MARRY YOUR KILLER
Chapter Three: The Enemy's Invitation
---
The next three days were a blur of dresses and flowers and meetings that made Jay want to put her fist through a wall.
Her mother took over the wedding planning with military precision. Caterers. Venues. Guest lists. Serina Watson had her own opinions, and the two women engaged in a cold war over floral arrangements. It would have been funny if Jay wasn't the prize they were fighting over.
She sat through three dress fittings.
Women in expensive suits pinned fabric around her and murmured about silhouettes. She smiled when they asked her opinion. She nodded when they showed her lace samples. She let them dress her up like a doll and pretended she didn't feel like she was being prepared for a sacrifice.
Her uncle visited the ancestral home twice. Both times, he pulled her father into the study and closed the door. Both times, Jay stood in the hallway and heard nothing. The room was soundproofed. Her father had always been paranoid. Now she hated him for it.
On the third day, the invitation came.
It arrived at her penthouse in a cream envelope, sealed with wax. No return address. No sender. Just her name written across the front in handwriting she didn't recognize.
She opened it standing at her kitchen counter.
Dinner. Tomorrow night. My house. Come alone.
No signature. No explanation. Just an address in Forbes Park.
She turned the card over. Nothing.
She checked the envelope. Nothing.
She held it up to the light. The paper was thick, expensive, the kind of stationery that cost more than most people's rent. The handwriting was sharp, deliberate—a man's handwriting, she thought, or a woman who had learned to write like one.
She didn't need to guess who sent it.
---
She didn't sleep that night.
She sat on her balcony, the city lights spread beneath her, and she thought about Keifer Watson. The way he had looked at her across her mother's living room. The way he had said I want to know who you really are. The text message at 3 AM: Can't sleep either?
She hadn't responded. She hadn't deleted it either.
Now this. An invitation to his house. Come alone.
She called Freya.
"He wants to meet."
Freya didn't ask who. "Where?"
"Forbes Park. His house."
"Don't go."
"I have to."
"You don't have to do anything."
Jay watched a plane blink across the sky, small and distant, carrying someone who didn't have to think about blood feuds and arranged marriages and what it meant when the enemy invited you to dinner.
"If I don't go, he wins," she said. "If I show fear, he wins. If I bring backup, he knows I'm scared."
"So let him know."
"No." She gripped the railing. "I need him to think I'm not afraid of him. I need him to think I'm exactly what I seem—a rich girl who got lucky. If he knows what I really am—"
"He already knows." Freya's voice was flat. "You said it yourself. He looked at you like a mirror."
Jay closed her eyes.
"Then I need to find out what he wants. And I can't do that with you standing behind me."
The silence stretched between them.
"If you're not back by midnight," Freya said finally, "I'm coming for him."
"That's fair."
"And Jay?"
"Yes?"
"Wear the knife."
---
She wore the knife.
It was small, flat, strapped to the inside of her thigh, invisible beneath her dress. She had chosen the dress carefully—black, simple, expensive in a way that didn't need to announce itself. The kind of dress that said I belong here without saying anything at all.
Her hair was down. Her makeup was minimal. She looked like a woman going to dinner, nothing more.
She drove herself.
Forbes Park was quiet at night, the mansions sitting behind high walls and security gates, the kind of neighborhood where money went to hide from the rest of the world. Keifer Watson's house was at the end of a private road, a modern thing of glass and steel that glowed warm in the darkness.
She pulled through the gates—they opened without anyone asking her name—and parked beside a car that probably cost more than her penthouse.
For a moment, she sat in the driver's seat, her hands on the wheel, her breathing steady, her face calm.
You're not afraid, she told herself.
She was lying.
She walked to the front door. It opened before she could knock.
Keifer Watson stood in the doorway, dressed in a dark shirt, sleeves rolled up, barefoot. His hair was slightly disheveled, like he had been running his hands through it. He looked different than he had at the engagement meeting—less polished, less practiced. More real.
