Chapter Five
Anna's Pov
The smell of disinfectant hit me first — sharp and antiseptic, cutting straight through to the back of my sinuses.
I opened my eyes. A hospital room. Someone was standing at the window with their back to me, phone pressed to their ear.
Sunlight came through the glass and caught his silhouette — tall, with the kind of shoulders that filled out a dark shirt cleanly, one hand dropped into his trouser pocket, the other holding the phone. His posture was loose, almost careless, but carried something in it: a quality of looking down at the world from a height.
"If Grandfather chose her, then let him marry her himself." His voice was cold. "I'm not interested."
"I don't care what he promised her family. That's his problem."
"Marry that woman? I'd sooner go out and marry a stray dog off the street."
The person on the other end seemed to be arguing. He cut them off. "Come back to the estate now? No. Something came up."
He hung up without saying goodbye.
He turned around, and I saw his face for the first time.
Young — mid-twenties, maybe. Deep-set brow, a straight nose, a jaw with clean definition. His eyes were a dark, oceanic blue.
He crossed to the bed and looked down at me. His first words were a question.
"How much?"
My mind was still sluggish, still pulling itself up out of unconsciousness. "What do you — what do you mean?"
"You threw yourself in front of my car on purpose." He said it the way someone states a fact they find dull. "That's extortion. So let's skip the performance. What's your number?"
"I didn't — I wasn't —"
He talked over me. "Name a price. But I'll warn you: I'm in a poor mood today. Push too high and I won't negotiate. I'll have you arrested. Directly."
Arrested.
My body reacted before my brain did. I flinched.
"No —" My voice had started to shake. "I didn't throw myself in front of your car. I'm not trying to extort you. I —"
I was trying to run away from a marriage.
He narrowed his eyes. "Run away from a marriage."
"My parents were forcing me to marry someone," I said, the words coming quickly. "A man I'd never met. They told me he was disabled. That his temper was violent. That his own family had kept him locked away for over ten years."
"None of that mattered to them. They only wanted me to marry him because it would close a business deal."
"I left in the middle of the night, barefoot. I hadn't gotten far when I fell. Then your car came."
I looked directly at him. "I am not going to extort you. I have no job right now. Nowhere to go. But once I find work, I will pay back every single cent of the medical costs. I swear it."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "No money. No job. Nowhere to live. Your own family trying to sell you off." He paused. "And you just told me you have a criminal record." Another pause. "So your plan is — what, exactly? Walk out of this hospital in a gown and figure it out?"
The way he said it made it sound utterly absurd.
"Yes," I said.
He stared at me for a long time. I could tell he thought it was insane. "You can go," I said.
I expected him to leave. There was no reason for him to stay. A woman he'd scraped off the side of a road at midnight, covered in bruises, rambling about running from a wedding — any reasonable person would have already walked out.
He didn't leave. He stood at the edge of my bed, perfectly still, and I could feel him thinking.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Nineteen."
The silence stretched. Then he said, "You told me you don't want to marry that man."
I nodded.
His gaze moved slowly across my face — the bruises, the cracked lips, the hospital gown. I couldn't tell whether he was calculating or deciding, or whether those were the same thing.
Then he said it. His tone was level, without inflection, without ceremony — the way you might float a business proposal over coffee.
"Would you be willing to marry me instead?"
