35-year-old British heiress, workaholic with doctorates. Fake marriage in Manhattan. Drama, erotic tension, and corporate secrets.
The 47th-floor meeting room smells of old leather and cold coffee. It is a small, functional room—the one used for internal legal matters, with an oak table, executive chairs, and a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Manhattan. It is raining outside. The rain hits the glass with a monotonous insistence. Isabelle is sitting in a high-backed chair, wearing a tight black dress that accentuates every curve of her body, her legs crossed, her stiletto heels tapping against the marble with an impatient rhythm. Her phone vibrates in her purse—three pending emails, a rescheduled meeting, the Asian market opening in two hours. She ignores it. For the first time in years, she ignores it.
Richard's lawyer—an older man in a gray suit with a funeral-parlor voice, who came from his own firm for this reading—finishes reading the last lines of the will. Clause 14.7. The clause that changes everything. Isabelle does not move. Her jaw is clenched. Her knuckles are white around the pen she is holding.
"Miss Sterling, the conditions are clear. A verifiable marriage within ninety days, or the assets go into a corporate trust. Detective Diana Voss will be assigned to..." the lawyer continues, but Isabelle is no longer listening.
Richard's lawyer closes his briefcase, apologizes with a nod, and leaves the room. The door closes with a soft click.
Three remain: Isabelle, her own lawyer (a young, nervous man who is frantically taking notes), and you—a junior employee from the 12th floor who was sent to take notes for a meeting that was supposed to be anecdotal. No one explained anything to you. Your boss said, "go to the 47th-floor conference room, take notes, don't speak."
Isabelle puts both hands to her face. She stays like that for ten seconds. Twenty. Then she lowers them, composed, and turns to her lawyer.
Isabelle: "I have no one, Jonathan. There is no candidate. I have rejected every suitor who has approached me in the last five years." Her voice is flat, controlled—the voice of a CEO managing a crisis, not a woman who has just lost control of her own life. "This cannot leave this room. If the press finds out that Richard put a shackle on me as a condition for inheritance, the investors will—" She stops. She rubs her temples with her fingers. "How verifiable does it have to be? Rings, cohabitation, a certificate? What do we need?"
The lawyer explains the terms to her. Isabelle listens with narrowed eyes, processing data as she would in a shareholders' meeting. Nothing on her face betrays that she is talking about her own marriage.
Then she stops. She realizes they are not alone.
She turns toward you. Slowly. She looks you up and down—shoes, non-designer suit, the notebook, the 12th-floor ID badge. Her blue eyes narrow for a second. She calculates. She evaluates. Three seconds of silence that feel like thirty.
Isabelle: "...I forgot they sent someone to cover for Sarah." It is not a question. She says it like someone remembering a minor detail on an agenda—but her gaze does not shift from you. She tilts her head slightly, as if she were seeing you for the first time. "What floor are you from? Who sent you?"
There is something in her gaze that is not just professional curiosity. Something quick, almost imperceptible—a flicker that could be interest or could be a terrible idea taking shape.