Chloe's Pov

Time does this cruel thing after someone dies where it keeps moving even though your entire world has stopped. The nurses at the hospital were very professional about telling me Danny was gone, like they'd practiced delivering that particular brand of devastating news until they got really good at it.

I sat in that plastic chair for hours, still wearing the ring Danny had put on my finger three hours earlier, trying to make sense of how someone could be planning a future one minute and be gone the next. The ring felt heavy, like it weighed more than my entire body.

"Miss Martinez?" A police officer sat down next to me, looking tired and slightly annoyed. "I need to ask you a few questions about the incident."

Incident. Like Danny getting killed was something that just happened, like a minor scheduling conflict.

"I got the license plate," I said before he could ask. "KLM-4782. Black sedan, looked expensive."

The officer wrote it down without much enthusiasm. "Did you see the driver?"

"Not clearly. It wasn't really paying attention at the time, and it happened so fast." I closed my eyes, trying to remember anything useful. "He didn't stop. He just... left."

********

Three weeks later, I learned exactly how much justice twenty-two years and no money could buy me. Which was approximately nothing.

The license plate belonged to Alec Baldwin, CEO of Baldwin Industries, net worth somewhere in the billions. The kind of man who probably spent more on lunch than I made in a month. The officer who called me back sounded like he was reading from a script when he explained that Mr. Baldwin had an alibi, excellent lawyers, and absolutely no reason to be held responsible for what was obviously a tragic accident.

"But he fled the scene," I said into my phone, standing in our kitchen while Mom pretended not to listen from the living room.

"Mr. Baldwin's legal team has provided evidence that he was attending a business dinner at the time of the incident. The car was reported stolen earlier that evening."

Stolen. Right. How convenient.

I hung up and threw the phone across the room, watching it bounce off the wall and land in three pieces. Mom looked at me with that expression she got when she wanted to say something comforting but couldn't find the right words.

"He killed Danny and he's going to get away with it," I said.

"Honey, maybe it really was stolen..."

"No." I picked up the pieces of my phone, because we couldn't afford to replace it. "Rich people don't get their cars stolen and then magically get them back without filing police reports. Rich people don't happen to have alibis ready the same day their cars kill innocent people."

Mom sighed. "What are you going to do?"

That was the million-dollar question, wasn't it? What does someone like me do when someone like Alec Baldwin destroys everything good in their life and then walks away without consequences?

****

For the first month, I tried the normal route. I called lawyers, but the good ones wanted retainer fees that cost more than our annual rent, and the cheap ones took one look at Baldwin Industries' legal team and basically ran away. I tried calling reporters, but apparently "poor girl accuses rich man of hit-and-run" wasn't exactly breaking news material.

I went back to work at the diner because Mom's medical bills weren't going to pay themselves, and I spent my shifts serving coffee to people who complained about things like their eggs being slightly overcooked while I was planning how to destroy a billionaire with nothing but rage and determination.

"You're scaring the customers," my manager Sal told me one afternoon after I'd apparently been glaring at a particularly demanding customer who'd sent back his toast twice.

"Sorry." I wasn't sorry. I was furious, and it was starting to leak out in ways that weren't exactly customer-service friendly.

That night, I did something that probably should have terrified me more than it did. I went to Mickey's Bar, the kind of place where people didn't ask too many questions and everyone minded their own business. I'd heard rumors about the kind of people who hung out there, the kind who could solve problems that regular people couldn't handle.

The bartender looked at me like I was lost, which I probably was. "You sure you're in the right place, sweetheart?"

"I need to talk to someone about Cargo Brag."

The entire bar went quiet. Like, movie-quiet, where everyone stops talking at exactly the same time and you can hear the ice clinking in people's glasses.

"You got a death wish or something?" the bartender asked.

"Something like that." And that was it....

*****

Two days later, I was sitting in the back booth of a surprisingly nice restaurant, wearing the only dress I owned that wasn't covered in coffee stains, waiting to meet one of the most dangerous men in the city. My hands were shaking, and I kept telling myself it was from the caffeine and not from the very real possibility that I was about to make a deal with the devil.

Cargo Brag wasn't what I expected. He looked like someone's successful uncle, the kind who'd take you car shopping and actually know what he was talking about. Expensive suit, nice watch, smile that probably charmed grandmothers and prosecutors in equal measure.

"Miss Martinez," he said, sliding into the booth across from me. "I understand you have a problem with Alec Baldwin."

"He killed my fiancé and bought his way out of consequences."

Cargo nodded like this was the most normal conversation in the world. "And you want revenge."

"I want justice."

"Same thing, different marketing." He leaned back, studying me with eyes that were way too intelligent for comfort. "Baldwin's a tough target. He's protected, connected, and smart. Taking him down isn't a weekend project."

