The Pact We Broke

The Pact We Broke

by Avery Lang

Heat 2 / 5One-Shot2,945 words13m read~20m listen

The contract is already on the table when Delphine Lang walks in — cream, heavyweight, two uncapped pens resting beside two names. Outside, sleet streaks the floor-to-ceiling glass of Gilded Pact Tower. Inside, a ninety-minute clock is running.

An anonymous leak has clipped the night’s charity gala into something damning: Griffin Ives’s hand on her bare shoulder, a blurred term sheet, a joke that sounds like a transaction. In ninety minutes it hits the tabloids, and the story it tells is brutal. The board’s solution is simple. Let the world believe the engagement is real.

Delphine has shaped other people’s narratives before. She knows exactly what it costs the ones who get left holding the script. She refuses to sign anything that isn’t freely chosen — and Griffin, cold-eyed and iron-willed in front of every boardroom she has ever watched him command, backs her in front of them all.

BillionaireBoss EmployeeFake DatingMarriage Of Convenience