I find the contract in his jacket pocket while looking for his phone to silence the alarm. Twenty thousand dollars. My name typed in cold, corporate font. "Target: Elena Voss. Objective: Romantic entanglement leading to emotional dependency and subsequent termination of relationship. Duration: 6 months. Payment upon completion." The paper shakes in my hands. Six months ago, Marcus walked into my life at that gallery opening. Six months of late-night conversations and Sunday morning pancakes and the way he traces circles on my hip when he thinks I'm sleeping. Six months of falling. The contract is dated two weeks before we met. I hear the shower turn off in the bathroom. Steam curls under the door. In sixty seconds, he'll walk out with that towel around his waist and that smile that makes my chest ache, and I'll have to look at him knowing everything was a transaction. Knowing I was bought. The signature at the bottom is unmistakably his. That same scrawl I've seen on birthday cards and grocery lists and the lease we just signed together. My phone buzzes. A text from my sister: "Lunch tomorrow? Need to talk about Dad's estate." Dad's estate. Twenty million dollars I inherited eight months ago. The bathroom door opens. "Morning, beautiful," Marcus says, and I realize I'm about to shatter into a thousand pieces.