Three days since the balcony. Seventy-two hours of replaying seven minutes like they mattered.
They didn't. They couldn't. Isla Conti doesn't get moments that matter. She gets eighteen-hour shifts and unpaid bills and a grandmother who pretends not to notice the restaurant is dying.
She gets flour on her apron and guilt in her bones and a letter she's read a thousand times hidden in her bedroom drawer.
I'm sorry. I didn't know what they would do. I didn't know it would cost you everything. If I could take it back—
The letter stops there. Incomplete. Like everything her father left behind.
The bell above the door chimes.
Isla looks up, automatic smile already in place. "Welcome to Conti's, grab a seat any—"
She stops.
Liam. From the balcony. Standing in her doorway like he belongs here, like the universe has a sick sense of humor, like three days of telling herself she imagined that connection meant nothing at all.
He's wearing a suit that costs more than this restaurant made last month. He's holding the door like he's afraid she'll disappear. He's looking at her like—
"You're here," she says.
"You're real." He says it like he wasn't sure. Like she might have been a hallucination brought on by too many martinis and too much city light.
"I'm real." She wipes her hands on her apron, suddenly aware of the flour, the grease, the thousand ways this place screams struggling while he screams success. "What are you—"
"Lunch." He glances around the empty dining room. Red-checkered tables. Fading photographs. One customer in the corner, an old man nursing coffee he's been drinking for two hours. "I heard the sauce is good."
"Who told you that?"
"You did. On the balcony."
She remembers. Seven minutes of honesty with a stranger, never expecting to see him again. She told him about Nonna's sauce, about her mother's recipes, about a restaurant that used to mean something.
She didn't tell him about the debt. The foreclosure notices. The way she lies awake at night calculating how many more months they can survive.
"Right." She pulls out a menu. "Well. The sauce is good. Sit anywhere."
He sits at the table by the window. The one with the crack in the corner. The one she's been meaning to fix for six months.
She brings him bread. Water. The menu he doesn't need because he's not looking at it. He's looking at her.
"You work alone?"
"Nonna comes in at four. Makes the sauce. Goes home around noon." She gestures vaguely. "I handle the rest."
"That's a lot for one person."
"That's life for one person."
He almost smiles. "You always this honest?"
"You always show up at restaurants belonging to women you met on balconies?"
"First time, actually."
She laughs. It feels strange in her chest—warm, unexpected, like the other night. Like forgetting, for one second, who she is and what she's carrying.
Then the door slams open.
Isla turns. Freezes.
Kaelen Mercer walks in like he owns the place. Like he owns her. Like eight years haven't passed since she last sat in his office, taking messages, eating candy he gave her, being helpful while money moved through her father's accounts like water through cupped hands.
He doesn't look at her. Not yet. He looks at Liam.
"Blackwood." His smile is sharp. "Interesting to find you here."
"Kaelen." Liam's voice is flat. Controlled. "Following me now?"
"Following the property." Kaelen pulls a folded document from his jacket. Slaps it on the table nearest him. "This place. Conti's. Your father had interesting friends, didn't he, sweetheart?"
He finally looks at her.
Nothing. No recognition. She's furniture. She was always furniture.
"I don't—" Isla's voice cracks. She tries again. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No?" Kaelen taps the document. "Your father and I had business. Unfinished business. This property was collateral. And now"—he spreads his hands—"I'm collecting."
The room tilts. Isla grabs the nearest table.
"That's not possible. My father never—"
"Your father borrowed money. Lots of it. From people who expected it back." Kaelen's eyes are cold. Empty. "He didn't pay. So now you pay."
"How much?"
The question comes from Liam. He hasn't moved from his table. His face is unreadable.
Kaelen names a number. Isla's knees buckle.
It's more than the restaurant is worth. More than she could make in ten years. More than—
Liam stands. Pulls out a checkbook. Writes.
He tears the check free and holds it out to Kaelen.
"Triple what the property's worth. Plus interest. Plus whatever your father's people charged." His voice is calm. Deadly calm. "Take it. Walk out. Don't come back."
Kaelen stares at the check. Then at Liam. Then at Isla—really looks at her for the first time.
Something flickers in his eyes. Confusion. Recognition trying to surface.
She holds her breath.
Then it's gone. He takes the check. Folds it. Pockets it.
"Pleasure doing business." He tips an imaginary hat at Isla. "Tell your father I said hello."
He leaves.
The door swings shut. The bell chimes. The old man in the corner sips his coffee like nothing happened.
Isla can't breathe.
"You didn't have to—" She stops. Starts again. "That's insane. That's—I can't—"
"Yes, you can."
She looks at Liam. Really looks. Sees the walls behind his eyes, the control, the calculation. Sees the man who built an empire from nothing.
"There's a condition."
Her stomach drops. "Of course there is."
He steps closer. Close enough that she smells his cologne, sees the tension in his jaw, the thing beneath the control that might be loneliness or might be something worse.
"Marry me. One year. Play the role of my wife. Public appearances. Dinners. Events." His voice doesn't waver. "In exchange, the debt is gone. The restaurant is yours. And at the end of the year, we go our separate ways."
She should laugh. Should throw him out. Should tell him this is insane, she barely knows him, this isn't how life works.
But Kaelen's face is still burned into her memory. The way he almost recognized her. The way he will recognize her, eventually, because people like him don't forget forever.
And if he remembers—if he remembers who she was, what she did, the calls she answered—
"One year." Her voice is a whisper. "No intimacy. No expectations. Just business."
"Just business."
She holds out her hand.
He takes it.
---
That night, Isla stands in Liam's penthouse for the first time. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Manhattan glittering below. A room down the hall from his—separate, safe—where she'll sleep for the next year.
She unpacks one bag. Places her father's unsent letter in the nightstand drawer.
Then her phone buzzes.
Unknown number.
She answers anyway.
Silence. Then breathing. Then a voice she prayed she'd never hear again.
"Little one."
The line goes dead.
Isla drops the phone. Her hands won't stop shaking.
Across the city, Kaelen Mercer leans back in his chair, staring at a photograph on his desk. Seventeen years old. Braces. Ponytail. Eyes too trusting.
Isla Conti.
He smiles.
"Took me eight years," he murmurs. "But I never forget a face, sweetheart. I just needed the right name."
He picks up his phone. Makes a call.
"I need everything. Phone logs from eight years ago. Every call she answered. Every message she took. And find out exactly how close she is to Liam Blackwood now."
He hangs up. Sips his whiskey.
Outside, the city glitters. Inside, Isla Conti sits on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar penthouse, clutching her father's letter, feeling the walls close in.
She doesn't sleep that night.
Neither does Liam—but for different reasons. He stands at his own window, three doors down, replaying her face when Kaelen walked in.
You look familiar.
She didn't answer. But her face did.
What is she hiding?
What did he just marry?