Marco Bellandi stared at the clause beneath my finger as though he had hoped I would never reach it.
My father leaned forward, trying to read upside down.
“What is it?” Robert asked.
I didn’t answer him.
I kept my eyes on Marco.
“Who wrote this?”
“I approved every clause.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“The contract was prepared under my instructions.”
I tapped the paragraph again.
It said that after the marriage was executed and my father’s debt formally released, I could terminate the arrangement if Marco violated any of several conditions: physical coercion, financial interference, restrictions on my movement, unauthorized use of my identity, or any attempt to threaten Robert in order to force my compliance.
Most important, termination would not revive the debt.
I looked at my father.
“Did you know this was here?”
Robert shook his head.
“I read the important parts.”
I almost laughed.
Of course he had.
The payment amount.
The deadline.
The signature page.
Numbers had always made more sense to my father than consequences.
I turned back to Marco.
“You built an escape door into your own contract.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I need a wife on paper.
I don’t need a prisoner.”
The answer landed harder than I expected.
I had spent the entire drive imagining a criminal who believed money gave him ownership of people.
Marco was still dangerous.
I had seen the armed men.
I knew what kind of world surrounded him.
But the document in front of me didn’t match the threat I had constructed in my head.
That did not make him trustworthy.
It made him interesting.
“Why me?” I asked.
“It wasn’t originally you.”
My father’s face changed.
Marco saw it.
“So he didn’t tell you that part either.”
“Tell me what?”
Robert stood.
“Lena, this is complicated.”
“Sit down.”
He stared at me.
I had never spoken to my father that way.
Then, slowly, he sat.
Marco folded his hands on the table.
“Your father came to us after the investment collapsed.
He knew he couldn’t repay the debt.
He asked for more time.
He was given it.
He missed that deadline too.”
Robert looked at the floor.
