"First." She holds up one finger, and I track the movement with a predator's focus. Her nails are painted a soft pink, slightly chipped at the edges. She's been biting them, a nervous habit she probably doesn't even realize she has. "I keep working. I came here for a job, and I intend to have one. I'm not going to be a trophy wife locked in a mansion while you run your empire."
"Done." The word comes easily. I want her close. Working at Redthorne puts her exactly where I can see her, protect her, watch over her. Every day. Every hour. Within arm's reach whenever I need to assure myself she's safe. "You'll work directly under me. Executive assistant. You'll have access to everything except the classified Syndicate files."
Her eyes narrow, suspicious of the easy victory. Those eyes. Dark and deep and sharp enough to cut. They see too much, this woman. It's one of the things that drew me to her at the masquerade, the way she looked at me like she could see past the mask to the man beneath. Now that same perceptiveness makes my skin prickle with unease.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." I roll one shoulder in an easy shrug, watching her eyes narrow further at the casual gesture. "Next condition."
She hesitates, thrown off balance by my agreement. Good. I want her off balance. It's easier to catch someone when they're not expecting the fall.
But even off balance, she's magnificent. The flush of anger still rides high on her cheekbones, and her chest rises and falls with controlled breaths that speak to the effort she's expending to keep herself together. The silk of her blouse shifts with each inhale, drawing my eye to curves I remember tracing with my tongue.
Focus, Valentina. Business first. Pleasure later.
"Second." Another finger rises. "Luna stays in my life. You don't isolate me from my friends. I've seen what men like you do." Her voice hardens, taking on an edge that speaks to personal observation rather than abstract knowledge. "They cut women off from everyone who cares about them until there's no one left to run to."
The accusation lands like a blade between my ribs, but I don't let it show. She's not wrong to be wary. I've watched men do exactly that. Hell, I've helped men do exactly that when it served the Syndicate's purposes. I've seen the slow suffocation of women married to powerful men, watched their worlds shrink until they existed only in the shadow of their husbands.
But I won't do it to her. I won't become the monster she fears, even if I'm already the monster she doesn't know about.
"Luna Moone is welcome in our home anytime." I keep my voice even, controlled. "I would never separate you from the people you love. That's not the kind of marriage I want."
"What kind of marriage do you want?" The question is sharp, probing. She steps closer without seeming to realize it, her body drawn forward by the intensity of her own interrogation. Her scent drifts toward me, jasmine and green grass after rain, and my hands itch with the need to touch her.
"One where you trust me." The irony lands like a blade I turned on myself, but I don't let it cut deep. Not now. "Eventually."
Her laugh is bitter and hollow. It bounces off the high ceilings and I deserve every echo. "Trust. Right. We're off to a fantastic start on that front."
She's quick with the blade. I file that away alongside everything else I love about her.
I deserve that. I deserve worse. But I don't say anything, just wait for her next condition while cataloging every micro-expression that flickers across her face. The tightening around her eyes. The slight downturn of her lips. The way her jaw clenches and releases as she wrestles with words she hasn't yet spoken.
"Third." She holds up a third finger. Her voice hardens, and her eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that makes my chest tighten. She plants her feet, squares her shoulders, and delivers her words like a judge handing down a sentence. "You never lie to me again. Whatever this is between us, whatever this marriage becomes, I need to know that the words coming out of your mouth are true. I've spent my whole life being manipulated by powerful men. I won't tolerate it from the man I'm marrying."
The words hit with surgical precision, finding the exact seam in my armor she doesn't even know exists.
My fingers tighten against my biceps. The contradiction registers like a cold equation: she's demanding the one thing I can't give her without losing everything I've just secured. I'm already lying. I know it. The question isn't whether I feel the weight of that. The question is whether the truth serves her better than the protection my silence provides. Right now, it doesn't.
Every decision I made had sound reasoning behind it. Every single one. The problem is that sound reasoning and honesty aren't the same thing, and she just drew a line between the two that I can't uncross.
Drake's voice echoes through my skull, sharp with warning from Saturday night at Ember House: "Tell her the truth before someone else does. Secrets like this have a way of detonating at the worst possible moment."
I dismissed him then. I told myself there’s no way she could find out. And I believe that.
There's only now, with her standing before me demanding honesty while I choke on lies she’ll never know about.
The strategist in me files this away as a manageable risk. The man who remembers the way she looked at me in that glass room tells me I'm a bastard for thinking in terms of risk management. Both voices are mine. Neither one is wrong.
Part of me says tell her. Right now. All of it. Let her decide with full information whether that ring stays on her finger. But full disclosure means she walks. And if she walks, Enzo finds her. The math isn't complicated. It's just ugly.
So I do the only thing the math allows.
“I won't lie to you.” The promise settles between us with the weight of a loaded weapon. I know exactly what I'm doing. I know exactly what it costs. “You have my word.”
She searches my face for a long moment, those dark eyes probing, dissecting, looking for the sign that I'm already breaking my promise in the act of making it. I hold her gaze and let nothing show. I've spent a lifetime learning to control what people see. One more calculated silence won't break the pattern.
Something in her expression shifts. Not belief, not quite, but there’s a reluctant acceptance of the performance. She doesn't trust my words, but she's choosing to move forward anyway.