Chapter 3 Different Kind Of Hell.

ARIA'S POV

My jaw clenched as I stared down at the name on the contract again, just to be sure I hadn't hallucinated it the first time.

Kane Callahan.

Not just any client. Not some rich boy with daddy issues or a seasonal inheritance itch.

Callahan. That name was a knife in my gut.

The contract didn't lie. Neither did the itinerary. Nor the penthouse address that screamed Old Money with new PR polish.

Zane's family.

I let out a bitter laugh, the kind that scratched your throat on the way up. Of course. Of course, the universe would make me sign a fake marriage contract with Zane Callahan's half-brother.

The same man who stood like a god over my deepest trauma, the same man who had cared as I bled out alone and still managed to humiliate me afterwards.

Fate didn't pull punches. It threw them bare-knuckled and straight to the gut.

Still, I signed the NDA.

Still, I packed my bag and entered the town car that arrived exactly when the assistant said it would.

Because that's who I was now.

Aria Whitmore: Professional Wife-for-Hire.

Trauma survivor.

Expert in emotional detachment.

And now? Future Mrs. Kane Callahan, if only for seven cursed days.

But the car wasn't heading toward the Callahan Holdings tower.

I knew Manhattan well enough to clock every turn. The driver didn't speak-thankfully-and the screen separating us stayed firmly up.

I rechecked the itinerary. The contract had listed "Callahan Holdings, 32nd floor office."

Instead, the car took a hard right off Park Avenue and kept climbing north, weaving into quieter blocks, past doormen and polished limestone buildings with gold plaques and names like The Vesper and La Rivière.

By the time we pulled up in front of the penthouse tower, I already knew.

This was no office meeting.

"Sorry for the sudden change of plans. But take the elevator up to the top floor, Miss Aria. Don't keep me waiting."

The concierge opened my door, and as the elevator climbed, my gut clenched.

I'd been through worse.

Hell, I was worse: scarred, steel-hearted, calculated to the bone. But something about the sudden change in plans made every alarm in my system blare at full volume.

He knew.

Kane Callahan already knew who I was.

The elevator opened directly into the living room. Of course, it did. I rolled my eyes.

His penthouse was all glass walls and marble floors. A view of the skyline that screamed generational wealth and strategic detachment.

He stood at the far end, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a glass of bourbon like it had been poured exactly three minutes before I arrived.

"Kane Callahan," I said without greeting, stepping in with my coat still on and with bitterness laced in my voice that I couldn't seem to hide.

"Funny. I thought we were meeting at your office. Why the sudden change in plans?"

He set his glass down.

"Do you want to talk about logistics in a boardroom under fluorescent lights? Or here, where no assistants or security cameras get in the way?"

I crossed my arms. "You could've just said that upfront. You didn't need to play cloak and dagger."

"I've found that most people show their true selves when they're caught off-guard.".

"And what did you learn about me, Mr. Analytical?" I asked, stepping farther into his lion's den.

"That you don't rattle easily." His eyes moved over me, clinical, not lustful. Strategic. Like he was assessing an asset, not a woman. Or a person. "That's a good thing. It'll... sorry, my bad. You will be a great asset."

I gave a short laugh. "You don't know the half of it."

He didn't deny it. Just motioned to the chair across from him.

I didn't sit. I just stood with my arms crossed and my chin tilted just enough to let him know I wasn't intimidated.

Not even close.

"You should've told me who you were," I said.

"I didn't lie about it, though."

"Zane Callahan's brother or half-brother. Whatever," I said, voice flat. "That name should've been in bold at the top of the contract."

"Do you need to know the name of every guy who contracts you?" he replied coolly.

That calm tone. God, it made me want to throw something.

I stepped closer.

"You think this is funny? You think dragging me into your little CEO fantasy while casually omitting that you're related to the man who ruined my life is a joke?"

"No," Kane said. "I think it's an opportunity. For both of us."

I stared at him. "Excuse me?"

He took a step toward me now, slow and deliberate. "You want money. You've made a rather good business out of wearing rings that aren't yours. I need a wife, for a short window, to solidify my position on the board. You were the best option."

"And Zane?"

