I take a breath. Time to show the cards.
“Dante’s dead,” I say. Her eyes widen a fraction. “He has a brother.”
“Jayshaun, they call him Big Jay.”
I nod. “He knows I took you. He doesn’t know why. But he’s put out word.”
I pause. I want to gauge if she understands the weight of what comes next. She stays still. Listening. “A few thousand to whoever delivers you to him,” I continue. “Another five if they kill me in the process.”
She gives an ugly, broken laugh. “I’m only worth a few grand? Inflation’s a bitch.”
“It’s not about the money. His men make more than that in a night. Pride is its own currency. You aren’t a target because you matter to him. You are a target because taking you wounds me.” She tilts her head. “It is inconvenient. For both of us.”
I push away from the island, move to the window, and look down at the street. From here, the pedestrians are insects. From there, I am just a face in a tower. Power is about perspective.
When I look at her again, she is hunched over the counter, fingers worrying the edge of a napkin. She spent three months building a business plan out of her own body. She would have made a magnificent lieutenant in another life.
“You were selling your virginity,” I say. “What if I offered you more for it? A year of your life in exchange for a child. An heir.”
The room goes quiet. Even the refrigerator stops humming.
Riley's brows meet, and her throat works. “You want to buy a baby from me?”
“I want to buy a future. So do you. I am proposing a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”
I lay it out. Cold. Precise. The way I would negotiate a shipping contract or a territory dispute. “Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. One year. You live here, in the penthouse. You carry my child via artificial insemination. Nothing invasive beyond what the doctors require. After the birth, you are free. The money, a clean identity if you need one, and enough to open your shop and start over. No strings attached.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. I can practically see her recalculating. “You’re serious,” she says.
“I am always serious.”
She should run away screaming. She should call me a monster and throw the orange juice at my face. Instead, her eyes narrow.
Then it happens. The shift from victim to negotiator. The same shift I made in a Vladivostok alley at sixteen, when a man offered me boots in exchange for a favor, and I countered with a blade.
“Three conditions,” she says.
I arch a brow. “Speak.”
“One. I want a contract. Written. Signed. Legally, it might not hold up, but it is binding in principle. I want it clear that this is a deal, not... not whatever the fuck this is.”
“Agreed.”
“Two. I keep working toward my cosmetology goals. During the pregnancy. I don’t get locked in this tower. I research my shop. I plan. I don’t become a—what do you call it—a broodmare.”
“Broodmare,” I repeat. The word darkens the room. “You will have freedoms. Within reason. With security.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I stop her. “Big Jay…”
“Fine.” She lifts her chin. Its stubborn tilt nearly undoes me. “And three...”
She trails off. For the first time since she walked into my kitchen, she looks unsure. Young. Twenty years old and trying to sell a body she has never fully claimed.
“This artificial insemination,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “I’ve never... I mean, I’m still...” She takes a breath. Steels herself. “I don’t want the first time something breaks my cherry to be a medical procedure. Or a baby.”
Riley Miller has been one shock after another. She is never what I expect. This could have been a cold, distant undertaking. But no. Why would I think she would ever make things simple?The words hang between us. Heavy. Hot. Dammit, I was trying to do this clean—to not be the dirty old man my wet dreams tell me I am. One flash to last night's dream, and my blood goes south before my brain can catch up.
I should say no. I am forty-two. She is twenty. It is already morally bankrupt. To do this under contract is to stand on the ledge of something from which I cannot step back.
“You want me to take your virginity?”
