Chapter 2 - The Price of a Monster
Vivian caught my wrist, her manicured nails digging into my skin. Her wide, doe-like eyes were filled with artificial concern, the kind she had perfected over years of taking things that weren’t hers.
"Arya, why would you do this?" she whispered, her voice trembling just enough to sound fragile. "He’s a killer. You’ve heard the stories. You’d throw your whole life away just to spite me?"
I looked down at her hand on my arm, then slowly lifted my gaze to meet hers. For nine months, this girl had walked into my apartment, shared wine with me, helped me pick out bridal flowers, and smiled to my face while Damian was still warm in her bed.
"I'm not doing it to spite you, Vivian," I said, my voice dead and level. "I’m doing it because I’d rather dance with a monster who shows his fangs than sleep next to one who smiles while he poisons me."
I ripped my wrist from her grip. She stumbled back a step, looking at Celeste as if waiting for her mother to punish me. But Celeste was frozen, her calculating eyes darting between Edward and me, silently running the math on how this shift in the board pieces would affect her own survival.
My father exhaled a long, ragged breath, his hands resting on the mahogany desk. "Arya, this isn't a game. You don't just 'take Vivian's place' with Roman Moretti. He isn't a Wall Street associate you can manipulate with legal filings. If he feels insulted by a switch, he won't just pull the harbor financing. He’ll tear Hartwell Holdings down to the bedrock."
"Then you better make sure you present the deal properly," I replied coldly. "You have sixty minutes to get him on the phone. Tell him the eldest daughter—the one who holds the actual voting equity in the logistics docks he needs—is offering herself instead of the decorative second child. If he's the businessman people say he is, he’ll know who holds the real power."
Vivian let out an indignant gasp. "Edward, are you going to let her speak to me like that?"
My father didn't answer her. He was staring at me, perhaps seeing for the first time in thirteen years the woman his late wife had built. Elise Hart had not raised a victim. She had raised an heiress, and though I had dimmed my own light for years to make Damian Lockwood feel taller, that illusion had burned to ash thirty seconds after I walked into this room.
"Wait outside," my father said hoarsely.
I didn't wait in the hallway. I walked straight down to the conservatory, where my mother’s favorite orchids still grew behind misted glass. I stood there in the humid, floral air, my hands trembling violently. The adrenaline was beginning to ebb, leaving behind the jagged ice of betrayal. Six years. Six years of my youth, my devotion, my unquestioning trust—all traded away for a set of forged smiles and stolen hotel rooms.
Forty-five minutes later, the study door opened. Edward stepped out into the hallway, his face completely devoid of color.
"He wants to see you," Edward said, leaning against the doorframe as if his legs could barely support his weight. "Tonight. At midnight. At his residence in DUMBO."
"Did he agree to the terms?" I asked.
"He said..." Edward swallowed hard. "He said he doesn't negotiate with surrogates. If you want the deal, you come alone. If you survive the conversation, he’ll sign the harbor release and let you have Elise’s papers."
"I'll be there," I said.
Three hours later, a sleek black car with tinted windows pulled up to the gated entrance of a converted industrial warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront. The rain had started—a cold, relentless September downpour that turned the East River into churning slate.
Two men in tailored charcoal suits, their frames broad and their jackets cut loosely enough to conceal firearms, met me at the elevator. They didn't speak. They didn't search my purse. They simply keyed the private elevator to the top floor and stepped back.
The elevator doors parted directly into a sprawling, two-story penthouse. The aesthetic was striking—raw, exposed brick and industrial steel beams paired with priceless oil paintings, dark Italian leather, and floor-to-ceiling glass that framed the glittering Manhattan skyline like a captured kingdom.
At the far end of the room, standing before the glass with a tumbler of amber liquid in his hand, was Roman Moretti.
