Page 21

LIA

T here was a text from Rhaim waiting for me on the burner phone when I got up.

When you get out of your meeting, and it’s safe, call me.

And that was good. Something to look forward to, after…whatever this was.

What did one wear to a pre-nup signing? I knew I had several little black dresses, but did I own a black veil?

And honestly, I didn’t care what Marcus thought of me—he, at least, had known what he was getting into.

So I went back to my ‘art school clothing’ as Rhaim called it, a baggy sweater and jeans and low heeled boots, suitable for kicking someone’s ass if it came to that.

I might’ve felt like I was in a horror movie, but there was no reason I needed to dress like I was in one.

And I got a text on my normal phone at eleven.

Here. Ready?

from Trevia.

I didn’t even know her last name—I just knew she was like some sort of genie my father summoned periodically to get me and friends of his out of trouble.

I didn’t respond, I just took the elevator down.

There was a black Escalade waiting for me outside, and the driver hopped out to open my door the second he spotted me.

“Don’t you think this is a bit much?” I asked her the second I got inside.

Trevia was almost my father’s age, but you wouldn’t know it from her hair, which was blonde and coiffed perfectly around her head as though it were a helmet.

“We’re not taking an Uber to an official business meeting,” she said primly, then gave me a hint of a smile. “Besides, I wouldn’t know how to write one off.”

I crossed my arms. “Somehow I doubt that,” I said, as she began to fish inside the leather folio case beside her. “Am I allowed to ask what I sold for?”

“Seventy-two camels and a penthouse with a view of the park,” she answered, before handing a sheaf of papers with little pastel tags poking out like a porcupine’s quills.

“Teasing about the camels. Not about the penthouse. But you’re going to want to go through everything I flagged there, and quickly. ”

“Why?” I asked, as the same time I reached the first one. “A morality clause?”

Trevia held her hands up. “They aren’t unusual in high profile marriages, especially when one party has a reputation to protect.”

My eyebrows crawled up my forehead. “His, or mine? And is he signing one?”

“Please,” Trevia tsked. “He’s a man. Though…” she began, and started scribbling down some notes, as I ran a thumb over the rest of the tabs.

“How much of this is bullshit?”

“Enough of it that I told our driver to take an extra loop around the block,” she said, jerking her chin back at the papers while she quickly wrote.

I frowned, and opened it to the next tab.

I skimmed it, and found out that I had to clear anything I said online with Marcus’s designated media consultant no less than 48 hours before posting.

“What…the fuck?”

Trevia looked up and over at that, to see where I was. “He’s a politician,” she said, trying to calm me. “It makes sense. They can’t have you coming in out of left field wanting to save the rainforest, or puppies.”

At the moment, the only thing I wanted to save was me. I frowned and hopped forward. The next clause said that any business I entered into after my marriage was considered joint property.

Including Corvo.

“Absolutely-the-fuck-not. Corvo’s mine.”

“That is what this says. That your 15% in Corvo stays yours.”

“So if I take Corvo public while we’re married, he gets a cut? Fuck that. No.” I started going through my purse until I found a pen, scratching those lines out.

Trevia shrugged. “The last one’s worse.”

“Oh God,” I muttered, while flipping there quickly. “A psychological review clause? Are you kidding me?”

Trevia gave me a look that said she’d helped my father break more than one contract with a boarding school before.

“Fuck, Trev,” I said, looking at her for any hope.

“I agree with you, this one’s particularly egregious. But basically, he’s protecting himself—and if you’re not doing well?—”

“He wants to med me.” It was a statement, not a question.

I’d been on meds before—a lot of them. I knew they worked—I’d seen their magical effects often enough on other boarding school girls—as long as you actually had the condition you were being treated for.

And seeing as my depression and mania were largely situational, based on my proximity to my shitbag-child-molesting-uncle—I might’ve needed therapy, yeah, but I didn’t need Prozac.

What I needed was my freedom.

And suddenly it felt like I was in a tunnel and the walls were closing in—a tunnel I’d been in before, repeatedly, one I’d always had to claw myself out of.

Except this time…Rhaim had left me some rope.

