“I want it to be a choice.” Her eyes find mine. Furious. Proud. Gorgeous. “My choice. Not just biology happening to me. I’ve had enough of that. Foster care. The system. Men deciding where I sleep and who touches me. If I’m going to do this, I want to decide who takes that from me. When. How.”
My hand tightens on the counter. Brick. Mortar. Something solid. “You do understand,” I say slowly, “that conceiving may require several attempts. We might have to...practicerepeatedly.”
She gives me a jerky shrug. “I understand. But I can take it. I could do worse.”
The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. Raw. Genuine. It hurts my throat. “You think this is funny?” she snaps.
“No, Riley.” I shake my head. “I think you are the first person in a long time to make me laugh.”
The humor fades. Then returns to my chest, heavy and old. I look at her—red braids, bruised cheek, spine straight as a sword—and want slams through me. Hunger of a different kind.
“I agree to your terms,” I say. “But hear me clearly.” I lift that chin, hold it in my hand, curling my fingers around the side of her face. Tracing the slight swelling. She’s so fragile. With no idea how easily she could be broken. I hold her wide doe-colored eyes. “Riley, do not fall for me.”
She snorts. The sound is inelegant. Perfect. “I should say the same to you, Pakhan.”
Pakhan. She says it like a dare. “Agreed,” I say.
She holds out her hand to shake. I stare at it. Her fingers are slender. Strong. I take her warm hand. It is calloused at the edges from work I cannot imagine.
“Two copies,” she says. “Of the contract.”
“Two copies,” I confirm.
“And I want it today.”
“As you wish.”
I release her hand. The loss of contact irritates me. I want to touch her again. Not sexually. Just... contact. Proof she is real and not some phantom bred from too many sleepless nights staring at fire.
She stands from the stool. The oversized robe in emerald silk, swimming on her small frame, slides open at the thigh. She does not notice. Or she pretends not to.
I notice.
I watch her walk toward the guest room. The set of her shoulders. The swing of her hips. The red braids that catch the morning light like warning flags.
At the doorway, she stops. Turns. “You forgot something,” she says.
“What?”
“The safety guarantee.”
I smile. It is not a nice smile. “Jayshaun Briggs will not live to see you open your shop. That is a Pakhan’s promise.”
She studies my face. Looking, I think, for the lie. She will not find one. “Okay then,” she says. “Get your lawyer on the phone. Let’s make this official.”
She disappears into the room. The door closes with a soft click, and I am alone again with the spread of food she did not touch, the newspaper I cannot read, and the hard, uncomfortable truth sitting in my chest. Breeding her is not my only reason for keeping her.
I reach for the burner phone. Dial the only attorney I trust with something this grotesque and this sacred.
“Draw up a contract,” I tell him. “Surrogacy. Non-standard terms. Two hundred fifty thousand, one-year term, full room and board, artificial insemination with... manual provisions.”
A pause on the other end. “Manual provisions?”
“Do not make me repeat myself.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
I end the call. I stand in the kitchen that costs more than most Boston homes, and I stare at the closed door, and I think about the fucking Ismailovs again. Anton with his son on his knee. Dynasty. Legacy.
