The walls pressed in so closely it felt as if they might bend inward. Alyssa sat curled on the floor beside the radiator, her back flattened against the peeling mint-green paint, knees drawn high to her chest. The contract folder lay across her lap like a loaded pistol—heavy in her hands, full of danger—and she hadn’t dared open it.

The apartment was silent. Not the kind of peaceful quiet that soothes, but a suffocating hush that wrapped around her lungs like damp gauze. Even the city outside—usually alive with late-night sirens, shouting voices, and the hiss of tires on wet asphalt—had fallen silent. A single streetlamp threw a pale circle of light against the cracked windowpane, illuminating dust motes that drifted like spirits in the still air.

Beside her, the radiator hummed, its surface warm and rhythmical. Deep in its belly, old pipes groaned and rattled, then eased into a long, echoing sigh. A distant drip from the bathroom faucet kept time with her racing heart.

Her phone vibrated once on the chipped laminate counter. She glanced up, squinting through exhaustion at the screen.

A message from Kira:

Call me when you’re ready. I’m here.

Alyssa’s thumb hovered over the reply button, but she couldn’t bring herself to tap. It was nearly two in the morning; her eyes ached from staring, her coat was still draped over her shoulders, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

She turned back to the folder as if it might quiver open of its own accord. If she touched it, she imagined the steel-cloth pages would snap her fingers.

She hadn’t read the contract all the way through—didn’t need to. Every cruel term was already carved into her mind:

Six months.

Live in Wolfe’s home.

Play the wife.

No love. No sex. No lies, except all of them.

Her hands slid up to her face, pressing her palms hard against her cheekbones. They smelled faintly of cold metal—elevator rails at the office building, doorknobs in the lobby, that smooth-glass reception desk where she’d sat only hours ago as if in a dream. It felt like another person had gone there, someone stronger, someone who hadn’t come back.

She should have been furious. She was. But not at the contract. At herself—for even considering it, for spending the last twenty-four hours measuring out her dignity like spare change. A transaction, she reminded herself. That was all.

Her legs cramped, so she stood abruptly, bones echoing in protest. She paced the narrow room: seven steps from peeling wall to dusty window sill, turn, and back again. Her socked foot snagged on a splintered floorboard. She stumbled but kept moving, the scrape of wood like fingernails on a chalkboard.

On the shelf above the bed, a neat stack of sketchbooks leaned to one side—dog-eared, thick with charcoal, their spines coated in dust. One book had a dog-eared page poking out, the edge of brittle newsprint fluttering like a wounded bird. She reached for it with trembling fingers, careful not to jostle the others.

The sketch on that loose page was a charcoal rendering of her mother’s hand in motion—long, slender fingers bent at the knuckles, the lines of bone and tendon picked out in dense gray strokes. She remembered how her mother had posed for it so many years ago, sitting on this very floor, legs crossed, pencil clenched until her fingers went numb. Even then, her mother had trembled just enough to make the drawing challenging. But she’d held that pose until the page was full.

“You see people better than they see themselves,” her mother had said, voice soft as moss.

Alyssa’s breath caught, and a fierce ache bloomed in her chest. She pressed the sketchbook closed, fingertips lingering on the rough cover, then turned away and dropped it back on the shelf. The urge to draw shivered through her, a hollow ache in her palms, but she hadn’t drawn for herself in years.

She sank back to the floor, this time opening the contract folder. The paper inside was unnaturally smooth, cold to her touch, each sheet crisp and blank-eyed. The black-ink text marched down the page in rigid columns: precise legalese, no ornament, no room for mercy. Each clause was a locked gate, each paragraph a chain around her future.

At the back of the folder, between the last pages, she found a single silver-embossed card. It was heavy in her hand, the metal cool against her skin, the typeface an elegant serif. Just a number at the center. No name. No logo. Only possibilities—none of them good.

She turned the card over and over, questions ricocheting through her mind. When had her life shrunk to this point—one number, one signature?

“Is this what my life comes down to?” she whispered, voice small in the emptiness.

The radiator erupted in a sudden hiss. It was so loud she jumped, heart in her throat, then laughed—a single, breathless bark that felt more like sobbing.

