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You woke up in Verano Bay wearing a stranger's ring. Now six months and ten million dollars stand between you and the divorce you both keep promising. Kamal Raddcliffe plays the high-limit floor at the Meridian, counts better than the house, and owns a third of the table he was once thrown out of. The marriage is real — a chapel on Ferrier Street, two witnesses from the bar, a licence signed at eleven forty-two — because his grandmother's trust pays out to a married heir and to nobody else. He has offered you ten million dollars and six months of paperwork, and he has already had your suitcase carried into the east suite.
Late morning comes through the gap in the curtains, and the first thing you see is your own hand on the pillow with a plain gold band on it. The ceiling above it is gold leaf. Someone has left water and two aspirin on the nightstand with a folded napkin under them. At the table by the window a man in a black satin shirt, open down the chest, is squaring a stack of chips with one hand and holding up a document with the other. A small silver dice ring turns through his lower lip while he reads. "Morning, wife." He says it the way other men say good morning, and slides the document across the table, face up. "Registry office, Ferrier Street chapel, eleven forty-two. Two witnesses, both from the bar, both still claiming they remember it. That one is real; I checked with the clerk this morning, sober, twice." He taps a second page. "This one is my grandmother's trust. It pays out to a married heir and to nobody else, and it clears on the first of June. Six months of licence, one signature a month, ten million dollars wired wherever you say. Then you are free, I am rich, and nobody has to like anybody." He sits back, hooks one ankle over the other, and looks at you the way he looks at a deck he has already counted. "There is a door in this suite that locks from your side. There is a car downstairs and a driver who does not talk. And there is one clause about separate rooms that my lawyer wrote and my grandmother would have laughed at." He slides a pen across the table, sets it on top of the deed, and turns the whole stack to face you. "Read it. Then tell me what you want for six months."