said. "Half the women in this city could fill that role. A public wife for three years, photographed at events, legally married on paper. You could place an advertisement and have fifty applications tomorrow. Why a dancer from a private club? Why me specifically?"
He looked at me. "Because you are not any of those fifty women," he said.
"That is still not an answer."
"It is the answer I am giving tonight," he said. He did not say it as a dismissal. He said it the way someone closed a door they intended to open later.
I looked at him for one more moment. He was thirty-four years old and he ran one of the largest technology firms in the country and he was sitting in a nightclub at midnight offering a marriage contract to a woman he had tracked down specifically. Every part of that was wrong in a different direction.
"If I agreed," I said. "Where would I live."
"The estate," he said. "You would have your own wing. Your own staff."
"Would I be able to come and go."
"Within reason," he said.
"What does within reason mean," I said.
"It means you have obligations as my wife that I expect you to meet," he said. "Outside of those obligations your time is your own."
"That sounds like a very clean version of something that is not clean," I said.
He looked at me without answering.
"What happens at the end of three years," I said.
"You walk away," he said. "With everything agreed upon in the contract. No obligations after the date of dissolution. Clean exit."
"And if I want to leave before three years."
"The contract runs to completion," he said.
"So I cannot leave," I said.
"You can leave," he said. "You would forfeit the compensation."
I sat back. The room was almost entirely empty now. One bartender wiped down the far end of the counter. A waitress collected glasses near the entrance. The music had been turned down low enough that it was barely there.
"I need time to think about it," I said.
"You have forty-eight hours," he said. "My number is on the card."
I pushed the card back toward him and stood up. Something about the whole situation was wrong in a way I could not fully name and I had learned over the past two years that when something felt that specific kind of wrong the right move was to leave.
"I am not interested," I said.
I walked out of the club without looking back.
The night air hit me hard and cold. I pulled my coat tighter and started walking. I made it half a block before I made myself slow down because hurrying looked like panic.
I stopped at the corner and breathed.
My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and looked at the screen and then looked up because the notification was not from my phone.
Across the street the large electronic billboard that ran advertisements all night had changed.
My face filled the screen.
WANTED. $10,000 REWARD.
A number to call sat below my photograph in large white text.
I stood on the corner and stared at my own face above the city.