She rose again, feet aching, and crossed to the window. She shoved it open. Cold air crashed in like a wave, carrying the tang of rain and exhaust. She leaned on the sill, her arms trembling as she surveyed the narrow alley below. A rusted fire escape clung to the building’s brick wall like an iron vine. The wet asphalt glinted with streetlamp reflections and shattered glass. A cardboard box trembled in the corner.

A stray cat slunk out, ribs prominent beneath its matted fur, and dragged something from a torn trash bag. It ate with a desperation she recognized—one motion after another, chewing fast, as though it feared someone would snatch its meal.

She watched until the cat disappeared into the darkness, then slammed the window shut.

By 5:47 a.m., the sky had shifted to a pale gray so faint it seemed undecided between night and day. In the kitchen, she boiled water for tea, the kettle’s whistle a tinny clarion in the quiet. Her hands, once shaking, had stilled.

She sat again on the floor, the contract folder open before her like a dark invitation. A pen lay beside it—an ordinary black ballpoint, caps half off and cap off. She picked it up, feeling its weight, its promise.

Her hand hovered over the signature line labeled “Signature of Party B.” She inhaled, tasting iron in her mouth, then forced her fingers to steady. With a single fluid motion, she pressed the pen to paper and wrote her name in loops of black ink. One stroke at a time. Controlled. Precise.

She initialed each margin, dated the last page, then sat back, staring at her name as though it belonged to someone else—someone who might have moved through life with more choices, more freedom.

It wasn’t for Danilo.

It wasn’t even for the money.

It was for this: she was tired of clawing at the surface of her own life, praying it wouldn’t crack beneath her weight. Maybe, she told herself, if she gave away six months, she could buy back something she hadn’t felt in years.

At exactly 8:02 a.m., she dialed the number printed on the silver card. The line clicked, then a smooth, rehearsed male voice answered, “Miss Rein?”

“I’ve signed it,” she said, her voice steady.

“Very good,” he replied. “Be ready in one hour. A car will collect you.”

She hung up before he could add anything else. She didn’t own luggage, so she grabbed a duffel bag off the back of a chair and packed in two changes of clothes, a toothbrush, the sketchbook with her mother’s hand, and the silver locket she hadn’t worn since the funeral. She changed into clean jeans and a black blouse missing its top button; she fastened it with a safety pin.

Back in the kitchen, she placed the contract—now sealed in its gray folder—in an envelope and left it on the counter. Beside it, she wrote a note to Kira in careful script:

I’m not okay.

But I will be.

Don’t worry.

Love,

A.

She folded the note, placed it next to the envelope, then crossed to the window again. The morning air was sharp and gray, cold enough to burn exposed skin. She cracked the window just wide enough to hear the world stirring.

Below, a car door slammed. Two male voices murmured on the sidewalk—low tones, calm, practiced. She leaned closer to the glass.

He was there.

She recognized the clipped, measured accent before she saw him. Wolfe’s voice: cold steel wrapped in control.

“If he calls again, block it,” he said. “If he shows up—don’t let him near her.”

The words landed like stones in her stomach. She pressed her palm to the cool glass. Another voice, the driver’s, murmured something unintelligible. Tires squeaked as they shifted on wet pavement.

Finally, Wolfe’s calm voice came again, softer but sharper than before: “I don’t care that he’s her father.”

She closed her eyes. The betrayal burned hotter than the morning wind.

Then a whisper, almost an afterthought: “She’s mine to protect now.”

The engine rumbled to life and rolled away, leaving only the echo of his promise behind.

Alyssa stepped back from the window, her pulse hammering in her ears. His words hadn’t been meant for her—but somehow that made them more powerful.

At exactly nine o’clock, a sleek black car idled outside the building. The driver got out, buttoned his coat, and held out the door without a word.

Alyssa climbed in, duffel at her feet, the envelope sealed hard in her hand. She slid into the seat, heart thundering as the city blurred by—no longer solid buildings, but streaks of gray and gold, like ink bleeding through rain.

There was no turning back now.

She was on her way to meet the man who had bought her freedom. Or perhaps her soul.