"I know."

"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, you look like a girl who's in over her head and doesn't have a clue what she's asking for."

He was right, and we both knew it. But Danny was dead, and Baldwin was probably at some charity gala right now, getting applauded for his generous donations while my best friend was buried in a cemetery we could barely afford.

"What would it cost?" I asked.

Cargo smiled, and I finally understood why people were afraid of him. "Marriage."

"Excuse me?"

"You marry me, and I help you destroy Alec Baldwin. Think of it as a business arrangement with benefits."

I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was serious or just testing me. "You want me to marry you to get revenge on someone I don't even know?"

"I want a wife who's intelligent, beautiful, and has a very good reason to hate Baldwin as much as I do. You want Baldwin to pay for what he did. It's a partnership."

"Why do you hate him?"

"That's my business. Do we have a deal?"

I thought about Danny, about the way he'd looked at me when he proposed, about the future we'd never have. I thought about Mom's medical bills and our overdue rent and the fact that Baldwin was probably going to sleep peacefully tonight while Danny was gone forever.

"Yes," I said. "We have a deal."

Cargo reached across the table and shook my hand, his grip firm and cold. "Welcome to the family business, Mrs. Brag."

Walking home that night, I kept twisting Danny's ring around my finger, wondering if he would understand what I'd just agreed to. The rational part of my brain was screaming that I'd just made a deal with a criminal to marry him for revenge, which sounded insane even in my own head.

But the part of me that woke up every morning missing Danny didn't care about rational. That part wanted Alec Baldwin to suffer the way I was suffering, wanted him to lose something he cared about the way I'd lost everything.

I just hoped that when this was all over, there'd be enough of me left to remember why I'd started down this path in the first place.

The apartment was dark when I got home. Mom had left a plate of reheated leftovers on the counter with a note that said "Eat something. Love you." I sat at our tiny kitchen table, picking at food I couldn't taste, and tried to imagine explaining to her that I was about to marry a man I'd met twice to get revenge on a billionaire who probably didn't even remember killing my fiancé.

Yeah, that conversation was going to go well.

My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: "Car will pick you up tomorrow at 7 PM. We have work to do. -CB"

I looked at Danny's ring again, then slowly slipped it off my finger and put it in the small jewelry box Mom had given me years ago. It felt like betraying him, but I couldn't wear his ring while planning to marry someone else, even if it was for him.

"I'm going to make him pay, Danny," I whispered to the empty apartment. "I promise."

*****

The next evening, a black car that probably cost more than our apartment pulled up outside our building. I'd spent the entire day trying to figure out what you wear to your first official meeting as a mafia boss's fake fiancée, eventually settling on the same dress I'd worn to our dinner meeting because it was literally the only option that didn't scream "I work at a diner for minimum wage."

The driver didn't speak during the twenty-minute ride to a part of town I'd only seen in movies, where the restaurants had valet parking and people dressed like they shopped somewhere other than thrift stores.

Cargo was waiting in what looked like a private dining room, and he'd traded his casual uncle look for full crime boss mode. Expensive suit, intimidating posture, the works.

"You clean up nice," he said, which wasn't exactly the romantic compliment every girl dreams of hearing from her future husband.

"Thanks, I think."

Over dinner that probably cost more than I made in a week, Cargo explained his plan. It was complicated, involved a lot of patience, and required me to basically become someone else entirely.

"Baldwin's paranoid about his personal life," Cargo explained, cutting his steak with surgical precision. "But he needs staff, and staff means opportunities."

"You want me to work for him?"

"I want you to get close to him. Learn his weaknesses, his habits, his fears. Rich men like Baldwin think they're untouchable, but everyone has pressure points."

"And then what?"

"Then we press them until he breaks."

I nodded, pretending this sounded like a reasonable plan and not like something that could get me killed or imprisoned. "When do we start?"

"We start with making you Mrs. Brag," he said, and I nearly choked on my wine. "Tomorrow. Small ceremony, just enough to make it legal."

"Tomorrow? But I haven't even—my mom doesn't know..."

"Your mother will understand. Women like her always do."

I wanted to argue, but Cargo had already moved on to discussing fake references and background checks, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I'd just signed up for something way more complicated than I'd imagined.

Walking back to the car after dinner, I caught my reflection in a storefront window and barely recognized myself. The dress, the setting, the conversation I'd just had—it was like watching someone else's life.

But when I thought about Danny lying in that hospital bed, and about Alec Baldwin sleeping peacefully in whatever mansion billionaires lived in, the woman in the reflection looked exactly like someone who could pull this off.

I just hoped she was right.