He looked at her for a long moment. His eyes traveled from her face to her dress to her hands, empty at her sides. He didn't look at her thigh, where the knife was hidden, but she had the strange feeling he knew it was there anyway.
"You came," he said.
"You invited me."
"I wasn't sure you would."
She lifted an eyebrow. "You sent an invitation with no signature, no explanation, and a command to come alone. What exactly did you expect?"
He smiled. It was not the smile from the magazines. It was something smaller, quieter, almost private.
"I expected you to show up armed," he said. "Did I guess right?"
She didn't answer.
His smile widened, just a fraction. "Come in."
---
The house was warm.
That was the first thing she noticed. She had expected cold—glass and steel and the kind of minimalist design that felt like a museum. Instead, the rooms were soft, lit with lamps instead of overhead lights, filled with books and photographs and the kind of comfortable furniture that suggested someone actually lived here.
She followed him through a hallway, past a kitchen that smelled like something had been cooking, into a living room that overlooked a garden.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to a sofa. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."
She didn't sit. "You cook?"
"I do many things."
"Like sending mysterious invitations to women you're supposed to marry?"
He walked to the kitchen, and she followed despite herself. He moved easily, comfortably, like he was used to being watched. He pulled something out of the oven—she caught the smell of garlic, herbs, something slow-cooked and rich.
"I wanted to talk to you without our families present," he said. "Without the cameras. Without the audience."
He turned to face her, leaning against the counter. In the warm light of the kitchen, he looked younger. His eyes were not cold now. They were something else—something she couldn't name.
"Can we do that?" he asked. "Can we talk, just the two of us, and pretend for one night that we're not what everyone says we are?"
She studied him. The ease of his movements, the deliberate casualness of his posture. She had learned to read people the way other people learned to read books—looking for the cracks, the tells, the places where the mask slipped.
His mask was good. But she had been looking at masks her whole life.
"Why?" she asked.
"Why what?"
"Why do you want to pretend? We both know what this is. An arrangement. A transaction. A way to end a war that should have ended a long time ago."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he set down the dish he was holding and walked toward her.
She didn't move. She didn't step back. She held her ground, her hands steady at her sides, her face calm, even as he stopped close enough that she could smell whatever soap he used—clean, sharp, something like cedar.
"That's what I want to talk about," he said quietly. "The arrangement. The transaction. The war."
He was taller than her. She had to look up to meet his eyes, and she hated that, hated the way it made her feel smaller, even though she knew she wasn't.
"What about it?"
"The war," he said, "isn't going to end with our marriage."
Something cold settled in her chest. "What do you mean?"
He stepped back, giving her space, and she hated that too—hated the way she noticed the absence of him, the way her body had been braced for something and now had to relax.
"Dinner first," he said. "Then we talk."
---
She sat at his dining table, in a chair that was too comfortable, eating food that was too good, and she waited for him to tell her what he meant.
He served her himself. No staff. No witnesses. Just the two of them, sitting across from each other in a house that felt more like a home than anything she had ever owned.
"This is good," she said, because it was, and because she didn't know what else to say.
"My mother taught me. Before she became Serina Watson, she was just a woman who liked to cook."
"Just a woman," Jay repeated. "I don't think anyone has ever described your mother that way."
He smiled. "She would hate it. That's why I say it."
She found herself almost smiling back. She stopped it.
"Why did you invite me here, Keifer?"
He set down his fork. "Because I needed to know if you were going to be an enemy or an ally."
"Those are the only two options?"
"In our world? Yes. Enemy or ally. There's nothing in between."
She looked at him across the table. The candlelight made shadows under his eyes, shadows that matched the ones she saw in the mirror every morning.
"What if I don't want to be either?"
He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached across the table and turned her plate slightly, adjusting it, a small gesture that felt strangely intimate.
"Then you'll be alone," he said. "And in our world, being alone is the same as being dead."