The press photographs didn't do him justice. They captured the severity of his jaw, the dark, razor-sharp cut of his hair, and the faint scar that ran from the corner of his left eyebrow down toward his cheekbone. But they couldn't capture his presence. He was thirty-seven years old, broad-shouldered and imposing, radiating the kind of effortless, terrifying authority that didn't need to raise its voice to command a room.
He didn't turn around immediately when my heels clicked against the hardwood floor.
"Your father sounded like a man standing on a trapdoor with a noose around his neck," Roman said, his baritone voice slicing through the quiet hum of the rain outside.
"He is," I answered, stopping ten feet behind him. "And you're the one holding the lever."
Roman turned slowly. His eyes were an arresting, predatory gray—like the edge of a sharpened blade. He took a slow sip of his drink, his gaze raking over me not with crude lust, but with the cold, meticulous assessment of an appraiser evaluating a volatile asset.
"Arya Hart," he murmured. "The dutiful daughter. The devoted fiancée. You're supposed to marry Damian Lockwood on Saturday at St. Catherine’s."
"Damian Lockwood has spent the last nine months sleeping with my sister," I said, keeping my chin lifted and my voice steady. "And my father intended to trade Vivian to you to cover his debts, while using my trust fund to bail out Damian’s firm. I don't intend to let either of them have a single cent."
A faint, dangerous smirk touched the corner of Roman's mouth. "So you come to the wolf to save you from the jackals?"
"I don't need a savior, Mr. Moretti. I need a partner."
"A partner," he repeated, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. He walked toward a heavy desk made of reclaimed timber and set the glass down. "Your sister was a tax write-off, Miss Hart. A decorative concession to ensure your father didn't get cute with the shipping manifests at Pier 42. But you... you control thirty-one percent of Hartwell Holdings. You hold the actual maritime deed to the western terminal."
"Which means I am far more valuable to you than Vivian ever could be."
"You are," Roman agreed, stepping closer until he was standing directly in front of me. He smelled of rain, cedarwood, and expensive tobacco. His presence was suffocating, an overwhelming aura of contained violence. "But your price is higher. Your father said you demand Elise Hart’s original trust documents and total corporate independence."
"I do."
"And what do I get in exchange, Arya? Aside from the harbor?"
"You get the undisputed legitimacy of the Hart family name on every port authority contract in the Tri-State area," I said, refusing to back down, refusing to blink under that merciless gray stare. "And you get to ruin Damian Lockwood. I know his firm owes you twelve million in offshore bridge loans. He can't pay you without my shares. If I cut him off, he defaults. You can strip Lockwood Capital down to the bone."
Roman tilted his head slightly, studying me with genuine intrigue. For several agonizing seconds, the only sound was the rain lashing against the glass.
"You're colder than your father," he noted, a low rumble of amusement in his tone. "I like that. But you misunderstand one fundamental detail."
"Which is?"
He leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a dark whisper that sent a shiver straight down my spine. "If you take this deal, this is not a business transaction that ends with a handshake. If I put my ring on your finger, you are my wife. You will live under my roof. You will bear my name. And in my world, there is no such thing as divorce. When you marry the devil, Miss Hart, you don't get to renegotiate your soul when the flames get hot."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, but the memory of Vivian's smirk and Damian's casual cruelty flared white-hot in my chest.
"I don't want a divorce," I told him, looking dead into his eyes. "I want retribution. And I want it on my terms."
Roman stared at me for a beat longer, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a heavy, velvet box. He didn't open it. He simply set it in my palm.
"Be at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau tomorrow morning at eight o'clock sharp," he commanded quietly. "Bring two witnesses you can trust not to breathe a word, or I’ll provide them myself. We sign the papers. You become Mrs. Moretti."
"And the wedding on Saturday?" I asked.
The ruthless smile that crossed Roman Moretti's face was nothing short of lethal.
May you like
"Oh, you'll still have your wedding, Arya," he said softly. "You'll wear your white dress. You'll walk down that aisle. Let Damian Lockwood believe he has won right up until the exact second the noose snaps around his neck."
***
