Damien didn't sleep at all that night either.
He sat alone in his study with a glass of whiskey he had no real intention of actually drinking, staring blankly at nothing in particular, replaying the strange events of the evening over and over again in his restless mind. A stranger sitting comfortably in his kitchen, laughing among his staff like she belonged there. A stranger wearing his ring on her finger. A stranger who, according to every single legal document that mattered, simply wasn't supposed to properly exist at all.
He had never actually planned on attending the wedding himself, not once, not from the very first moment his grandfather had proposed the arrangement to him months earlier. Marriage, to him, had never once been about love or genuine connection or any of the soft, sentimental notions people liked to pretend it was fundamentally about. It was purely and simply about keeping Crew Enterprises tied firmly to Hitler Industries through a legally binding contract that neither family could easily walk away from without significant financial consequence. He hadn't needed to see the bride's actual face in order to sign the necessary paperwork properly. Felix could handle every single formality entirely on his behalf, exactly as he always did. That had always been the whole entire point of doing things his own particular way. Distance. Careful control. No unwelcome surprises of any kind whatsoever.
And now there was a strange, unexpected woman sleeping somewhere in his enormous house who wasn't even properly the woman he had originally agreed to marry in the first place.
A quiet knock sounded at his study door. Felix let himself inside without bothering to wait for any kind of formal response, the way he always did, dropping unceremoniously into the leather chair positioned across from Damien's desk.
"You're still up," Felix observed, studying his old friend's face carefully.
"I met her," Damien said flatly. "Silveria."
Felix winced visibly at that. "I was planning to properly tell you first thing tomorrow morning, before you'd had any chance to run into her unexpectedly."
"You already knew the truth?"
"I found out partway through the actual ceremony itself," Felix admitted, running a hand tiredly through his hair. "There wasn't exactly a convenient moment available to pull you aside privately and say, hey, small complication here, wrong sister showed up at the altar today, carry on as planned."
Damien rubbed a tired hand slowly over his face. "This entire situation is an absolute mess."
"Is it, though?" Felix leaned back comfortably in his chair, studying his old friend with careful, measured attention. "The marriage itself is still perfectly legal either way you look at it. The contract with the Hitler family remains fully in effect regardless of which sister actually walked down that aisle. Nothing of any real consequence has actually broken here, except maybe your pride a little, and possibly your carefully maintained sense of control over every variable."
"My pride has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this particular situation."
"Sure it doesn't," Felix said, clearly not believing a single word of that particular claim. "What was she actually like, then? Since you clearly can't stop thinking about her long enough to sleep."
Damien didn't answer right away. He found himself thinking instead about the way she had sat so calmly and comfortably at his own staff's table, like she genuinely belonged there among people who technically worked for him, the way she had looked him directly and steadily in the eye instead of shrinking away in obvious fear the way most people instinctively did in his commanding presence. He thought about the strange, uncomfortable pull he had felt simply looking at her properly for the first time, like he was trying desperately to place a face he had somehow seen somewhere before and simply couldn't quite manage to remember exactly where or when.
"Different," he said finally, choosing the word carefully. "Not remotely what I was expecting to find."
"Different bad, or different interesting?" Felix pressed, clearly enjoying himself considerably.
"I honestly don't know yet," Damien admitted, frustration creeping steadily into his tired voice.
Felix smirked broadly, clearly delighted by this rare admission. "That's probably the single most honest thing you've said to me in months, Damien, if we're being entirely truthful with each other."
"Don't read too much into that particular statement."
"I'm not reading anything into it whatsoever," Felix said, holding both hands up in mock surrender. "I'm simply pointing out, as your oldest friend, that for a man who insists none of this actually matters to him in the slightest, you're spending an awful lot of valuable energy thinking carefully about a woman you only properly met a few short hours ago."
Damien shot him a look sharp enough to end the conversation entirely, and Felix, wisely recognizing the clear warning in his old friend's expression, let the subject drop for the time being, though his knowing smile lingered a moment longer before he finally composed his own expression properly.
"What do you actually want to do about the situation?" Felix asked instead, shifting to more practical matters. "Legally speaking, I mean. The marriage stands regardless, but you could still make her life fairly difficult if you chose to. Annulment, perhaps, though that would create its own considerable mess with the Hitler family and likely destroy the entire business alliance you both need."
"I'm not interested in making anyone's life difficult," Damien said, something tired entering his voice now. "I simply want to understand exactly what I'm dealing with before I decide how best to move forward from here."
"That sounds remarkably reasonable of you."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm always surprised when you choose reasonable over ruthless," Felix said, though genuine warmth colored the teasing observation. "It happens rarely enough that I like to properly note it when it does. Your grandfather will want an update, by the way. He'll have heard about the wedding by now."
