Chapter 3 The Contract

[POV: Lanaya Roux]

The silence in the tunnel shattered.

Lanaya brought her hand back and slapped Maverick Hayden across the face.

The crack echoed off the concrete. Her palm burned. His head snapped to the side.

He slowly turned his face back to her. The grey-blue of his eyes had gone completely black. The red mark of her handprint bloomed over the bruise she had already given him on the ice.

"Feel better?" His voice was a lethal, quiet rasp.

"You are a monster," Lanaya breathed.

"I am a businessman."

"This isn't business. This is blackmail."

"It is survival." Maverick crowded her again, the raw heat of his body trapping her against the wall. "If the foundation goes under, everything Crew built dies with it. The youth clinics. The scholarships. All of it gone by Friday. Unless we sign the contract."

"Where is it?"

"My penthouse. Tomorrow morning. Eight AM."

Lanaya shoved both hands against his chest. She needed distance before the heavy cedar-laced scent of him completely suffocated her.

"I hate you," she promised. The words tasted like poison. "I will sign your contract. I will smile for the cameras. But if you think for one second this changes anything between us, you are dead wrong."

"I don't want it to change anything."

"Good."

"Tomorrow morning, Huntress. Don't be late."

He turned and stalked into the shadows. Lanaya stayed pinned against the wall, her legs shaking. She raised her trembling hand to her chest, right over her wildly beating heart.

She was engaged to the boy who let her brother drown.

Eight AM felt like an execution.

Maverick's penthouse was a cold monument to the Hayden empire. Floor-to-ceiling windows, dead air, no pictures. Sharp angles, black leather, and sterile glass.

Lanaya stood clutching her coffee cup like a weapon while two corporate lawyers slid a thick stack of papers across the oak table.

"The contract stipulates a twelve-month public engagement," the lead lawyer said. "Cohabitation is mandatory. You will move into this penthouse by the end of the week."

"No." The word tore out of her. "Absolutely not."

"It is non-negotiable." Maverick's voice was flat, completely shut down. "A fake engagement looks fake if we live in separate apartments. Page four, section B. Read it yourself."

Lanaya crossed the room and snatched the contract off the table.

Her stomach plummeted.

Both parties agree to reside in the primary residence of Maverick Hayden for the duration of the twelve-month term. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination of the merger agreement and the liquidation of all associated assets, including the Crew Roux Memorial Foundation.

She dropped the paper as if it burned her.

"You agreed to trap me."

Maverick finally looked up. The coldness in his eyes cracked, revealing that same dark, starving intensity from the tunnel. "Sign the paper, Lanaya."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then the foundation is gone in five minutes."

He held out the silver pen. A challenge. A threat.

She snatched it from his hand. Her fingers brushed his, and the violent spark of electricity that shot up her arm made her teeth click together.

She signed her name so hard the pen tore through the paper.

"There," she spat. "You have your fake fiancée. Are we done?"

Maverick stood and reached into his suit pocket, pulling out a small velvet box.

"Not quite."

He snapped it open.

The diamond was massive. A perfect blinding cut set in platinum. Heavy, expensive, and completely terrifying.

"Give me your hand," he ordered.

"I can put it on myself."

"Give me your hand, Roux."

She extended her left hand slowly, fingers trembling. Maverick's calloused hand wrapped around hers. The heat of his skin was a shocking contrast to the cold metal. He held her firmly, his thumb pressing into her pulse point, before slowly pushing the diamond onto her finger.

It fit perfectly.

The weight of it was wrong. Too familiar. Like something that had been measured in advance, or waiting, or both.

Her mind went somewhere she hadn't let it go in eight years.

She was fourteen. The old outdoor rink on Fenwick Street, the one the city had since torn down. Late October, the ice still rough from the first freeze, the sky that particular dark blue it only went in the hour before full dark.

Crew had been doing backwards crossovers in the center, showing off for no one in particular, which was completely on brand.

"Lanaya, watch this!" he shouted, and immediately fell flat on his face.

She laughed so hard she had to grab the boards.

"You good?" Maverick called from the far end. His voice had just started to change that year, catching on itself in unexpected places.

"I meant to do that," Crew announced from the ice.

Maverick skated over without a word and pulled him up by the collar. Crew immediately went back to his crossovers, unbothered, still grinning. That was the thing about Crew. He filled every silence he walked into. He made the cold feel warm and the ice feel like somewhere you had chosen to be.

When Crew drifted back to center, Maverick stopped beside Lanaya at the boards. Not talking. Just there.

She hadn't looked over at him for a long moment. When she did, he was already looking at her. Not at the rink. Not at Crew. At her.

The cold air burned in her throat. He was fourteen years old and he had the look of someone who had just understood something enormous and was not yet sure it was safe to say out loud.

"It's gonna snow tomorrow," he said finally. Still looking at her.

"Okay," she said, which was a stupid thing to say, and she knew it immediately.

Crew called out from the center. The moment broke. Maverick pushed off the boards and skated away, and Lanaya told herself it was nothing, it was the cold, she was imagining things.

She spent the next three years telling herself that.

Then the summer came.

And after the summer, there was nothing left to tell herself at all.

The memory snapped shut. The penthouse swam back into focus, sharp and sterile and nothing like Fenwick Street. Nothing like any version of them that had ever been safe. She became aware that Maverick's thumb was still pressing against her pulse point, and that her heart rate hadn't slowed down at all.

"Beautiful," the lawyer murmured, packing up his briefcase. "Welcome to the family, Miss Roux."

The lawyers left. The door clicked shut.

Lanaya stared down at the ring, the weight of it anchoring her to a nightmare she couldn't wake up from.

"It's done," Maverick said, his voice dropping to a dangerous rasp. "You're mine for the next twelve months."

Lanaya looked up. For one fraction of a second, she was fourteen again, and the ice was rough, and the sky was that particular dark blue. Then she buried it.

"I am not yours. I will never be yours."

Maverick stepped into her space. His long fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, his thumb resting dangerously close to her pulse.

"Keep telling yourself that, Huntress," he whispered, his gaze dropping to her mouth. "Let's see how long you actually believe it."