Lethal Vows：Married to My Rival novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Buyer

Valentin Creighton buys her contract; she goes for his throat in his car; he offers a six-month engagement and her brother's head.

They didn't make me fight again that night.

The announcer's jacket looked wet under the arms when two men in black suits walked onto the sand and handed him a briefcase.

"Sold," he said, in a smaller voice. "To Mr. Creighton."

The band came off my ankle with a click.

I did not know what a man like Valentin Creighton paid for a woman who had just choked out a giant, and I did not ask.

Two guards walked me up a steel staircase, through a corridor lit green, and out to the loading dock.

It was snowing, a fine dry snow that stung my torn arm.

A black car idled with its back door open.

"Get in, Miss Harlow," said the old man holding the door.

Gray crewcut, a limp in his left leg, a black overcoat.

He looked at my dress, my bare feet, my ruined arm, and his face did not change.

"I'm Doyle. Mr. Creighton is waiting."

I got in.

Valentin sat at the far end of the long back seat with his coat over his knee.

Up close he was bigger than I'd thought.

Broad through the shoulders, dark brown eyes, the scar through his eyebrow older than the rest of his face.

A glass of water sat in the cup holder by his hand.

His fingers were wrapped around his phone, and his left hand shook a little against the screen.

I noticed it and I filed it away.

The door shut. The car pulled out.

"You're not afraid," he said.

"No."

"Most people are, in this car."

"Most people didn't just win a fight in a wedding dress."

His mouth moved. It wasn't a smile yet.

My left hand slid up into my hair.

Doyle's men had taken every pin, but not the last one, a thin steel hairpin I had pushed up under the lining of the torn bodice at the altar, out of habit.

I had it between my fingers before he finished speaking.

I came across the seat and put the point against the side of his throat, under his jaw, where the pulse jumped.

Valentin did not flinch.

"Tell the driver to stop the car," I said.

"No."

"I'll open your carotid before he can brake."

"You will," Valentin said. "And then you'll be alone in a Creighton car with six of my men behind us, with no shoes, in the snow."

I pushed the pin in a little harder.

A bead of blood ran down into his collar.

He looked at me, steady, almost interested.

"You hid that pin in your bodice before you went down," he said. "Drugged, at the altar."

I had.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"The man who bought you."

His left hand was shaking where it lay against his thigh.

He closed it into a fist, slowly.

"I watched you tonight, Miss Harlow," he said. "You put your thumb in a giant's eye and told him to say he was done, politely. I want to hire that."

"Hire."

"Six months."

I did not take the pin away.

"I need a fiancée," he said. "A real engagement, a ring, dinners, my family's table. The Creighton families vote on who leads them at the spring meeting in May. My uncle wants my chair for his son. The rule says the head of the house must be engaged or married when the vote is called."

"So you got a woman out of a death match."

"I got the only woman in Port Calder who can't be bought off by my uncle, because she hates the people he's working with."

I stared at him.

"Calvin Harlow sold you from my own warehouse," Valentin said. "Pier Nine is Creighton land. My uncle rents it to him and takes a cut. I've wanted a reason to burn that arena down for two years."

The car turned onto the harbor road. Snow whirled past the glass.

"Here's what you get," Valentin said. "Safety, a bed, clothes, a gun if you want one, and every file my people have on your brother, your fiancé and your friend. When the six months end, you walk away with your hands clean, and I put Calvin Harlow in your hands."

"And if I say no?"

"I take you back to Pier Nine and tell them the sale was a mistake."

That was a lie. It was the kind of lie that shows you where the door is.

"You wouldn't," I said.

"Try me."

I looked at his throat, at the pin, at the thin line of blood on his white collar.

I thought of Tobias's hand on Lacey's hip.

I thought of Calvin's face going soft with pity as I swallowed.

I took the pin away.

Valentin lowered his chin, his shoulders loosening.

He took out a handkerchief, pressed it to his neck, and passed me a pen from his coat.

"Terms are in the folder under your seat," he said. "Read them or don't. Just sign."

I opened the folder.

Page one said, in clean black type: Six months. One engagement. No touching without an audience, and no feelings.

I laughed, once, short and dry.

"No feelings," I said.

"None."

"I'm not going to fall in love with a man who buys women."

"Good," said Valentin Creighton, and he was not smiling at all.

I signed.

He folded the page into his coat.

"Welcome to the family, fiancée," he said. "Don't die before the wedding."

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