Chapter 2
Chloe's POV
I couldn't sleep. I lay on the couch with the rain going and looked up the Vances on my phone at two in the morning.
Werewolves aren't a secret. Nobody's hiding, nobody's out in the woods howling at the moon. They were in the open before I was born, running shops, sitting on the school board, working at companies like anybody else.Most of the time I can't tell them apart from humans at all.
My best friend is one. Rachel and I met at nineteen, when we were both too broke to be picky about roommates, and the wolf thing came out the way someone mentions being lactose intolerant — a fact about her, not the whole of her. She can tell I've been crying before I get my coat off. She says she smells it. They have that in them.
But knowing werewolves isn't knowing the rest of it. This city runs on two sets of rules that don't touch. City hall handles the paper — the registration, the deeds, the taxes. The territories handle what they count as their own: who belongs, who inherits, what you get called inside a family's gates. Where the line falls, nobody tells you.
Vance Group: logistics, real estate, and a healthcare division. A few press releases with the same face in all of them, a man a few years older than me, pale enough that the camera looked like it had washed him out, deep-set eyes, standing in the middle of a row of people with the expression of somebody waiting for a bus in bad weather.
Elias Vance. I said it once in my head. Nothing happened.
I put the phone down and stared at the ceiling until it all went dark.
At eight I texted Martin: Coffee. The place by the shop. Bring everything.
He was already there when I got in, in a jacket worn pale at the elbows, a folder open in front of him with the corners soft like it had been carried around for a while.
I sat, and he pushed the collection notices and the payroll sheet across to me.
"If those final payments don't come back, we shut down next week."
I turned a few pages. All of it together was a long way past anything I had.
"So you've already found me a family."
"I'm only asking you to go and meet them," he said. "The Vances are willing to help and you're not losing anything by it."
"That depends what they want."
He didn't take that one. He reached over and turned a page back.
"Your mother's biggest fear was holding up wages. Even in the worst months she found a way—"
"I told you. You don't get to talk about her." I looked at him.
He lowered his head.
If it hadn't been for his betrayal, my mother would still be alive. And here he was sitting across from me, using her to talk me into a marriage.
"I know you don't want to be looking after me," he said. "But she protected that company for years too. If it goes under, can you really just walk away?"
I looked at him and wanted to push the folder back.
Then the picture came up anyway — my mother in the corner of the shop, doing quotes. It's cold there in winter, and she'd lay her coat over her knees, and I'd have to tell her twice before she'd agree to go home.
I put my hands back in my lap.
"How did the Vances hear about me?"
"An events company we've worked with put us forward. They're looking for a human match for the son, so I mentioned you."
"You gave them my job, my age, where I live, and that we're broke, and it never crossed your mind to tell me first."
"It's a good match. These are serious people, Chloe."
I sat there looking at him, and something dropped into place where I didn't want it. Not anger, exactly. Something flatter than anger.
I had been on a list since before last night.
I'm not going to claim I was thinking clearly. I hadn't slept properly in two days. My wrist hurt when I turned it. I still had those pictures of him on my phone.
But here's a thing nobody tells you: a really bad week makes you very good at arithmetic. What I had was a folder, no money, and a job that covered my own living and nothing past it. What they had was a payroll I couldn't cover in ten years.
And honestly — there's nobody here I need to lie to. Some of it was spite. Some of it was me thinking that at least a contract says what it means, at least a contract has a date on it, and Tyler's promises didn't even have that.
"I'll go and meet them," I said.
Martin sat up straight.
"But the company and my conditions get talked about separately. I want to hear it from them myself, and you don't agree to anything for me."
He frowned. I pushed the folder back toward him.
"Deal?"
"Deal," he said at last.
That afternoon Martin drove me out to Blackwood Estate.
Just before we got there he started in again. "Don't talk about family business once we're inside. And your boyfriend—"
"Ex-boyfriend."
"Right. Anyway. Don't bring it up."
I turned and looked out the window.
The gate came out of the trees with no warning at all — two stone pillars, iron, a camera on the left one. The man in the booth checked the invitation against a list, then the plate, then us.
It took a minute to drive up to the house. I timed it.
I looked at the paving. Real stone, laid properly, with a drainage channel cut along the edge so the water had somewhere to go instead of standing. I converted it in my head into warehouse rent, and the number came out ugly — that one driveway and its drain would cover half a year of it.
The house wasn't a castle. That was the point. It was a house, big and old and well kept, with a porch that had been rebuilt at some point by somebody who knew what he was doing.
A man walked out from under the porch and opened the car door for us.
"Mr. Davis. Miss Davis. Mrs. Vance is waiting inside."
Martin was already out, straightening his collar. I looked down at the folder on my knee and then undid my seatbelt.
This was their ground. I let the fact sit there for a second. Not the Vance Group offices. Not a conference room on some fortieth floor. Their ground.
The man took us down a corridor, and at the end of it was a half-open door.
The drawing room was the kind of room that made you want to keep your hands in your pockets. Twelve-foot ceiling, a fireplace you could have roasted a whole person in, chairs arranged so that nobody's back would ever be to the door.
Eleanor Vance was standing at the fireplace, putting a poker back on its stand. She turned when she heard footsteps.
She was shorter than I'd expected, a little over five feet, in a dark gray knit cardigan with nothing decorative on it. Her hair was blond going silver, combed flat, not one strand loose.
"Chloe. Coming all this way in weather like this." She offered her hand. "Sit wherever you like. There's coffee, there's tea, and something stronger if the drive was bad."
"The drive was fine."
She poured for both of us, sat down, set her cup aside, and looked at me. Really looked, which I hadn't prepared for.
Martin cut in from beside me and brought up the company.
"I've read the files. The arrears will be dealt with, and there's a working sum on top of it to get the business running again."
Martin opened his mouth, looked at me, and the tightness went out of his face.
I didn't answer as fast.
"And all of that is part of the marriage terms?"
"It is," she said. "But the money for your father's company and the arrangements for you…."
She slid a document across to me.
I'd assumed my first question would be about timing. Instead my eyes stopped on the figure.
One million dollars.
I read the line above it to make sure it was mine.
"Transferred into your own account after the registration," Eleanor said. "Living costs are arranged separately. You can keep working. You keep your own accounts and your own property."
Martin reached over to turn the page. "Let me just—"
I put my hand flat on the paper.
"I'll read it myself."
His hand hung there a second, then went back. Eleanor didn't step in for him. She just waited for me to go on.
I read the pages that concerned me, then turned back to the figure. The hole in my father's business was already more than I could do anything about, and what they were giving me was a great deal more than that.
"Why me?"
