Chapter Six
Anna's POV
I stared at him. My mind went blank—or rather, it went very loud, a dull roar filling every corner of my skull—yet his expression was utterly serious, the kind that made it impossible to dismiss what he'd just said as nonsense.
"What?" I asked.
"You heard me. I don't like repeating myself."
He didn't look angry. He didn't look embarrassed. He looked like a man who had identified a problem and arrived, calmly, at a solution.
"My family is pressuring me into a marriage," he said. "An arrangement. A political one. The woman was chosen for me—I never wanted to marry her." He paused. "But if I'm already married, they lose their leverage."
"You need a place to stay. I need a shield. You marry me, I take you home, and you're not out on the street. It's that simple." He delivered it the way someone reads from a contract—steady, without inflection, like he was reciting terms he'd already reviewed.
I understood immediately. Two people trapped by their families. Him forced toward a woman he didn't choose. Me forced toward a man I didn't choose. He needed a barrier. I needed shelter. Two strangers in a hospital room—one fleeing a marriage, one fighting one—and somehow this had produced the most absurd conversation of my life.
Absurd or not, my brain had already started calculating.
No money. No job. No home. A criminal record. The Greys could come for me at any moment, drag me back to that basement, and deliver me to the Kinsleys like a package. Mary's crumpled bills wouldn't cover a single night's rent. I had escaped one cage, but the world outside wasn't freedom—it was open water with no horizon, and I had no way to navigate it.
But if I were married—if I were already someone's wife—the Greys couldn't sell me to the Kinsleys. The deal would collapse. The leverage would vanish.
"All right," I heard myself say. "I'll do it."
He raised one eyebrow. He hadn't expected me to agree so quickly.
"You don't need time to think it over?"
"No."
I steadied myself. "But before you decide—there's something I have to tell you first."
I knew this might be the moment everything fell apart. But I wasn't going to hide it from him.
"I was released from prison. Recently."
I braced for the reaction—the disgust, the recoil, the quiet retraction of everything he'd just offered. The turning away. That was what people did.
My voice came out unsteady. "I want you to know—I'm not a bad person. I didn't do what they said I did. I was set up, and I'm going to find a way to prove it."
I knew exactly how that sounded. Everyone who walks out of prison says they're innocent.
He looked at me for a moment, his face unreadable. "I don't care."
Then: "Even if you were a murderer, you'd still be a better option than that woman."
He glanced at his watch.
"Can you get out of bed and walk?"
"Where are we going?"
"The registrar's office," he said. "If we leave now, we'll make it before they close."
Now?
I looked down at myself. Hospital gown. Bare feet. Every patch of exposed skin mapped with bruises. Hair unwashed and tangled. An IV line still taped to my arm that someone would need to remove. This was, without question, the most wretched bride in the history of the institution.
"Yes," I said, without hesitation.
The sooner, the better. The moment I belonged to someone else, the Greys lost their claim on me. No more basement. No more being sold. No more being used as a bargaining chip in someone else's negotiation.
At the registrar's office, the clerk slid the forms across the counter, then paused when I picked up the pen.
"Are you sure, dear?" she asked, her voice careful. "You don't look like—"
"I'm sure."
The whole thing took less than twenty minutes. Fill out the forms, sign, stamp. No dress. No rings. No vows. No one there to wish us well. Just two people standing at a counter, processing paperwork the way you'd process a lease agreement.
When she asked my name, I said, "Anna." Just that. Not my surname. Not Grey. I didn't want that word anywhere near my new life. I wanted to shed it entirely—the name, and everything scarred into it.
He did the same. "Adrian," he said. Only his first name. No surname.
Two people who had walked out of their own private storms, carrying nothing but their names, signing them onto the same piece of paper.
Anna. Adrian.
The clerk may have found us strange, but she asked no questions. She stamped the certificate and pushed it across the counter.
My fingers were still trembling when I picked it up.
He drove me back to the hospital. At the door to my room, he stopped.
"Rest," he said. "Get your strength back. I'll come for you in a few days."
Then he left. The sound of his shoes against the corridor floor clicked steadily into the distance, and then disappeared.
I settled back against the pillow, holding the certificate in both hands, staring at the name printed there. Adrian. I didn't know his last name. I didn't know where he lived, or what he did, or anything beyond what I'd seen in this room. I had married a stranger—and all I had of him was a face and a first name.
But for the first time, I thought I might actually sleep tonight without nightmares.
I closed my eyes.
I was almost under when footsteps sounded in the corridor. Several sets, moving quickly, growing louder—and then stopping just outside my door.
The door flew open.
I saw who it was.
The blood rushed to my head all at once.
They had found me.
