"Mateo."
Santiago's voice came out low and unhurried, and the man appeared in the doorway as though he had been standing just beyond it the entire time. He set a small stack of papers on the table without a word. The servants in that house moved like that, present without being present, and they cleared what remained of the table setting without sound and were gone again before Daniella had registered them leaving.
She looked at the papers without touching them.
A contract. Printed in clean black type, precise and cold, the kind of document that appeared ordinary until you read what it was asking of you. Her chest tightened before she had finished the first line.
"Once you sign that," Santiago said, still working at the clasp of his watch without looking up, "you sign everything away. Your body. Your life. Whatever is growing inside you. I decide what happens to any of it."
