Chapter 3

I stared at Adrian Hartwell for several long seconds, trying to determine if he was joking or if I had drunk more whiskey than I thought and was now hallucinating conversations with my ex-best friend's billionaire brother, but his expression remained perfectly serious as he waited for my response to his insane proposal.

"You want me to marry you," I said slowly, making sure I had heard him correctly. "You, Adrian Hartwell, one of the wealthiest men in the city, want to marry me, a woman whose life just fell apart and who you have spoken to maybe three times in eight years."

"I want to propose a mutually beneficial arrangement," Adrian corrected, pulling up what appeared to be a legal contract on his phone. "You marry me in a highly publicized ceremony that completely overshadows Lily's little Instagram announcement, and in return you get perfect revenge on both her and Maxwell while I gain control of my sister's inheritance before she can waste it on her next destructive whim."

The mention of an inheritance made me pause, and I asked the question that seemed most relevant: "What does your sister's inheritance have to do with you marrying me?"

Adrian took another sip of his drink before explaining.

"My father's will contains a clause that divides his estate between Lily and me, but if I marry before my thirtieth birthday next month, I gain control of her portion as well until she either marries or turns thirty-five," he said. "The idea was to prevent Lily from destroying herself financially before she matured enough to handle that kind of wealth, but what my father did not anticipate was that Lily would spend the next several years causally ruining lives and reputations while I watched helplessly from the sidelines."

"You want to cut off her money," I said, understanding beginning to dawn.

"I want to stop funding her destructive behavior," Adrian clarified. "Lily has burned through millions of dollars enabling her various schemes and affairs, and every time I think she has hit bottom, she finds a new way to hurt people for her own amusement, and I am done standing by while she destroys everything she touches."

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because I had always thought Adrian was simply indifferent to his sister rather than actively working against her, but clearly there was a great deal about their relationship that I had never understood.

"So you marry me, gain control of Lily's money, and I get what exactly?" I asked.

"You get to watch my sister's face when she discovers that her former best friend is now her sister-in-law," Adrian said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. "You get to see Maxwell realize that he threw away someone who is now married to his biggest business rival, you get a year of living in luxury while we play the devoted newlyweds for the cameras, and at the end of our contract you walk away with ten million dollars and the satisfaction of knowing you made them both regret what they did."

Ten million dollars was more money than I would make in my entire lifetime, and the thought of Lily discovering that I had married her brother was almost intoxicating in its appeal, but there had to be more to this arrangement than Adrian was telling me.

"Why me specifically?" I asked. "If you just need a wife before your birthday, there must be dozens of women who would marry you for ten million dollars."

Adrian studied me for a long moment.

"Because you are kind in a way that Lily has never been, because you showed me genuine compassion at my father's funeral when everyone else was too busy networking to care about how I was actually feeling, and because I have spent three years watching you date Maxwell and wishing I had intervened before he could hurt you the way I knew he eventually would," he admitted.

The confession stunned me into silence, because I barely remembered talking to Adrian at that funeral except for a brief conversation about how overwhelming these events could be, but apparently that small kindness had stayed with him in ways I never would have imagined.

"You have been watching me for three years," I said, trying to process this information.

"I have been aware of you for three years," Adrian corrected. "Watching sounds stalkerish, but I would occasionally check in with Lily to make sure you were okay, and I noticed when you got engaged to Maxwell six months ago, and I have been preparing for this exact moment ever since because I knew my sister would eventually destroy your relationship the way she destroys everything good she encounters."

"So you were just waiting for Lily to ruin my life so you could swoop in with this offer," I said, not sure whether to be impressed or disturbed by his level of planning.

"I was waiting for the right moment to propose an arrangement that would benefit both of us," Adrian said without apology. "The fact that Lily accelerated her timeline by posting that Instagram photo simply means I get to execute my plan sooner than expected, and you get revenge sooner than you would have thought possible."

I looked at the contract on his phone, then at Adrian himself, and I thought about walking into work on Monday and facing all the people who had seen Lily's post.

Thought about canceling a wedding that hundreds of people were planning to attend.

Thought about spending the next year being pitied and gossiped about while Lily paraded around with my former fiancé.

Or I could marry Adrian Hartwell and watch Lily's smug satisfaction turn to fury when she realized I had moved on to someone infinitely more powerful and wealthy than Maxwell could ever hope to be.

"When would this marriage need to happen?" I asked, and I saw something flash in Adrian's eyes that might have been triumph or relief.

"Tomorrow," he said simply. "Before Lily has a chance to announce her engagement to Maxwell publicly, we get married and make it the scandal of the season."

"Okay," I heard myself say, the word coming out before I could second-guess the insanity of what I was agreeing to. "I will marry you, Adrian Hartwell, and we will make Lily regret every cruel word she said to me."