I felt the outline of the phone that was just for him in my pocket, and imagined him, at his farm, with his beautiful horse, in a barn on a sunlit day, his sleeves rolled up, showing off his forearms, as he made me a ladder—no, a set of stairs.

“Lia?” Trevia asked, resting a motherly hand on my knee.

“I’m good,” I said, settling back into the upholstery. I knew I could hold my shit together better now, than I had—and I knew how to lie to medical professionals. “I’ll sign.”

“You…will?”

“Everything except for the Corvo part. Yeah.” Because I didn’t intend to live in a world where this pre-nup was consummated.

If something happened to Rhaim—fuck his opinion on the matter, I’d make sure to take Marcus down with me.

“Okay,” she said, and then flagged the driver to make a turn.

The car parked in front of a building I didn’t recognize with a dramatic stone facade and windows so dark they could’ve been portals to space. Trevia navigated us to a door with her folio in hand, and someone opened it up from the inside before she got a chance to knock.

And inside…was like getting on the Hogwarts Train.

We suddenly were not in Kansas anymore, or New York City—we were in some facsimile of a hunting lodge in Edwardian England. We were surrounded by a claustrophobic amount of rich, warm, wood, oil paintings of men standing in front of trains, and the air smelled like cigars.

I looked entirely out of place and had never been happier about it.

“This is the women’s entrance,” Trevia said, under her breath, as we both waited for someone to collect us.

“Ah, yes, Trevia Falconi, and Miss Ferreo,” said an obsequious looking man in a butler’s uniform, right after his arrival from behind a hidden door in the hallway. “Follow me, please,” he said, and led us back the way he’d come.

I realized we were being taken to wherever it was we were going to via the servant’s corridors, behind the walnut walls we’d left behind.

“Just how powerful do they think my vagina is?” I muttered to Trevia, and heard her snort.

The man in front of us held a door open just so, which deposited us into a smaller room where Marcus, and another man, presumably his own lawyer, were waiting. Both of them stood upon our arrival, and I saw Marcus clock my ensemble with a hint of dismay.

“I wasn’t sure what to wear,” I explained. “No one told me we were time traveling back to 1873.”

Marcus looked to the man who’d brought us. “Bring the drinks we discussed,” he said first, and then turned. “I figured this was neutral territory,” he explained, moving over to pull out a heavy chair.

For me.

To sit in.

Because this was happening.

I grit my teeth and strode over like I belonged here. “Yes, doing it at Corvo might’ve seemed odd, seeing as you won’t be getting any of it,” I said, as Trevia found her own seat. “You’re plenty wealthy on your own, you don’t need my father’s company.”

Marcus sat across from me, and gave me a contemplative stare. “But you won’t need it either, when you’re my wife.”

“You’ll have me. Won’t that be enough?” I challenged him.

He didn’t look entirely prepared to answer, when his lawyer, a man in a gray suit with even grayer hair, stepped in and saved him. “And as for the rest of the conditions?” he asked with a French accent—and more of Trevia than me.

Trevia nodded, and handed over her version of the contract.

“My client is rejecting any clause that would categorize future earnings or interests in Corvo Enterprises as marital property under equitable distribution standards. And, seeing as Lia is a Ferreo, we’ve added a morality clause of our own. ”

She reached over to flip the contract open to the page she’d been writing on in the car, and I read her addition upside down, in her neat handwriting.

The parties agree to refrain from any conduct deemed overtly intimate or sexual—including but not limited to disrobing in the same room, entering one another’s private quarters uninvited, or engaging in any sexually explicit behavior—until after the legal date of marriage.

I wanted to high-five Trev, who was staring at Marcus’s lawyer, looking smug, and I understood why—if Marcus refused her addition, he’d look like a man who was after only one thing.

Me.

Although I still didn’t understand why I’d been chosen as the sacrificial lamb.

“Other than those two issues, however, Miss Ferreo is prepared to acquiesce on every other term.”

I watched Marcus for any tells—and saw his nostrils widen as his eyes narrowed, and his lawyer leaned over to whisper something in his ear.

