Darian's POV
I watched her not like I wanted to, but I couldn't help it. She was standing there, ruining my floor with every second she didn't move. She looked like a drowned rat in that ridiculous pink uniform. It was stained,cheap in fact.It was everything I hated...unrefined, messy, and loud in its poverty.
I expected the tears. Usually, when people enter this office and see me, they either start talking too fast or they start crying. Especially the desperate ones. And she was the definition of desperate. Twelve dollars in a bank account? That wasn't a balance; it was an insult.
I took a sip of the scotch. It was warm, but the ice in my chest stayed frozen. I was waiting for the sob. I was waiting for her to drop to her knees and tell me she'd do anything if I just saved her mother. I had the script ready in my head. I'd tell her to be quiet. I'd tell her to sign. I'd tell her she was lucky I was even looking at her.
But she didn't cry.
She stood there, shivering so hard I could hear the fabric of her wet sleeves rubbing against her sides. Her hands were the messiest part...They were pale, red at the knuckles, and shaking like she was plugged into a light socket. But when she reached for the folder, she didn't just touch it. She gripped it. She grabbed the edge of the desk as if she were trying to anchor herself to the earth.
The leather of the folder groaned under her fingers...
She's going to break the binding, I thought. It was a stupid, small thought. The folder cost fifty dollars. I didn't care about fifty dollars. But I cared that she wasn't doing what she was supposed to do. She wasn't looking down or even hiding.
She was staring right at me.
Her eyes were hazel, but in the dim light of the study, they looked like moss and burnt sugar. They were wide, rimmed with red from exhaustion, but the center was sharp. It was that steel core Xavier had mentioned in the folder...I'd thought he was being dramatic. Xavier liked to talk like he was in a movie sometimes. But he was right. There was something in there that didn't belong in a waitress from a crumbling apartment building.
A single droplet of water fell from a matted strand of her hair. I found myself tracking it. It hit her collarbone, right above the frayed edge of that pink uniform, and disappeared into the fabric.
I felt a weird jolt in my stomach. Not lust...Not exactly. It was more like... curiosity? No, I don't get curious about assets. It was irritation. Yes, that was it. I was irritated that she was still standing.
"Are you going to open it?" I asked. My voice sounded a bit too loud in the quiet room.
She didn't answer right away. Her jaw was locked. I could see the muscle jumping in her cheek. She was fighting the urge to shatter into a million pieces. I'd seen men in boardrooms fold under less pressure than what I was putting on her right now.
"My mother," she said. Her voice was thin, like a wire stretched too tight. "Xavier said... he said the doctors are waiting. He said it depends on this."
"It depends on you," I said. I leaned back in my chair, trying to regain the distance I felt slipping. "The folder contains the terms. If you can't follow them, the doctors go home. It's a simple trade, Liora. Life for a legacy. Don't make it more complicated than it is."
I watched her eyes flicker to the folder and then back to me. She was second-guessing. I could see it.
She was wondering if she could run. If there was any other way. I knew there wasn't. I'd made sure of it. I'd bought her debt, her landlord, and her future before she even got in the car...
But for a second, I felt a twinge of something that felt like guilt...It was gone before I could name it. Guilt was for people who didn't have a company to run. My father didn't feel guilt. He felt results.
"You're Daniel's daughter," I said, mostly to see if she'd flinch. "He was a man of principles. Look where that got him. He's in a grave, and you're standing in my office soaking wet, begging for a check."
She did flinch then. Her eyes narrowed, and for a split second, the hazel turned dark green. It was fire. Real, honest-to-god fire.
"I'm not begging," she whispered.
"Aren't you?" I asked. I stood up and walked toward her. I wanted to see if she'd back away. I wanted to feel the power of being the one who decided if she survived the night.
I stopped just inches from her. She smelled like the rain..cold and metallic...and that cheap, greasy smell from the diner. It was a human smell. It was messy and It didn't belong in this room with its air-filtration systems and its scent of expensive cedar.
She didn't move. She stayed right where she was, even though I was looming over her. She was tiny, but she felt... heavy.
I realized then that she was more dangerous than the socialites my father usually tried to set me up with. A socialite wanted my name. She wanted the black card and the parties. She was easy to buy because her price was just money.
But this girl? Liora? She wasn't here for money. She was here for a life. She was here because she loved someone enough to sell herself to a man she clearly hated.
That made her unbuyable. I could buy her time. I could buy her body for nine months. I could buy the baby she would carry. But I couldn't buy that look in her eyes. It was a contradiction. I owned her, but I didn't possess her.
It made my skin itch. I didn't like things I couldn't fully control.
"You have five minutes," I said, my voice dropping to a low growl. "Read the first three pages. That's the core of the agreement. The rest is just legal jargon about your diet and your medical checkups. Sign the last page, and the doctors move."
She looked at the folder again. She still hadn't opened it.
"Why me?" she asked. "There are thousands of women. Why choose someone whose father you... whose father you hated?"
I didn't have a good answer. The real answer was that I wanted to win. I wanted to take the one thing Daniel Hayes had left and make it mine. I wanted to prove to my father that I could be just as ruthless as he was.
But I couldn't say that.
"Because you have nothing," I said instead. "And people with nothing are the most reliable. You have everything to lose, Liora. That makes you the perfect partner for this transaction."
Partner. It was a lie. We weren't partners.
She finally opened the folder. I watched her eyes move over the words. Surrogacy. Parental Rights. Non-Disclosure. Genetic Succession.
The room felt colder. I watched the way her fingers trembled as she turned the first page. She was reading about her own disappearance. She was reading about how she would give birth to a child and then never be allowed to hear its name or see its face.
I expected her to stop. I expected her to throw the folder at my head and tell me I was a monster.
But she just kept reading. Her face went pale, almost grey, but she didn't stop.
"It says here... I can't leave the estate," she said. Her voice was flat. No emotion left. Just a statement of fact.
"Correct," I said. "You will live in the West Wing. You will have everything you need. But you will not be seen. You will not have contact with the outside world. Until the child is born and the recovery is complete, you belong to the Volkov estate."
"Like a prisoner," she said.
"Like an asset," I corrected.
She looked up at me. The fire was still there, but it was buried under a layer of ice. She looked older than she was. She looked like she'd lived a hundred years in the last hour.
"My mother stays in the private wing?" she asked.
"For as long as she needs," I said. "The best doctors. The best recovery plan. All paid for."
She looked back at the paper. She was hesitating. I could see her thumb rubbing against the corner of the page. She was thinking about her mom. She was thinking about the empty apartment. She was thinking about the trash bags in the rain.
I felt a sudden, weird urge to reach out and touch her shoulder. Just to see if she was as cold as she looked. I didn't. I gripped my scotch glass tighter instead.
I was second-guessing myself now. Was this a mistake? Bringing this much fire into my house? My life was quiet. It was organized. She was a mess. She was a walking, shivering complication.
But then I thought about Sergei. I thought about the "Legacy Clause."
I needed this.
I leaned in closer, drawn to the defiance that still wouldn't die in her eyes. I could see my own reflection in her pupils. I looked cold. I looked like a machine.
"Are you going to read," I said, my voice a whisper that felt like a threat, "or are you waiting for me to tell you how this ends?"
She didn't blink. She just stared back.
"I know how it ends," she said.
