Nadia's POV
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He's still walking toward me.
I don't move. I don't look away. I just sit here on this cold floor and watch him come closer, and the whole hallway feels like it gets quieter with every step he takes.
The folder under his arm. *Holloway.* My name. My family's name. Written in clean black letters like a case file.
My heart is doing something strange — not quite panic, not quite fear. Something in between. The feeling you get right before you find out something that will change everything.
He stops three feet away and looks down at me.
Not the way men usually look at women sitting on hospital floors — not with pity, not with awkwardness. He looks at me the way someone looks at a door they've been searching for. Direct. Certain.
"Nadia Holloway?" he says.
His voice is low and even. Like he already knew I'd be here.
I stand up. Slowly. Deliberately. I will not have this conversation from the floor.
"Who's asking?" I say.
Something moves across his face. Not quite a smile. More like he noted my answer and approved of it without wanting to show it.
"Marcus Steele," he says.
The name hits me like cold water.
Marcus Steele. I know that name. Ethan said it the way people say the names of storms — carefully, with a kind of respect that had fear hiding inside it. His stepfather. The self-made one. The one who built an empire from nothing and never let anyone forget it without actually having to say it.
I stare at him.
Of all the people. Of all the nights. Of all the hallways in this entire city — Ethan's stepfather is standing in front of me holding a folder with my family's name on it, twelve hours after my marriage quietly died and my family lost everything.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"To offer you a solution," he says. "If you'll give me ten minutes."
I almost laugh. I don't know why. Maybe because ten minutes ago I had nothing and no plan and a dead phone battery, and now a man in an expensive coat is standing in a hospital hallway offering me a solution like it's a normal Tuesday.
"For what?" I say.
"For all of it," he says simply.
He gestures toward a small room down the hall. A consultation room. The door is open. There's a table inside.
I look at the folder again. My name. My family's name. In his hands.
I should say no. Every smart, careful part of me is saying *no, Nadia, you do not follow strangers into rooms when your life is already burning down around you.*
But then, from two doors away, I hear it.
My mother's monitor. Beeping steadily. Keeping time on borrowed treatment I can no longer pay for.
I walk toward the consultation room.
---
He sets the folder on the table but doesn't open it yet. He sits across from me and folds his hands and looks at me like he's about to explain something complicated to someone he believes is smart enough to handle it. I appreciate that, even though I don't want to appreciate anything about him right now.
"Your father's debt," he says. "The acquisition of Holloway Industries. The hospital payments. I know about all of it."
"How?" I ask.
He doesn't answer that directly. "What I can tell you is that I have the ability to resolve every financial crisis your family is currently facing. Completely. Within forty-eight hours."
I look at him. "And what do you want in return?"
He opens the folder.
One page. I pull it toward me and read.
I read it once fast. Then I go back and read it again slowly because I need to make sure I'm reading what I think I'm reading.
A contract. A marriage contract.
*One year minimum. Legal marriage. Shared residence at Steele Tower. Public appearances as husband and wife. In exchange — full resolution of Holloway debts, complete coverage of Clara Holloway's medical care, and a monthly allowance.*
I look up at him.
"You want to marry me," I say. Not a question. Just making sure the words are real.
"I want a contracted arrangement," he says. "The legal structure is marriage. The reality is a business agreement."
"Why?" I ask. "Why me? Why now? Why any of this?"
He looks at me for a long moment. "I have my reasons. You'll understand them in time."
That's not an answer. I tell him that.
"No," he agrees calmly. "It isn't."
I push the paper back toward him. "I don't sign things I don't understand."
"Then let me tell you what you do understand," he says, and his voice doesn't change, doesn't soften, doesn't try to sell me anything. It stays level. "Your mother needs surgery aftercare for at least four more months. Without continued payment, this facility begins discharge proceedings in seventy-two hours. Your father has no remaining assets. You have eleven days until your rent is due. And the man you've been married to for seven years—" He pauses. "—is currently meeting with his family's lawyers to make sure the divorce is quiet enough not to disturb the acquisition."
The room goes very still.
"What acquisition?" I say. My voice comes out quieter than I planned.
Marcus looks at me. Something in his expression shifts — just slightly. Like he's deciding something.
"The one your father thought was a debt sale," he says carefully.
I feel it then. That cold, slow feeling that starts in your stomach and moves upward.
"It wasn't a debt sale," I say. It comes out like a statement, but it's really a question.
Marcus is quiet for exactly three seconds.
"Sign the contract," he says. "And I'll show you what it actually was."
My hands are on the table. They're still. Perfectly still.
I think about my mother's monitor beeping down the hall. I think about my father's broken voice. I think about Ethan sitting with lawyers right now, making things quiet.
I pick up the pen.
And that's when my phone lights up on the table between us.
A text. From Ethan.
But it isn't the message that stops my blood cold. It's what's behind it — a notification I accidentally left open this morning. A bank alert. An automatic one from a joint account I forgot we still shared.
A transfer. Made three days ago. From Ethan's personal account.
To a name I don't recognize.
For exactly the amount that would have cleared my father's debt before the acquisition happened.