Aria's POV;

They announced my engagement at my father's funeral.

One moment I was standing beside his coffin in the rain, wearing black and pretending my knees weren't shaking. The next, my father's lawyer cleared his throat at the lectern and read a sentence that turned every head in the cathedral toward me.

"To my daughter, Aria," Whitmore read, his voice carrying to the last row, "I leave Bennett Enterprises, my estate, and all my holdings, on the condition that within thirty days, she marries Alexander Blackwood."

The rain on the stained glass was suddenly the only sound in the world.

Then the whispering started.

"Blackwood? The Blackwoods?"

"Isn't that the family that tried to destroy Bennett Enterprises?"

"Did he say marry?"

Phones rose in the pews like a field of black flowers. Someone near the front laughed, a short sharp sound, and I locked my knees because if I folded now, I'd be footage by tonight. Heartbroken Heiress Collapses at Her Father's Funeral. I could see the headline already.

"Did Richard hate her?" a voice behind me murmured, not even bothering to whisper. "That's not an inheritance. That's a sentence."

Chloe's hand clamped around my wrist. "Aria. Breathe. Whatever you're about to do, do it with oxygen."

I couldn't. My mother hadn't moved. Eleanor Bennett stood in her black veil with her hands folded, and something about her stillness terrified me more than the will. She wasn't shocked.

She was waiting.

"Mom." I turned my head an inch. "Did you know about this?"

Her eyes stayed on the coffin. "Not here, darling."

Not here. Not no. My mother had answered a question I hadn't asked, and somehow that was worse than the will itself.

Whitmore shuffled another page, and I watched three hundred people lean in.

"Mr. Alexander Blackwood," he read, "has been notified of this condition through counsel and has indicated his willingness to comply."

The gasp that went up then was almost musical. He'd already said yes. My father had sold me from beyond the grave, and the buyer had signed before the body was cold.

"Mr. Whitmore." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "What happens if I refuse?"

The lawyer's eyes flicked toward my mother, then back to me. "Then per your father's instructions, everything is liquidated to satisfy the creditors. Bennett Enterprises ceases to exist by the end of the week. I'm sorry, Miss Bennett. Those were his terms."

Four hundred employees. My father's life's work. My name, which had opened every door in this cathedral, auctioned off by Friday.

"Your father loved you," Whitmore said quietly.

"My father is blackmailing me from beyond the grave," I said, and walked out.

The whispers chased me down the aisle. Let them talk. Let every one of those silk-suited vultures film it. I pushed through the cathedral doors into the marble foyer, my heels cracking against the floor like gunshots, and I was digging for my phone when it buzzed in my hand.

Unknown number.

Don't sign anything.

I stopped walking.

The foyer was empty. Rain traced the tall windows. Somewhere behind me, three hundred of New York's richest people were gossiping about my future, and somewhere in the city, someone who wasn't at this funeral was watching me closely enough to know I'd just been offered a deal.

My phone buzzed again.

We'll be watching, Mrs. Blackwood.

Mrs. Blackwood. They were already naming me after a man I hadn't seen in three years.

A man who, the last time I saw him, had promised to meet me at midnight and instead vanished so completely I'd spent three years wondering if I'd imagined all of it. The secret year. The hidden love. The way Alexander Blackwood used to look at me like I was the only warm thing in his frozen life, right up until he proved I was just another thing he could walk away from.

I'd waited on that bridge until two in the morning, in the rain, in the dress he'd loved. I'd invented a hundred excuses for him. Car accident. Family emergency. Amnesia, once, at three a.m., because grief makes idiots of everyone. The truth was simpler and worse: he'd looked at forever and chosen never, and the only thing more humiliating than being left was how long I'd hoped.

The elevator at the end of the foyer chimed.

The doors opened.

And Alexander Blackwood stepped out.

Three years had carved him into something harder. The black suit fit like it had been sewn onto him, his dark hair was shorter at the sides, and he'd traded the boy I'd loved for a man who filled the entire foyer without raising his voice. His eyes found me like he'd known exactly where I'd be standing.

Of course he had. Men like Alexander didn't arrive anywhere by accident.

"Aria," he said.

One word. Three years of silence broke against it.

Every camera in my head said run. Every memory said his name.

"You're not serious," I said.

"I've never been more serious about anything."

"You have some nerve showing up at my father's funeral."

"I wasn't invited to the funeral." His blue eyes didn't waver. "I was invited to the marriage."

Behind me, the cathedral doors swung open, and the crowd poured out in a wave of black and whispering. A woman gasped. Someone said his name like a curse. And through all of it, Alexander didn't look at any of them. He looked at me the way he used to, like the crowd didn't exist, like three years was a rounding error.

"Your father left you a problem," he said, holding out his hand. "I'm the solution. We should talk before you refuse."

"And if I've already decided to refuse?"

Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger. Something older and worse.

"Then someone is going to be very pleased," he said, "and it won't be you."

My phone burned in my palm with the second message, and Alexander Blackwood stood waiting, patient as a blade, for the answer to a question nobody had asked me yet.

Somewhere behind him, the elevator waited with its doors open, patient too, like the whole city had arranged itself into an offer I wasn't allowed to refuse.