Luna stopped in the middle of the living room as if someone had poured cold cement over the floor. Her legs betrayed her. Breaths flattened to pinpricks. The envelope on the coffee table looked harmless—pale, neatly sealed—but to her it was a grenade without a pin. Ethan's voice cut through the silence: low, steady, insisting it was lies. Sienna laughed right after him, that bright, brittle laugh that always grazed and bruised. "If it means nothing," she said, infuriatingly calm, "then let her open it."
Her hands trembled as she reached. For a second her fingers hung over the paper like someone pausing before touching an open wound. Ethan begged her to stop and warned that Sienna was manipulating her and that whatever lay inside was a fraud. Luna swallowed; her ribs felt raw under her throat. "If there's nothing to hide," she said, quieter than she planned, "then it won't matter if I see." The sentence cracked on its way out. Her fingers closed.
The envelope weighed more than she expected. Thick, almost luxurious paper—the kind that announces itself even before it's read. Official. Final. She slid a thumbnail under the flap as if she could slow the cut. Pages rustled: dense lines, legal phrasing that made her stomach lurch. The heading hit first, like a slap. Marriage Arrangement Agreement. Her vision narrowed. The names followed in indifferent type: Ethan Cole. Robert Harris. Regarding Luna Harris.
The terms were pitilessly clear. Fifty million baht, in return for arranging her marriage. Her uncle's signature stared up from the bottom of the page, bold and unmistakable. Sienna's voice flowed over her like oil— "Keep reading," she coaxed. Luna turned the page with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Each clause dug deeper. Her uncle's responsibilities were itemized with clinical precision: present the marriage as mutually advantageous, apply financial pressure, and keep Luna in the dark about Ethan's true wealth. Payments scheduled in cold installments, every date mapped out like a ledger. The paper crinkled as she clenched it. Ethan's voice frayed; he told her to stop. Still, Luna whispered she had to finish.
The final page left no ambiguity. Control of her family's company. Access to bank accounts and assets. Leverage against Marcus Tan. A date stamped at the top—four months ago. Before Ethan. Before the community center. Before she'd allowed herself to believe again.
She looked up. Ethan's face had drained of color, gone almost gray. Luna's voice came out small and brittle. "Tell me it's fake." He stayed silent. When she screamed, "Tell me the truth!" he admitted, softly, that he couldn't deny it. The room swam. The contract slid from her fingers and skittered across the rug. She stumbled back as if struck.
"You bought me?" she said, each word measured and sharp. "You paid my uncle to sell me like property?" Ethan scrambled for an answer, his hands full of apologies and terrible timing. She cut him off. "Is fifty million baht all I'm worth?" He said she was worth everything, that a piece of paper didn't define her. But the question hung there—if not that, then what?
Sienna flopped onto the sofa with the practiced air of someone watching the best scene in a play. She mocked the shape of Luna's face—"priceless," she purred—and told Ethan to shut up when he snapped at her. Then, with a smile that never reached her eyes, Sienna dropped another knife: Ethan had done the same to her once—courted her, made her fall, and later she'd discovered she'd been nothing but an acquisition. It landed like salt.
A sour nausea climbed Luna's throat. Soft memories snapped into jagged pieces. She asked about the community center, the proposal, and the timing. Ethan admitted he'd orchestrated much of it. When she accused their shared moments of being staged, he insisted what he felt had been real; the contract, he said, didn't change what had happened between them. Luna laughed then—no humor in it, only the brittle sound of someone watching a puppeteer cut the strings.
She tried to leave. Ethan stepped in front of her, begging her to listen. Move, she told him; he refused, saying she hadn't heard the whole story. He owned up to manipulation—paying her uncle, engineering circumstances—but claimed it wasn't for the company. According to him, the contract was what her uncle needed to believe, not the truth about him.
When she pressed for why, his answer shifted toward Marcus Tan. He'd seen another woman's life ruined and vowed he wouldn't let it happen again. He spoke of researching targets, of finding her father's business, and of sketching plans with the careful patience of someone used to moving chess pieces. Then he said what changed him—seeing Luna at the community center. Her quiet kindness, the way she tucked away her own sadness to help others, the little things no one noticed. He said he'd chosen to protect her because predators were circling, and the contract had been a blunt tool to stop her uncle.
Luna shook her head until it ached. He produced receipts—bank transfers, schedules, and even a record showing the final installment canceled. He insisted he hadn't followed through because he'd fallen in love. Tears pricked her eyes, but trust was not something that mended at a glance.
Sienna gleefully punctured any fragile repair. "You were another acquisition," she declared, as if that sealed the story. Ethan, wounded and reckless, unspooled painful truths about his divorce—embezzlement, betrayal—until Luna realized, with sick clarity, that she'd stepped between two people whose pasts were messier and darker than she'd known.
Overwhelmed, she said she needed air. She moved toward the elevator; Ethan called after her to stay safe. Inside the mirrored box she stared at his familiar, polished face and told him plainly: love built on lies was not love. The doors began to close. Sienna's smile followed her— "Run," she whispered, sweet and poisonous.
The elevator descended. In the lobby she nearly walked into someone solid and familiar. Marcus Tan steadied her; his concern looked real. "You okay?" he asked. She lied—of course. Marcus didn't buy it. He was blunt and quiet: Ethan destroys everyone he touches.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. The message seemed to hang in the air: the fire wasn't an accident. Meet me at Lumphini Park. Luna stared at the building's reflective glass, at Marcus, then at the pale rectangle of her screen. The text read like an order and a threat at once.
She ran into the night—hard, until her lungs burned and the city lights smeared into streaks. Hands still carrying the faint smell of paper and coffee, she let Ethan's calls tumble to voicemail until one finally got through. His voice, broken and pleading: he loved her. She watched her tear-streaked face reflected in the black glass of the phone, hollow and a little unfamiliar.
Three choices fanned out like the jagged edges of that contract: go back to Ethan, meet the stranger at Lumphini Park, or disappear entirely. Her thumb hovered. Then she typed one message and hit send—blind to how that single decision would drag her into something far more dangerous than the lie she'd uncovered and set in motion a confrontation that would change everything.
Cliffhanger: Luna realizes that the message she trusted has pulled her into a dangerous game, and as she agrees to a secret meeting, she understands too late that her life—and her marriage—may already be at risk.