Chapter 5

~Rhys POV

The door hadn't even fully closed behind her before I felt the office grow unbearably quiet.

I stood there for a long moment, staring at the scattered papers across my desk and floor, my jaw still aching faintly where her palm had connected with more force than I expected from someone that size.

I'd been struck before. In boardrooms, betrayals, backstabbing colleagues, and the occasional sharp reprimand growing up. But none of it had rattled me the way one furious slap from Aurelia Hart just had.

I picked up the folder, straightened the papers back into some kind of order, and told myself it didn't matter that she'd stormed out.

Desperation had a way of humbling even the proudest people eventually. She'd be back.

I almost believed that too, right up until I caught myself pacing in front of my own damn window like a man waiting on a verdict.

She'd looked at me like I was the villain in every story she'd ever told herself about her family's downfall, and I let her believe it. It was easier that way, cleaner, and there were reasons for the contract sitting on my desk that I had no intention of explaining to her, not yet, maybe not ever.

Earlier on, I'd told myself the arrangement was simply the most efficient path forward in my plans. I didn't examine that thought too closely. I didn't let myself.

But none of it explained why my chest had gone tight the second she stormed out, or why some idiot part of me kept replaying the way her voice cracked when she talked about her brother.

A few minutes later, with me still in my head, the door opened again, and there she was.

She looked nothing like the woman who'd slapped me and thrown a contract across my desk. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her mascara smudged at the corners, her whole body holding itself smaller than before, like something had physically deflated inside her.

She didn't storm in this time; she stood quietly in the doorway for a second, chin trembling.

"I want to see the full contract," she muttered from across the room, her voice thin but steady.

I didn't say anything about the change in her because I understood exactly what had put it there, and pointing it out would have served nothing except my own curiosity about how deep her pride actually ran.

"Sit," I told her instead, gesturing to the chair across from my desk.

She walked over from the door and sat stiffly, as if it cost her something to be in my office.

"I'm only doing this because of my brother," she stated before I'd even opened my mouth again. "I need you to understand that. This isn't forgiveness or me suddenly deciding you're not a monster. My brother is dying, and you're the only door still open, and I hate that more than I've ever hated anything in my entire life."

"Understood," I nodded before I slid the folder back toward her, watching her hands shake slightly as she flipped through the pages. Her eyes read every line twice, like she was searching for some hidden trap buried in the legal language.

Smart. I would have done the same if I were in her position.

"One year," she mumbled quietly, more to herself than to me.

"One year," I confirmed. "Every medical expense your brother incurs, past, present, and future, would be covered in full. You'll live with me, you'll play the part in public, and at the end of the year, you walk away with your name cleared of debt and your brother alive."

She looked up at me then, something unreadable passing behind those red-rimmed eyes. "And what do you get out of this? Don't tell me this is charity. Men like you don't do charity."

I stared blankly at her. There were things I could have said, but I held back. "That's my business," I told her instead. "Not yours to question or worry about."

Her jaw tensed, but she didn't push. She reached for the pen sitting beside the contract, and I let her get halfway to signing before I spoke again.

"There's a condition," I stated. "As punishment for the scene you caused at the gala. And for this morning."

Her hand stilled, and her face flushed, the memory of the slap clearly catching up with her, and for just a second, she looked almost sheepish, glancing away from me like she couldn't hold my gaze.

After a second, not letting the moment soften anything in my voice. "You will never ask me why I chose you," I said, cold, final, no room in it for negotiation. "Not now. Not during the marriage. Not after it ends. This benefits us both, and that's all it needs to be."

Her head snapped back up, eyes narrowing, suspicion and something sharper than hate flickering across her face. She studied me like she was trying to read straight through my skull, trying to find the catch I knew she assumed was there.

Yet again, she said nothing. She just picked up the pen and signed.

Later that afternoon, I sat across from my Uncle's lawyer while he reviewed the finalized contract line by line, far longer than the document actually required.

"Everything in order, Mr. Voss?" I asked, more out of habit than genuine concern.

"Just being thorough, Mr. Calloway." He responded, not looking up, his pen tapped twice against one of the clauses before moving on. "Your uncle did ask me to review this one personally. Given the sensitivity of the Hart name."

I grunted in approval, not thinking too much of it. Uncle Desmond had always taken an interest in anything that touched the Hart family, for years out of loyalty. At least that was what I told myself.

He was just a man protecting what little family he had left, and I had no reason yet to think it was anything else.