They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 03

They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 03

The address was the top floor of the Varga Building — the black glass tower that sits over Havenport harbor like a knife laid flat.

Owned by the one man my father never said out loud at dinner.

Nikolai Varga.

The man who took over a dying dock crew at twenty-five and owned every meter of shoreline nine years later. The man they called the Wolf of the Harbor. Thirty-four. Never photographed smiling. Never photographed with a woman. Two families had tried to kill him. Neither family exists.

He was standing at the window when the elevator opened, the whole black harbor spread beneath him like something he’d paid for.

Maybe he had.

“You came,” he said, without turning.

“You know about my baby.” My voice was steadier than I was. “Four people on this planet know. Three of them are doctors. So before anything else — how?”

He turned around.

I’d seen photographs. Photographs are liars. They don’t catch the stillness of him. And they don’t catch the way his eyes moved over my face — over the mark on my temple — not with pity.

With something that looked, insanely, like rage on my behalf.

“I know everything about everyone I intend to do business with,” he said. “Sit, Miss Moretti.”

“I’ll stand.”

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Almost approval.

“Then I’ll be quick. At midnight tonight you turn twenty-eight.” He lifted a single document off the desk. “Happy birthday. Here’s my offer. Marry me. Before midnight. There’s a judge two floors down who owes me his life, literally.”

I laughed. It came out in pieces. “I was branded a rat six hours ago. Is destroying me a sport for you people?”

“I don’t joke.” He said it so flatly I believed him instantly. “One year. On paper. You’ll want for nothing. Your child is born a Varga — which means untouchable, in this city, by anyone, forever. In exchange I get something I need. That’s the deal.”

“Why me?” I hated how small it sounded. “You could marry anyone. Why a woman whose own father just declared her a liability—”

“Because you are the only woman on earth,” he said quietly, “that this marriage saves.”

The clock on the wall said 11:26.

“What happened to you tonight wasn’t betrayal, Elena.” My name in his mouth went down my spine like a struck match. “It wasn’t your sister’s love affair. It wasn’t Matteo’s weakness. It was a transaction. Planned for months. Timed to the hour.”

He stepped closer. Close enough that I could see he hadn’t slept either.

“Someone paid to have you branded. Paid to make certain that no family in this city would bind blood to you before midnight tonight. Matteo was the instrument. Your sister was the bonus.”

My heart slammed. “Who?”

“Marry me and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me and I’ll consider marrying you!”

“No.” His eyes didn’t move. “Because when you hear the name, you’re going to come apart. And I need you to come apart after you sign. We have thirty-one minutes.”

“You’re insane—”

“Elena.” He held out the pen, and his voice dropped low, almost gentle — which was somehow more frightening than anything else that had happened that night. “Everything they took tonight. The ring. The name. Your brother. Your mother. Your family’s protection. None of it was ever about Matteo wanting your sister.”

“It was about making sure that at 12:00 a.m., you were worth nothing.”

“There is a number attached to your humiliation. It has nine zeroes. And the man who gave the order—”

He paused.

“—has known you since the day you were born.”

The pen hung in the air between us. The clock ticked to 11:31.

“Who,” I whispered. “Who did this to me?”

“Sign,” said Nikolai Varga, “and I’ll say the name.”