“All right then. We accept,” he announced.

His lawyer got up and left—via a normal door, I noticed—and I got a glimpse of the worsted wool world outside, men lounging, holding drinks, and some of them peeping at me right back.

“He’ll go make the changes, and then return with the final documents so we can sign. ”

And right after that, the butler-waiter-combo returned, with a tray of drinks.

Three of them were alcoholic, while one of them was water in a cocktail glass.

“This is for you,” Marcus said, handing it over. “I wouldn’t want anyone to say that I’d made you inebriated before signing anything.”

“Oh, the horror,” I murmured, taking a small sip.

“While we’re waiting for Robichard to return though, let’s discuss your plans for the rest of the day. You’ll remain here and have lunch with me and my sons, who are eager to meet you.”

A reasonable request I could hardly deny, but somehow the wood-paneled walls of the room all felt like they’d squeezed in six inches. “That’s fine.”

“And then we’ll work with my event coordinator, to discuss wedding planning.”

“What’s the rush?” I asked, doing my best to sound innocent. “I always viewed myself as a spring bride,” I offered, hoping to give Rhaim as much time as possible to save me.

“Oh, no,” Marcus said, with a head shake. “It needs to happen before the election.”

“Before…November?” That was just three weeks away. “Are you insane?”

Marcus’s lawyer returned, and handed papers over to Trevia—and then a separate binder to me. “This is Senator St. Clair’s social calendar between now and the election. As you’ll see, we’ve already blocked out your father’s birthday party in a week—but your wedding will be the weekend after.”

I was more flabbergasted by that than the pre-nup. “Is there something going on that I don’t know?” I asked, out of genuine concern. Just how fast was my father dying, anyhow? “And—I have work to do.” Just because Corvo’s IPO was going swimmingly didn’t mean I could take my foot off the gas.

“You do. But not for your father—for me. You won’t set foot into Corvo again.”

His lawyer saved me from making a scene by offering me a pen, which I took, so that I would have a weapon. “Why?” I asked, my voice going shrill.

“I need you to be my beautiful bride. The woman who reminds voters that I know what young people want.”

“Like not to be married off to their grandfather?” I said, but Marcus brushed it away, without looking wounded in the least.

“You have poise, and charisma, and I’ve heard you speak—I’ve seen you on TV,” the senator continued.

“Right now there’s a swath of voters who will vote for me just because my name is on the ballot—but a perhaps even bigger swath of them who currently find me unrelatable, or who need to be reminded that I exist. A wedding to a beautiful, notable young woman will get my name on TV every night for the next three weeks.

Late night talk shows will make fun of me and horny morning DJs will be jealous—but by the time we get to ignore your particular morality clause, Lia, everyone will know my name—and be dying to book rooms at your father’s new casino, the second it opens. ”

Another man joined us, this time a man around fifty, with wireframe glasses, emerging from another fucking hidden door—this club was like a hellish version of Willy Wonka’s factory, only all the Ooompa Loompas wore suits. He presented me with a binder full of more paper, with even more tabs.

“These are the senator’s positions on most major policies. You’ll need to memorize them quickly—the press will ask you questions,” he said, before even announcing his name. “Arnold, St. Clair media policy.”

“And what if we disagree?” I asked him.

“Then you tell voters whatever they want to hear. That mouth of yours was made for speeches,” he said, with a revolting wink.

I should’ve gotten a ‘no winking’ clause into the pre-nup.

I sank back with a sense of dismay as the mantle I had to wear until Rhaim somehow saved me settled on my shoulders. “And in addition to raising your presence—I’m your way to play both sides of the board.”

“Convincing women you can change my mind through the power of love,” Marcus said, giving me a leer that spoke of nothing of the sort—and I felt acid inside my stomach beginning to revolt.

“I’ve got you scheduled for an interview with Katrina Vale on Morning Moment at 7 am tomorrow,” Arnold said, then looked at my current outfit with disdain. “Which is luckily after we get you to a fitting this afternoon,” he said, looking to Marcus for confirmation.

“Money is no object,” Marcus told his man, without taking his eyes off of me.