"I'll handle Pascal myself," Damien said, something wary entering his expression at the mention of his grandfather. "He's going to have opinions about all of this, and I'd rather deliver the news properly than let him hear some garbled version from the papers first."
"Good luck with that conversation," Felix said, grinning. "I'll leave you to it."
• • •
The following morning, Damien requested that Silveria join him for a proper breakfast, needing to understand exactly what he was now dealing with before deciding definitively how to move forward from this entire unexpected situation.
She arrived wearing the same simple traveling clothes she'd had on the night before, her hair pulled back neatly and practically, looking exhausted but nonetheless carefully composed despite everything she had clearly been through in the past twenty-four hours. She sat down across from him at the long dining table without waiting to be properly told where she belonged, a small detail he noted with something closer to genuine interest than he had properly expected to feel.
"I looked into your family overnight," he said, skipping past any pretense of polite small talk entirely. "The Hitlers have been drowning steadily in significant financial trouble for well over a year now. This particular alliance with Crew Enterprises was supposed to be their lifeline, their way back to solvency."
"I know," Silveria said quietly, folding her hands carefully in her lap. "I didn't know all the specific details involved, but I always understood it mattered to them more than almost anything else in the entire world."
"And your sister ran away regardless, knowing exactly what that decision would cost this family."
"Lilibeth does precisely whatever she wants," Silveria said, something old and tired entering her voice. "She always has, for as long as I can properly remember."
"And you don't?" he asked, watching her closely for any reaction.
The question seemed to land considerably harder than he had intended it to. Silveria's jaw tightened visibly, something sharp and unexpectedly proud rising beneath her otherwise carefully quiet exterior. "I do whatever keeps the people around me properly safe," she said. "There's a meaningful, significant difference between the two approaches, whatever you might currently assume about me."
Damien studied her carefully over the rim of his coffee cup, something shifting slightly in his assessment of her. There was clearly something sharper underneath her outwardly calm, quiet surface, something that hadn't fully shown itself the previous night in the kitchen but was undeniably present now, given the right kind of provoking question to properly draw it out into the open.
"Here is precisely what's going to happen going forward," he said, setting his cup down with deliberate care. "The marriage remains firmly in place. Breaking it now would damage both of our respective families significantly, and frankly, it would make me appear considerably weak in front of business partners I simply cannot afford to look weak in front of, not at this particular stage of the company's expansion. You will remain Mrs. Crew until I personally decide otherwise."
"And what exactly does that arrangement mean for me?" she asked, watching him steadily.
"It means you will live here, in this house, as my wife in name. You will play the part convincingly whenever it's publicly required of you to do so. In exchange, you will have everything you could possibly need, money, security, considerable freedom to do largely as you please within these walls. What it does not mean," he added, his voice cooling noticeably, deliberately, "is anything real between the two of us. This is strictly a business arrangement, Silveria. Don't mistake it for anything more sentimental than that, whatever softness you might have witnessed from me last night."
Silveria's eyes flashed with something proud and entirely unbothered, despite everything she had clearly endured over the past twenty-four exhausting hours. "I wasn't operating under any particular illusions to begin with, Mr. Crew," she said evenly.
"Damien is fine."
"Damien, then," she said, testing his given name carefully on her tongue, like she was quietly deciding for herself whether she actually believed any part of what he'd just told her so plainly. "I have conditions of my own, if we're going to properly call this a business arrangement between equals."
That genuinely caught his attention, something sharpening behind his careful eyes. Nobody negotiated terms with him, not directly, not like this. "Go on, then," he said.
"I won't be humiliated in public," she said, her voice steady despite the obvious nerves underneath it. "Whatever this marriage actually is behind closed doors, in front of other people, you will treat me with basic, consistent respect. And you won't interfere in my personal life beyond whatever is strictly necessary to properly maintain appearances for the sake of the company."
He studied her for a long moment, something entirely unreadable passing quietly behind his careful eyes. "Agreed," he said finally. "On one condition of my own, in return."
"Which is?"
"Don't fall in love with me."
The words landed on the table between them like a heavy stone dropped suddenly into perfectly still water. Silveria blinked, genuinely caught off guard by the sheer bluntness of the statement, before something like a small, disbelieving laugh escaped her despite herself.
"I think that's a promise I can keep quite easily," she said, meeting his gaze steadily.
"Good," Damien said, already rising from the table with an air of finality. "Because I certainly don't intend on falling in love with you either."
He left the room without looking back even once, and Silveria sat alone at the table, staring down at her rapidly cooling coffee, wondering why his careless, deliberate words had somehow settled so strangely and heavily in her chest, like a warning aimed carefully at something that hadn't properly happened yet, but that some small, quiet part of her already suspected might, somewhere down the long road ahead of them both, eventually come true regardless.