---
After dinner, he led her to a study at the back of the house. Books lined the walls, floor to ceiling, the kind of collection that took years to build. A fire was burning in the fireplace, even though it wasn't cold.
He closed the door behind them.
She turned to face him, her back to the fire, her hand close enough to her thigh to reach the knife if she needed to.
"You said the war isn't going to end with our marriage," she said. "Explain."
He walked to a shelf and pulled down a file. Thick. Heavy. The kind of file that meant something.
He held it out to her. "Look."
She didn't take it. "What is it?"
"Your uncle. My father. The deal that started this war, thirty years ago. And the reason it's not going to end just because we sign a piece of paper."
She took the file. She opened it.
The first page was a photograph. Her uncle, young, standing beside her father and Keizer Watson, all of them smiling, all of them young enough to believe the world belonged to them.
The second page was a contract. A deal. A shipment. A betrayal.
She read.
And as she read, the world shifted beneath her feet.
---
The deal had been simple. The Marianos would ship. The Watsons would launder. They would split the profits. They would build an empire together.
It was supposed to be the beginning of an alliance.
Instead, it was the beginning of a war.
Her uncle had betrayed them. Both families. He had taken the shipment, sold it to a rival, and framed the Watsons for the theft. When the deal fell apart, when the money disappeared, when the bodies started falling, he had sat back and watched two families destroy each other over a crime he had committed.
And now, thirty years later, he was arranging a marriage between the heirs of those two families.
"You see," Keifer said quietly.
She looked up from the file. "This is real?"
"Every page. Every document. Every photograph. I've been investigating for two years. He's been playing both sides since before we were born. The war—all of it—he started it. And he's been keeping it going ever since. Every time peace was possible, he found a way to break it. Every time someone got too close to the truth, he made sure they disappeared."
She closed the file. Her hands were steady. Her voice was steady. Inside, she was nothing but cold.
"He's not trying to end the war," she said. "He's trying to finish it. With both families weak enough for him to take over."
Keifer nodded. "Our marriage is his final move. He brought our families together because he wants us to believe peace is possible. He wants us to let our guard down. And when we do—"
"He'll destroy us. Both families. One move."
"He's been planning this for thirty years. He's not going to stop now."
She looked at him across the firelight. The enemy. The man she was supposed to marry. The man who had just handed her the truth about her own family.
"Why are you showing me this?" she asked. "You could have used it against me. Against my family. You could have—"
"I could have," he said. "But I didn't."
"Why?"
He walked toward her. Slowly, like he was giving her time to move away. She didn't move.
"Because I looked at you across that room," he said, "and I saw someone who was as trapped as I am. Someone who didn't choose this. Someone who has been carrying a weight she never asked for."
He stopped in front of her. Close enough to touch.
"And because," he said, "if we're going to survive this, we're going to have to do it together."
She stared at him. The firelight flickered across his face, softening the hard lines, making him look almost human.
"You want an alliance," she said.
"I want a partner."
"There's a difference?"
He smiled. It was the first real smile she had seen from him—not practiced, not charming, just tired and honest and almost sad.
"An alliance is a contract," he said. "A partnership is a choice. I'm not asking you to sign anything, Jay. I'm asking you to trust me."
"Trust you," she repeated.
"You trusted me enough to come here alone. You trusted me enough to eat my food. You trusted me enough to read that file and not kill me for what it says about your family."
She said nothing.
"Trust me a little further," he said. "Just for tonight. And tomorrow, if you want to go back to being enemies, I'll understand."
She should have said no. She should have walked out the door, driven home, called Freya, and planned her next move from the safety of her own territory.
Instead, she looked at the file in her hands. At the proof that everything she had been taught about the Watsons was a lie. At the proof that her own uncle had been feeding her family to the wolves for thirty years.
She looked at Keifer Watson. The enemy. The stranger. The man who was asking her to trust him.
"What did you have in mind?" she asked.
---
END OF CHAPTER THREE