The number didn’t feel real. It sounded like something from a movie, a number with too many zeros to be attached to someone I’d eaten Sunday dinners with.
“Fifty million?”
“Mr. Baste has been generous,” Mr. Voss said in a voice as flat as a closed door. “He has agreed to forgive the entire amount, plus the lien on the Hale family home, plus your father’s pending criminal fraud charges, which Baste Holdings has the power to withdraw.”
“Forgive it?” I said. “In exchange for what?”
Mr. Voss opened the leather folder and slid a document across the desk.
The title read: MARRIAGE AGREEMENT.
I read it twice. Then a third time, because my brain refused to accept it.
“You want me to marry him.”
“Mr. Baste requires a wife,” Mr. Voss said. “For one year, at minimum. After which the debt is considered fully paid.”
“That’s insane. That’s illegal. That’s—”
“That is entirely voluntary,” Mr. Voss said gently. “You are free to refuse. In which case, your father will be arrested within the week. The house will be seized by month’s end.”
I looked at my father.
Say something, I begged him silently. Tell him no. Tell him you’d rather go to prison than sell your daughter.
My father put his face in his hands and began to cry.
And that was my answer.
I did not sign because I was brave. I did not sign because I was noble. I signed because the man who had taught me to ride a bike, who had once carried me home on his shoulders when I scraped my knee, was sobbing like a child in front of a stranger, and some broken part of me still loved him.
My hand shook as I wrote my name.
Mr. Voss collected the papers, bowed slightly, and said, “The ceremony will be on Saturday.”
I didn’t ask where Don Baste was. I didn’t ask whether I’d meet him first.
I already knew the answer.
Monsters don’t need to be introduced. They simply arrive.
