VINCE POV

I lit a cigarette before my ass even hit the leather chair. "Close the damn door, Hayden." I said, blowing out the first drag like it owed me money.

Hayden Bell, my best friend since prep school and the company’s legal bulldog, shoved the glass door shut behind him and tossed the manila folder on my desk. His expression was tight, his tie hanging unusually loose.

"What the hell was that back there?" He asked, eyes drilling through me.

I leaned back, smirking. "You will have to be more specific. I do a lot of questionable shit."

"You hired her."

"Again, not specific."

"The girl, Damaris Rowe." He said. "You hired her after three questions and a couple of fluttering eyelashes."

I shrugged. "She’s got a good résumé."

"She’s a stranger."

"She’s qualified."

He squinted his eyes. "Bullshit. You don’t hire assistants Vince. You fire them, remember Marcy? The one who kept putting two sugars in your coffee instead of one? You made her cry." He pointed it out.

"She was slow."

"And now you hire a random girl with no background check, no clearance, no due diligence!"

"Jesus, calm down." I muttered, tapping ash into the tray. "You act like I gave her access to the damn vault."

"I’m serious, Vince."

I sat forward, elbows on the desk, while pinning him down with my look. "So am I."

Hayden held my stare. "Okay, why her?"

I paused, smoke curling in the air between us. "I don’t know." I admitted. "There’s just something about her."

He raised a brow. "Like what?"

"She looked familiar but not just visually, like, deeply familiar. You ever meet someone and feel like you’ve known them before? Like déjà vu on steroids?"

"You believe in that spiritual reincarnation shit now?"

"I believe in instinct." I said, jabbing the air with my cigarette smoke. "When she walked in, I felt something, and she smelled familiar."

"Her smell?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, like… like something I once had and lost. I don't know man, it just threw me off."

Hayden chuckled and dragged a hand down his face. "Goddamn it, you’re losing it."

"I’m serious, man. I don’t know what it is, but she walked into that room, and it was like I was missing something, like she's important or valuable. Plus, she’s sharp, too. It was obvious with the way she answered those questions, I could tell she wasn’t just trying to impress me, she was surviving."

He raised an eyebrow. "So now you’re hiring for vibes?"

"I’m the CEO, I can hire whoever the hell I want."

"Right and you just happened to pick the mysterious girl with the haunted eyes a few days after you slept with your fiancée."

My jaw clenched at the word. "Don’t call her that."

"Contract bride, then." He corrected.

"Better."

He walked over and poured himself a drink from the cart near the window. "Look, all I’m saying is, be careful. You’ve already signed the marriage contract with Alice, and you took her virginity. There are terms, Vince. Legal ones."

I barked a laugh. "Yeah, let’s talk about that virginity clause."

Hayden returned and sat in front of me, with a glass in hand.

"She sold it, Hayden. Literally sold it for something more valuable to her. Two hundred million dollars if I back out post-deflowering. That’s not love, that’s a damn business deal."

"She agreed to it, so it's her choice."

"Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. That clause wasn’t even for her, it was to give me an out. My father was literally shoving her down my throat like she was some prize and we both knew the clause was a safety net in case she wasn’t the innocent little saint she pretended to be."

Hayden nodded. "We wrote it to keep you from being railroaded."

"And yet…" I leaned back in the chair again, running a hand through my hair. "It turns out the little minx was a virgin, who knew?"

"I didn’t believe it until the doctor’s report came in."

"Neither did I." I muttered. "She’s got the energy of someone who’s seen too much dick to even remember names."

Hayden snorted. "You’re definitely going to hell."

"Oh, I already booked the expressway."

He threw his head back and laughed so hard, I couldn't help but join him. "So, what now?"

I stared out the window, the city pulsing below us like a living organism. "I don’t remember that night, Hayden."

He looked at me.

"I was drunk, she gave me some crappy wine from her mother’s collection. Next thing I know, I wake up with a hangover from hell and Alice in my bed, looking like she’d won the fucking lottery."

"You really don’t remember anything?"

"Yeah, nothing after the second glass."

Hayden swirled his drink. "That’s… convenient." I didn’t answer.

The truth was, that night did feel off. My memory was foggy in a way it had never been, not even in my wildest blackout during my college days, and Alice had been acting weird ever since, clingy, and smug, like she’d pulled off something bigger than what she was letting on.

"I don’t trust her." I said quietly.

"You never did."

"Yeah, but now I have reason not to."

Hayden looked at me over the rim of his glass. "And the new girl?" He asked curiously.

"I don’t trust her either, but I want to figure her out."

He snorted. "You want to figure her out or you just want to fuck her?"

I shot him a look. I could have any woman I want, in my bed with just a snap of my fingers. I’m not chasing Damaris because I want her body." Which is banging by the way but he doesn't need to know that.

"That would be a first."

"I’m chasing her because something about her doesn't make sense." Nothing about her makes any sense. "Like how she smells like a memory?" What the hell is that?

Hayden stood, tossing back the rest of his drink. "Well, just be careful. If Alice finds out you’re even sniffing around another woman, she will use it against you. She may be fake as hell, but she’s certainly not stupid."

"I’m not married to her yet." I said.

"No but if you walk away, it’s gonna cost you two hundred million."

I waved a hand dismissively. "That's pocket change."

He laughed. "You’re such an asshole."

"I know."

He was about to leave then he paused at the door. "Keep your eyes open, Vince. I’ve got a bad feeling about all this."

"Noted."

He left, and I sat there staring at the closed door, the smoke curling in lazy spirals above my head. Something about Damaris was wrong but, in a world full of liars and leeches, wrong wasn’t always a bad thing.

Sometimes, wrong was just the truth in disguise.