"What about him?"

"You're seriously going to sit there and act like this has nothing to do with him?"

Kane's jaw ticked. Just for a second. "Zane doesn't run this family. And he sure as hell doesn't run me."

I couldn't stop the bitter laugh that slipped out. "He sure had a way of ruining lives, though. Specifically mine."

"I know what he did," Kane said quietly.

That silenced me.

There was something in the way he said it. Like he'd seen the aftermath. Like he hadn't just read about it in tabloids or overheard it during company gossip, but knew. Lived it.

But he didn't. Nobody did.

"I hated him long before he broke you," Kane added.

A beat passed. And then another.

"You expect me to believe that aligning myself with the Callahan name again is somehow smart?"

"No," Kane said. "I expect you to do the math. You walk away now, you'll still make six figures next time. But stay? You walk away with seven. And something Zane could never erase, his past, hand-delivered to his door, wearing my last name."

He was good, and I was intrigued.

I hated that I didn't hate him more.

I looked away, stared out the glass walls at the New York skyline, glittering little stars.

Everything in me said to walk away, to run even. To disappear and leave the Callahans, all of them, in my rearview.

But...

The photo of my baby's ultrasound still lived in a box I hadn't opened in two years.

The hospital bills were paid, but the grief never was.

Zane still walked around like I hadn't stood there, watching him f-k my stepsister in the bed I lost my child in.

Some ghosts just can't stand to be alone.

I pivoted back to face Kane, who was looking at me with that perpetually serious expression of his.

"One week," I declared, trying to sound more resolute than I felt.

"Seven days," he echoed, his tone confirming that he was just as serious about this as I was.

But there were some ground rules I needed to lay out. "No intimacy," I insisted, raising a finger for emphasis. "No emotional manipulation. And absolutely, no more surprises."

He nodded thoughtfully. "You'll get the same in return," he replied, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his lips, as if he found this whole arrangement amusing in some way.

With that, my back straightened, almost as if I could feel a spark of defiance coursing through my spine.

"Then congratulations, Mr. Callahan. You just bought yourself a wife," I said, letting the weight of those words sink in.

He stepped closer, extending his hand as if we were sealing some kind of deal. His palm was open and inviting, but I hesitated.

I mean, who in their right mind would shake hands on something like this? I looked at his hand, every inch of me screaming to take it, but reason held me back. Because let's be real, if the devil you know is bad, the one who despises your demons just as fiercely as you do?

Well, that could be a whole different level of hell.

But maybe, just maybe, that kind of "worse" is what I needed right now.

I nodded.

Let the game begin.

★

KANE'S POV

Change was the only thing constant.

Tsk. I never believed that saying.

Certain events can't change, certain people whom you couldn't change no matter how hard you tried, and Aria was one of them.

Was. The woman who stood in front of me was a shadow of what Aria was.

I could still remember the glow in her eyes, her wide smile, which warmed everyone up; she was like sunshine, spreading cheerfulness whenever she got it. The woman who glared daggers at me didn't exude such qualities.

Hell, she looked like she would shatter whatever she touched.

It took my brother a year to wipe out her smile and two more years of whatever hell he made her go through to strip her of her goodness.

That bastard.

When she stormed into my office like she owned the fucking place, at first, I was willing to pay double to know who gave her the audacity to walk into my office like that.

The look in her eyes told me she would kick back. She wasn't the little toy, used and treated like a slave.

As I stated my offer, she calmed, although I wasn't stupid enough to think she had let her guard down.

She could whip out a dagger from her black purse and plunge it into my heart at any time.

I won't blame her.

I wasn't that bastard, Zane, but I still bore the same surname as him. I was his brother.

Half-brother, but I don't think she would reconsider her plans based on that fact. We continued as I made a deal I knew she wouldn't refuse, one she saw as an opportunity, not just for money, but for revenge.

I stared at her; she looked weak, ridiculous with her glow, her long hair packed into a simple ponytail revealing the contour of her face, her blue ocean eyes flared with anger and pain, her lower lip captured by her teeth. She wore a simple off-shoulder gown.

She looked more like a little devil.

And yet I leaned in, awaiting her approval.