I didn't tell my mother. I didn't tell Karen. I barely managed to tell myself anything that made sense, lying awake that night running the same two options over and over until they stopped sounding like a choice and started sounding like a sentence I'd already been handed.
Theft charges, a lawyer I couldn't afford, a record that would follow me into every job application for the rest of my life — or four years married to a man who'd manipulated me into stealing from him in the first place, in exchange for that same crime disappearing completely.
I went to see Karen the next afternoon, mostly because I needed to be near someone who didn't know enough to ask the right questions.
"You look like hell," she said, the second I walked in. "Worse than me, even, and I'm the one who's actually sick."
"Rough couple days," I said, sitting on the edge of her bed.
"Work?"
"Something like that." I picked at a loose thread on her blanket, not quite meeting her eyes. "Hypothetically — if someone offered you a way out of a bad situation, but it meant doing something kind of insane for a few years, would you take it?"
"Depends what insane means," Karen said, narrowing her eyes. "Insane like skydiving, or insane like joining a cult."
"Somewhere in between," I said.
"Is this about a guy," she said, sitting up straighter despite the IV line tugging at her arm. "Oh my god, it's about a guy."
"It's not—" I started, and stopped, because it kind of was, even if not in the way she meant. "It's complicated."
"Everything interesting is complicated," Karen said. "Look, Alex, I've spent two years in this bed watching the ceiling tiles instead of living my actual life. If something insane fell into your lap that might actually fix things — the money, the job, whatever's stressing you out so bad you look like you haven't slept since Tuesday — I think you'd be an idiot not to at least consider it."
"You don't even know what it is," I said.
"Doesn't matter," she said. "You've spent years doing whatever it takes to keep me alive and Mom from falling apart. I trust you to know when something's actually worth the risk."
I didn't tell her the truth that day — couldn't, not without unraveling every lie I'd told both of them about River and the café and the driver who definitely wasn't a coincidence. But something about her certainty stuck with me on the drive home, sitting heavy in my chest alongside the fear.
I called Markus that night and told him I'd made my decision.
Chapter 14 — Law
Alex showed up at the casino the following evening looking like he hadn't slept in a week, which, given the circumstances, was probably accurate. I had the paperwork ready before he even sat down — not a real marriage license yet, just the framework Markus and I had put together overnight, the terms laid out clean enough that there'd be no room for either of us to claim confusion later.
"I'll do it," he said, before I could even open with anything. "Four years. You drop the theft, you cover whatever my sister needs covered, and at the end of it, I walk away clean. That's the deal."
"That's the deal," I confirmed.
"I want it in writing," he said. "Actual writing. Not just you telling me to trust you."
"Smart," I said, sliding the papers across the table. "I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't asked."
He read through every line twice before signing anything, which I respected more than I expected to. When he finally set the pen down, he looked up at me with an expression I hadn't seen from him yet — not fear, not the soft blush from the club, something steadier and harder underneath it.
"I need you to understand something," he said. "I'm doing this for my sister. Not for you. Not because of anything that happened at the club. The second this contract ends, I'm gone, and you don't get to act like any of this meant something it didn't."
"Understood," I said, and meant it, even as some small, irritating part of me filed the warning away like a challenge instead of a boundary.
"When do I meet your parents," he asked.
"Sunday," I said. "Dinner. Wear something that isn't a maid costume."
That earned me the first real glare he'd given me since walking in, and something about it — sharp, unimpressed, entirely unafraid despite everything I currently held over him — made the whole arrangement feel considerably less like a transaction than I'd planned for it to be.
"One more thing," I said, as he stood to leave. "My parents can't know any of this is fake. Not the theft, not the contract, none of it. As far as they're concerned, we met, fell for each other, and decided to get married. You're a good liar — I watched you do it for an entire evening at that club. This shouldn't be difficult for you."
"Funny," he said, pausing at the door, "calling me a good liar right after blackmailing me into a fake marriage."
He left before I could come up with a response that didn't sound exactly as defensive as it would have been, and I sat alone in that room for a long while afterward, looking at his signature on the contract, wondering exactly when this had stopped feeling like a solution to my parents' problem and started feeling like something considerably more complicated.