Leah's POV
Married. This week.
I stared at him. "You're serious."
"The investors have a quarterly meeting in ten days. I need this in place before then." Roman's voice had gone back to that boardroom tone, calm and efficient, like we were discussing a budget line and not the fact that he'd just asked me to become his wife in seven days. "We'll keep it small. A courthouse ceremony. The story we tell publicly is that we kept the relationship private during the trial because we knew how it would look. We fell in love. We kept it quiet. Now we're married."
"That's a lie," I said.
"Yes."
"You want me to lie to the entire country about how we got together."
"I want us both to survive what happened," he said. "This is how we do that."
I leaned back in the chair and looked at him for a long moment. This was the Roman I recognized. The one who saw a problem and engineered a solution without pausing to consider how it felt to the other people involved. The difference between this version and the courtroom version was that this time he was at least being honest about the engineering.
"What happens if someone finds out the truth?" I asked. "That this is a contract?"
"Nathan is the only other person who knows the full situation. He won't talk." Roman folded his hands on the desk. "The contract itself is confidential. There's a non-disclosure clause on page eleven."
I had read page eleven. I knew about the clause. I was asking something different and I think he understood that.
"What happens to us," I said more carefully, "if this goes wrong."
Roman looked at me. For a moment the boardroom version of him slipped just slightly. "Then it goes wrong and we both deal with the consequences. But I believe it won't."
"Because you always win."
"Because for once," he said quietly, "I have a reason to make sure someone else does too."
I didn't know what to do with that. So I picked up my bag and stood up and told him I needed the rest of the day. He said he understood. He walked me to the elevator and pressed the button and we stood side by side waiting for the doors without speaking.
When the elevator arrived he said, "Leah."
I stopped.
"I know what I'm asking you to give up. I'm not pretending otherwise."
The doors opened. I stepped in and turned around and looked at him standing there in his expensive suit with his careful eyes and his complicated guilt.
"You're not asking me to give anything up," I said. "You already took it."
The doors closed before he could respond.
Sophie called me four times on the way home. I let them all ring. I couldn't explain what had just happened in that office while I was still standing inside the feeling of it. Some things need time before they become words.
When I got back to my apartment I sat at my kitchen table and called Maya Rodriguez.
She answered fast, her voice still carrying that exhausted edge from last night.
I told her she had a job. Starting Monday. Full salary, better benefits than StyleShift had been able to offer. Her and the whole team. She went silent for so long I thought the call dropped.
Then she said, "Leah. How?"
"Don't worry about how," I said. "Just come back to work."
She cried. Happy crying this time, the kind that sounds like someone breathing again after being underwater. I held the phone and let her and didn't say anything because some moments don't need words either.
I called David Chen next. His reaction was quieter, more stunned, like a man who had already mentally moved on and suddenly had to reverse direction. He asked the same question Maya did. I gave him the same answer.
By the time I finished calling everyone on my list it was late afternoon and my apartment was lit in that warm gold that comes just before evening. I sat with my phone in my lap and thought about what I had actually done today.
I had signed a contract agreeing to marry Roman Ashford. I was going to live in his penthouse. I was going to stand beside him at events and smile at his investors and pretend we were in love. I was going to do all of that for twelve months and then walk away with my people employed and five million dollars and whatever was left of my dignity.
It was insane. Sophie was going to lose her mind.
My phone buzzed. A message from Roman. He'd sent the employee contracts for me to review before they went out. All fifty. Each one individually prepared with full details. Benefits, start dates, salary figures that were higher than what I'd been paying.
He hadn't waited. He'd already started.
I scrolled through all fifty contracts and felt something complicated move through my chest. Gratitude was part of it. Anger was part of it too, because I shouldn't need his money to take care of my people, I should have been able to do it myself, and the only reason I couldn't was because of him. Both things were true at the same time and I was tired of pretending that emotions were supposed to make sense.
I texted him back: These look right. Send them.
His reply came in under a minute. Done.
Then a second message: A car will come for you Thursday morning. Courthouse at ten. Bring whatever you need for the penthouse. We can send for the rest later.
Thursday. Two days away.
I looked around my apartment again. The same walls where StyleShift started. The same corner where the sewing machines used to live. I had built my whole life in this space and now I was leaving it to go live in a penthouse with a man I had every reason to despise.
I started packing.
Not because I was excited. Not because I had forgiven him or trusted him or felt anything other than a cautious, exhausted kind of resolve. I packed because fifty people were going back to work on Monday and that meant something. It meant more than my comfort. More than my pride. More than the version of my future I had imagined before Roman Ashford walked into it and changed its shape entirely.
Thursday morning came faster than it should have.
The car was black, expensive, exactly what I expected. The driver didn't make small talk, also what I expected. I sat in the back with one bag on my lap and watched Boston pass outside the window and tried to prepare myself for whatever version of Roman I was about to spend a year of my life with.
The courthouse was quiet. A clerk. A judge. Nathan Brooks standing as witness on Roman's side, Sophie on mine, because I'd finally told her everything the night before and she came anyway because that's the kind of person she is, furious and present at the same time.
Roman was already there when I arrived.
He was in a dark suit, no tie, and when he saw me walk in something shifted in his expression. Not a smile exactly. Something more careful than that. Like a man reminding himself to stay composed.
The ceremony took eleven minutes. We said the words we were supposed to say. When the judge said Roman could kiss his bride, Roman turned to me and asked very quietly, just for me, "Is this alright?"
I nodded.
He pressed his lips to my cheek. Brief. Gentle. Nothing like what a real kiss would feel like and yet my face went warm anyway, which I decided immediately to never think about again.
Sophie squeezed my hand on the way out.
Roman's car took us to his penthouse. The elevator opened directly into the apartment, which was large and modern and immaculate and looked like a place where feelings went to be organized into spreadsheets.
He showed me to the master bedroom and said it was mine. His was down the hall. The kitchen and the office were shared. Everything else was separate.
I stood in the middle of the room that was now supposedly mine and listened to him explain logistics with the same tone he probably used to run board meetings.
When he was done he looked at me and said, "If you need anything, I'm down the hall."
"I won't," I said.
He nodded once. Turned to leave.
"Roman."
He stopped.
I didn't know exactly why I called him back. Maybe because the room was too quiet. Maybe because I needed to say something true before we both disappeared into our separate corners and pretended this was normal.
"Don't make this harder than it has to be," I said.
He looked at me for a moment. "I'll try."
He left. The door clicked shut behind him.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the master bedroom of my husband's penthouse and thought about the fact that I had just married the man who took everything from me.
And somewhere under the anger and the exhaustion and the grief, something very small and very dangerous whispered that the eleven minutes in that courthouse had not felt entirely like nothing.
I told that small voice to be quiet.
It didn't listen.