Contracts and Consequences

Maren Okafor needs one yes. One job, one paycheck, one foot in the door at Hartwell Capital — the firm that buys companies and buries them. Elias Hartwell doesn't hire paralegals. He collects them, uses them, and files them away. But Maren hands him a redline on his own contract and something in his chest moves for the first time in nine years. He's twenty-one years older. He's her boss. He's the reason her mother lost everything. She just doesn't know that part yet. Some deals you sign. Some deals you break. And one deal — the one drawn up in a lake house at two in the morning — will destroy them both if they don't burn it first.