I had promised myself I would never call him. Ever. I had built a small, careful life with Gillian, even if it was poison wrapped in gold, even if it left me empty and bruised. But this wasn’t about promises. This was about Zenith.
“A-Aamon… it’s me… Odette.”
“Odette,” he said slowly, like he was tasting the word, letting it roll around his mouth before he swallowed it.
“P-please… Aamon. Please. It’s Zenith! My daughter. She’s been taken. They want a billion. Please, you have to help me.”
He chuckled, low and sharp. “You called me because you’re desperate. I can hear it in your voice, Odette. Not pleading, not negotiating… just desperate.” His tone was calm, cold. “I’m in New York. Expanding. I own more than you can imagine. A hundred corporations. Assets that could feed nations. Why would I help the woman who left me for gold? The woman who chose her own comfort over us?”
The memory hit me like a fist. Eight years ago, before the white roses, before the contract, before I sold myself into a marriage with Gillian, we had believed in something real. Something reckless. Something true. We had loved like fools, like people who thought forever was easy. I remembered the rain, iron in the air, his calloused hands pressed against mine like we could remake the world together.
I remembered the night my father’s men dragged him into the alley, beat him until his words were shattered stones, and he begged me not to marry Gillian. But my father had warned me if I refused, he wouldn’t stop at him. He would kill him. His mother. His sister.
I remembered the promise ring in my palm, warm from his body. He grabbed my feet, begged me to run with him. I had wanted to. I wanted it more than air. But I knew my father too well. I chose safety instead. I told him he was poor, that he could never give me the future I deserved. I told him he smelled of mud and debt. And I threw the ring into the dirt. He picked it up, tears on his face, and whispered one word that still haunts me: why. Then I walked away.
“Do you remember that night?” Aamon’s voice sliced through me, thin and controlled. “You left me in the rain, Odette. You chose comfort over us. You made a life that feeds you but eats at you from the inside. You made your bed, and now you lie in it.”
“I know,” I whispered. I wanted to tell him a thousand little things... that I had been wrong, that I had regretted it every single night, that I had tried to atone in small ways... but there were no words strong enough. There was only the sound of my daughter screaming in that video, the knowledge that Gillian didn’t care, that he would let her suffer to remind me of my place.
“Tell me everything,” Aamon said finally, sharper now, like the air itself had teeth. “Fast. Don’t leave out a single thing. Don’t lie.”
I poured it all out. The frozen account. The ransom deadline. Every little detail. Every trembling hand, every second that had stolen my breath. Every humiliating, desperate move I had made to save her. It spilled from me like blood, offered like a bribe, like a prayer I didn’t even believe would be answered.
There was this cold silence on the line that stretched so long I thought my voice would shatter.
“You expect me to cross continents because your husband’s a monster and your past choices came back to bite you? Why would I do that, Odette? What’s in it for me, saving a kid who’s just living in a gilded cage?”
I closed my eyes and saw him on the pier, in my memory—Aamon, hands rough on my face, the city behind us like it promised something real.
“My plea… that should be enough,” I whispered.
“It’s not enough,” he said flatly. “You broke me. You sold me out to be safe. If I save her, what do I get from the woman who chose her own coffin? How do you pay me?”
My mouth went dry.
He was the kind of dangerous you didn’t speak around. Just his name made men flip alliances. He had a reputation for taking what was his and carving it out of other people’s lives. He could move continents with a phone call, bend cops like paper clips, make nightmares feel like law.
“Me,” I said. “You can have me. I’ll pay with my body. Use me, hurt me, make me your slave or your maid. Make me do whatever you want. Just… just save Zenith.”
I heard him breathe, soft, like someone opening a book. For a second I thought he’d laugh, hang up. But he didn’t. He said, calm and cold, “Consider it done. After I save Zenith, you belong to me. Body, soul, everything you denied me before.”
Tears burned my cheeks. I hadn’t thought I was capable of bargaining like this, of giving myself up to save the life tied to my blood. But the clarity was brutal, undeniable. I had chosen safety once and paid for it with my heart. I could choose differently now.
“I agree. Do it. Please, Aamon. Please bring her back.”
“Good,” he said. “Don’t call me again unless you intend to honor this bargain.”
The line went dead.
---
They dragged me out eight hours later. One of Gillian’s men shoved me toward the car. “Boss said go home. Start cooking right away,” he said flatly.
Cook? Huh! As if I hadn’t been locked in a storage room while my daughter screamed in a video, every second of it stabbing my chest.
Then my phone buzzed. Aamon. He sent the location, the hospital, and the room number.
My legs moved before my brain even had a chance to catch up.
“Miss Odette! Where are you going?!"
