Chapter 4
Disposable
Celeste offered Elena ten million dollars in a room with no cameras.
Wealthy families did not call rooms what they were. This one had a marble fireplace, a tray of untouched tea, and a locked cabinet where Adrian's medication was arranged like a shrine to control. It was meant to look private. It was meant to feel safe enough that Elena would mistake a threat for a favor.
"Annulment," Celeste said. "Confidentiality. A car will take you wherever you want to go."
Elena sat across from her and looked at the check without touching it.
Ten million would have solved everything she could admit to needing. Her father's creditors. Noah's tuition. Rent. The shame of all the ways money had already won.
It would not solve the forged signature.
"If I leave," Elena said, "the proxy looks real."
Celeste's smile barely changed. "If you stay, you look greedy."
"I already looked greedy when you bought me."
The air sharpened.
Celeste set her cup down. "I rescued your family from federal attention."
"You bought silence from my father and a legal wife for your son."
"A temporary wife."
Elena glanced at the door. It was open just enough to let sound out and not enough to let anyone inside stop what was happening.
"Why temporary?"
Celeste's voice cooled. "Because Adrian was not expected to become difficult."
There it was. Not grief. Not relief.
Inconvenience.
Elena stood. "I won't sign anything else."
"You will. Everyone signs eventually. Your father did. Your brother will if we ask him correctly."
Noah.
The name hit harder than the check.
Elena's hand curled around the chair back until the wood bit into her palm. "Don't mention my brother again."
"Or what?" Celeste stood too. "You will remain in a marriage you do not understand, beside a man who has no reason to trust you, inside a family that knows exactly how disposable you are?"
The door opened.
Adrian stood in the threshold with one hand braced against the frame, pale from the effort of being upright, as if the sentence had dragged him there.
His eyes were on his mother.
"Say that last word again," he said.