Chapter 3
“You share a first and last name with the Chairman and CEO of Brandt Global Capital,” Piper said, leaning forward across the table, her gaze drilling into his features. “The man whose face has never appeared in a Forbes profile, who buys sovereign debt for sport, and whose algorithmic restructuring just axed my entire division.”
Wyatt leaned back against the red vinyl, casually spreading his arms across the top of the booth. He raised one eyebrow, an amused, self-deprecating drawl coloring his voice.
“Scottish-German immigrant roots,” Wyatt said calmly. “There are at least four hundred Wyatt Brandts between Queens and Philadelphia. If I had seventy billion dollars in offshore assets, do you think I’d be scrubbing carbon soot off manifold gaskets in Long Island City for sixty dollars an hour?”
He turned his hands over on the laminate.
Piper looked down. His knuckles were bruised, his palms heavily calloused, and dark streaks of mechanical grease were ground deep into the skin around his fingernails. He was wearing a threadbare charcoal thermal shirt and a canvas jacket with frayed cuffs.
“Fair point,” Piper murmured, though her brow didn’t entirely clear. She leaned back, chewing her lip. “The real Wyatt Brandt lives on private jets and estates in Geneva. He has six former intelligence operatives flanking him at all times and probably hasn’t stepped inside a subway station since 2005. He’d probably break out in hives if he touched a formica tabletop.”
Yet, as she spoke, Piper noted the lingering incongruities. The uncanny, aristocratic stillness of his posture. The razor-sharp speed with which he had broken down her trust trap. The faint trace of bespoke bergamot beneath the machine oil, and the crisp, commanding cadence of his voice that felt far more at home in a boardroom than a grease pit.
*A mechanic who talks like a federal litigator,* she thought, filing the suspicion into a mental folder. *Odd. But desperate men adapt.*
“Still,” Piper exhaled, shaking her head at the ceiling, “what a sick, twisted joke the universe is playing on me today. Of all the men standing outside the clerk's office, I marry a guy who shares a name with the corporate butcher who ruined my life.”
“You despise him that much?” Wyatt asked, his tone deceptively mild.
“He’s a parasite,” Piper snapped with vicious conviction. “Two days ago, his restructuring algorithm ran an efficiency sweep across thirty subsidiaries. Because my department was running deep forensic checks on regional supply chains instead of generating high-yield junk paper, his automated slaughterhouse axed fifty-four analysts overnight. By email. At two in the morning.”
She took a furious gulp of coffee.
“I had four years of flawless performance reviews, a proprietary forensic audit model, and a pending promotion. And that arrogant coward reduced my career to a PDF with a digital signature. If I ever met the *billionaire* Wyatt Brandt in person, I would throw a brick through the windshield of whatever two-million-dollar supercar he drives.”
Wyatt stared at her.
For the first time since they had collided outside the marriage bureau, the ironclad composure of Wall Street’s most feared corporate leviathan slipped just enough to let a flicker of stunned, hungry irony show through.
Two days ago, Wyatt had indeed approved the high-level corporate optimization mandate. He had explicitly instructed his executive committee that forensic operational talent be preserved and integrated into the core risk division. Clearly, his incompetent senior vice presidents had used an automated guillotine to trim headcounts and inflate their quarterly bonuses while ignoring his directives entirely.
And now, the sharpest, most fearless risk analyst his firm had ever employed was sitting across from him in a neon-lit Queens diner, wearing an oversized thrifted blazer, plotting to defend his decoy auto shop from predatory liens, and actively daydreaming about hurling masonry at his head.
“A brick,” Wyatt said mildly. “A bit crude for a financial analyst, isn't it?”
“He deserves a sledgehammer,” Piper countered, pointing her butter knife at him. “Men like him think human lives are just rounding errors on a spreadsheet. They hide behind shell companies, armed security, and PR nondisclosure agreements. You and I, we work for a living. Men like Wyatt Brandt just feast on the wreckage.”
Wyatt held her gaze. The sheer, vibrant defiance in her face—the way her chin lifted, the fiery integrity blazing behind her amber eyes—struck him with the sudden force of a physical blow.
In Manhattan’s elite circles, Wyatt was surrounded daily by sycophants who calculated every syllable they spoke to him. No one had spoken to him with this level of raw, unvarnished honesty in his adult life.
He had intended this marriage to be a cold, temporary countermeasure to kill his board’s proxy challenge. But sitting in this booth, looking at his fierce, untouchable new wife, an entirely different ambition flared to life in his chest.
He didn't want to correct her. Not yet.
He wanted to see the look on her face when she realized she hadn't just married an ally—she had married the weapon that was going to burn her enemies to ash.
“Fair enough,” Wyatt conceded, his voice dropping into a quiet, velvet drawl. “No sympathy for the billionaire.”
“None,” she affirmed, satisfied. She pulled the plate of eggs toward herself. “Now, ground rules.”
“I’m listening.”
“Rule one: this is strictly a defensive alliance,” Piper said, ticking off a finger. “We stay married for thirty days until my father’s founding trust vests and your family receivership window closes. After thirty days, we file for an uncontested, irreconcilable-differences dissolution. No alimony, no claims on each other’s property.”
“Agreed.”
“Rule two: living arrangements. Beatrice has private investigators on retainer. If Landon suspects this is a sham, he’ll hire someone to photograph my apartment steps. Which means for the next four weeks, you have to move into my place.”
Wyatt’s brow rose slightly. “Your place?”
“A fifth-floor walk-up in Astoria,” Piper said, watching him for any sign of hesitation. “It has radiator heat that clanks like a dying tractor, one bathroom, and a sofa that pulls out into a bed if you kick the left hinge twice. Can you handle that, or does the master mechanic require a five-star garage?”
“I’ve slept on concrete under transmission blocks,” Wyatt replied smoothly, carefully omitting the eight-thousand-square-foot duplex penthouse currently sitting empty on Central Park South. “Astoria sounds luxurious.”
“Good. Rule three: strictly platonic,” she said, her voice dropping slightly, her cheeks warming despite her professional tone. “We share a roof, we split groceries fifty-fifty, but there is zero crossing of personal boundaries. No expectations. No… whatever men like Landon think they’re entitled to.”
Wyatt leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. The distance between them shrank, and the sheer masculine gravity of his posture made Piper’s breath hitch in her throat. His gaze held hers, unwavering and surprisingly soft.
“You don't have to worry about me, Piper,” he said, his voice entirely devoid of mockery. “I respect a contract. And I respect you.”
The sincerity in his words hit her harder than any practiced charm ever could. Piper blinked, momentarily disarmed, her defensive armor rattling against the heat in his hazel eyes.
“Right,” she cleared her throat, suddenly very interested in spreading jam on her half of the bagel. “Good. Then we have a deal, Mr. Brandt.”
