Chapter 1 - Box Seventeen
The air inside Mercer Tower’s private underground archive smelled of stale cedar, brass polish, and secrets that carried expiration dates written in blood. My heels clicked against the black marble floor, each strike echoing like a countdown. Roman Vale thought he had delivered a parting blow upstairs. He thought dangling my late father’s legacy in front of me would make me scurry into the corner like a docile heiress awaiting instructions. He was wrong.
I reached shelf seventeen. The key Roman had neglected to mention was already hanging from my bracelet—a slim bronze spindle my father slipped into my palm three nights before his heart finally stopped in an ICU unit. The metal lock yielded with a heavy, satisfying click. Inside rested a single velvet-lined steel case. When I lifted the lid, I didn't find stock certificates, bearer bonds, or family jewels.
I found a leather journal bound with copper wire and a manila folder marked with Roman Vale’s real name: Roman Nikolai Kova.
My fingers went ice-cold. Beneath the folder lay a series of black-and-white surveillance photographs dated six years ago in Lisbon. Pictures of me walking out of my graduate dormitory. Pictures of me sitting in a café off the Praça do Comércio. Pictures of my first flat’s front door. Every date stamp corresponded with days I had felt an inexplicable prickle on the nape of my neck, days I thought my homesick mind was playing tricks on me. Roman hadn’t simply watched me grow up from behind my father’s shoulder in Chicago. He had stationed men across an ocean. He had curated my entire exile.
Tucked between the photos was a handwritten contract signed by Conrad Mercer and Roman himself. The first clause read cleanly: “In the event of Conrad Mercer’s demise, full legal custody of Mercer Holdings and the guardianship of Abigail Mercer shall remain under Roman Vale until her twenty-seventh birthday—or until marriage between the parties consolidates the estate against rival hostile acquisition.”
A marriage clause.
My breath caught in my throat. My father hadn't just protected me; he had bartered me. And Roman Vale had sat across from me twenty minutes ago pretending he was just a noble guardian wrestling with a sudden burst of inappropriate desire.
A soft, steady footstep scraped behind me.
“You always were too quick for your own good, Abigail.”
I didn't turn around right away. I let the sting of the betrayal harden into steel inside my ribs. When I finally faced him, Roman was standing framed in the low fluorescent lighting of the vault, his overcoat unbuttoned, his silver-dusted dark hair slightly damp from the blizzard raging above street level.
“You tracked me in Portugal,” I whispered, lifting the photographs between two fingers. “You had someone follow me to the grocery store, Roman. You sat in that boardroom while I was five thousand miles away, pretending you barely remembered my name, and you had eyes on my front door every single week.”
Roman’s expression remained stone, but a muscle jumped along the hard cut of his jaw. “Lisbon was not safe for Conrad Mercer’s only heir. The syndicate your father spent twenty years bankrupting didn't vanish just because you bought a one-way ticket to Europe.”
“And this?” I shoved the contract into the center of his chest. The paper crumpled under my palm against the heavy wool of his coat. “Did you keep tabs on me to keep me alive, or to make sure your future collateral didn't marry a Portuguese barista before your payday?”
Roman reached out. His fingers closed over my wrist—warm, broad, and unyielding. The shock of his skin sent an electrical jolt straight down my spine, shattering my carefully built composure. He didn't pull me closer, but he didn't let go either. His gray eyes burned into mine, completely stripped of their cold executive detachment.
“If I wanted Mercer Holdings, Abigail, I would have foreclosed on your father's debt three years before he died,” Roman said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, lethal cadence. “I signed that contract because it was the only way to keep the board from liquidating your trust fund and auctioning your life to Julian Vance.”
May you like
The name hit the room like a dead weight. Julian Vance—my father’s most ruthless rival, and the man who had tried to buy Mercer logistics right after the funeral.
“You think this is a business merger to me?” Roman tightened his grip just enough to pull me an inch forward, until I could smell the cedarwood, cold rain, and dark bourbon clinging to his breath. “Open your eyes. You’ve been looking at me like an enemy because it hurts less than admitting you never stopped wanting what you couldn't have.”
