Elena's POV
"You requested to see me." His eyes remained fixed on his laptop screen.
"Yes, sir." My voice came out steadier than I'd expected. "I'm here to request a personal loan."
One dark eyebrow rose slightly. "A personal loan."
"Yes, sir. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars." I opened my portfolio with shaking fingers, pulling out the documents I'd prepared over countless sleepless nights. Payment plans, salary projections, and testimonials from professors about my work ethic. The papers rustled too loudly in the silence. "I've worked out a repayment schedule over five years. I'm willing to accept any interest rate you deem fair, and I can provide…"
"Why?"
The single word stopped me mid-sentence. I looked up, meeting those grey eyes for the first time since I'd entered his office. They were the colour of storm clouds and just as cold.
"Why do you need one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Ms. Moretti?"
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. "My mother. She has stage four pancreatic cancer. There's an experimental treatment trial in Switzerland; it's her only chance. But insurance won't cover it, and the cost..."
"And you came to me." He hadn't touched my documents… hadn't even glanced at them. "Why not a bank?"
"I tried." The admission tasted like failure.
"Three banks. They all said no. My credit isn't... I don't have collateral, and the amount..." I trailed off.
"Is substantial." He leaned forward, finally picking up my carefully prepared payment plan. He scanned it for maybe five seconds before setting it back down with a soft thud that felt like a door closing. "Your current salary would take seven years to repay this, Ms Moretti. Even if I approved it, which I won't, you'd be in debt to me until you're thirty-five."
The floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet. My fingers gripped the edge of his mahogany desk, feeling the cool, smooth wood under my palms. "I can work overtime. Take on extra projects. I'll do anything…"
"Anything." He repeated the word softly, and something shifted in his expression. The coldness remained, but beneath it I glimpsed something else. Something that made my stomach drop.
Before I could respond, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and I watched his entire body go rigid. His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath his skin. His fingers tightened around the phone until his knuckles turned white.
For three heartbeats, he just stared at whatever message he'd received. Then he set the phone down carefully, as though he were stopping himself from hurling it through the floor-to-ceiling window behind him.
When he looked at me again, something had changed in his gaze. The calculation was sharper now, more focused… desperate, even though the word seemed absurd when applied to Vincent Ashford.
A bead of sweat traced down my spine.
"Tell me, Ms. Moretti. When you said 'anything,' how literally did you mean that?"
Warning bells hammered in my ears, but I thought of Mom in that hospital bed, her hand shaking when she tried to hold her water cup.
The way she'd apologised last week for being such a burden, as if her life were an inconvenience to be managed rather than cherished.
"Literally," I heard myself say. My voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else. "I meant it literally."
Vincent stood, walking to the window. The setting sun backlit him, turning him into a silhouette of sharp angles and shadows. The city stretched out behind him, forty floors below, with tiny cars and tinier people living their ordinary lives.
He was silent for so long I began to wonder if he'd forgotten I was there.
The leather chair creaked as I shifted my weight. My portfolio felt slippery in my sweaty hands.
"I have a proposition," he said finally in a neutral voice. "One that would clear your debt immediately and provide an additional two million dollars."
Two million. The number was so absurd I almost laughed. "Mr. Ashford, I don't…"
"I'm not finished." He turned, and the look on his face froze the words in my throat. "What I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room. If you repeat it to anyone… anyone, I will destroy you so thoroughly you'll wish you'd never been born. Do you understand?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice. My mouth had gone completely dry.
He walked back to his desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a thick folder, dropping it between us with a heavy thud that made me flinch.
"This is a contract. A marriage contract, to be specific." He paused, watching my reaction. "If you agree to the terms, you will become my wife in name. You will live in my home, attend social functions as required, and fulfil one critical obligation."
He slid the contract across the desk. I didn't want to look at it… didn't even want to touch it.
But my eyes betrayed me, scanning the first page, and four words jumped out as though they'd been written in fire:
Marriage. Heir. Eighteen months.
"You want me to..." I couldn't finish the sentence or even form the words with my tongue.
"Have my child." He said it as though he were discussing a quarterly earnings report. "In exchange, I will pay for your mother's treatment in full. I will transfer two million dollars into an account in your name. And when our arrangement is complete, after the child is born and the inheritance is secured, you will receive a generous divorce settlement and never have to worry about money again."
I shook my head before he'd finished. "This is insane. You're asking me to sell myself…"
"I'm offering you a solution to an impossible problem." His voice cut through mine. "Your mother is dying, Ms. Moretti. You walked into my office desperate, willing to put yourself in debt for the next seven years just for a chance to save her. I'm offering you that chance, plus financial security for the rest of your life."
The air conditioning hummed. Somewhere far below, a siren wailed, my hands trembling in my lap.
"Why me?" The question came out as barely more than a whisper.
"Because you need me as much as I need you. Desperation makes people... reliable." He leaned back in his chair, studying me with those unreadable grey eyes. "And because you're nobody. No tabloid history, no scandal, no family connections that would complicate matters. You're perfect precisely because you don't matter."
The words should have stung, but they were too honest for that. He was right. In his world… this world of corner offices and casual millions, I was nobody.
"What if I say no?"
He shrugged. "Then you leave, and we both lose what we need. Your mother dies because you were too proud or too scared to do what was necessary."
My hands trembled. I pressed them flat against my portfolio to hide it, feeling the cardboard bend slightly under my palms.
"And if I say yes?"
"Then you sign the contract tonight. I'll have the funds transferred to the Swiss clinic by tomorrow morning. Your mother can begin treatment by the end of the week."
He leaned forward, his eyes boring into mine with an intensity that made it hard to breathe.
"I'm not asking you to love me, Ms. Moretti. I'm not even asking you to like me. I'm asking you to be practical."
I thought of Mom, her weak voice when she'd told me last week to let her go. To live my life.
To be happy. She had no idea I was here, that I was even considering...
God, what was I considering?
"I need to read the contract," I whispered.
"Of course." Vincent stood, checking his watch… something sleek and probably worth more than my car. "Take it home. Read every word. My attorney will answer any questions."
He pulled a business card from his pocket and set it on top of the contract. "You have twenty-four hours to decide, Ms. Moretti. After that, the offer expires, and I'll find someone else."
Someone else… Like I was an interchangeable, replaceable substitute. In his world, I suppose that's exactly what I was… just someone else.
I reached for the contract with numb fingers. It was heavy in my hands, weighted with implications I couldn't begin to process. The paper felt expensive, the kind that didn't bend easily.
"One more thing." Vincent's voice stopped me as I stood to leave with unsteady legs. "If you tell anyone about this conversation, your mother, friends, anyone… the deal is void. This arrangement requires absolute discretion."
"I understand."
"Do you?" He tilted his head, studying me as though I were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
"Because once you sign that contract, your life changes forever. You'll be entering a world that will want to destroy you just for existing in it.
You'll be giving up your privacy, your anonymity, possibly your dignity. And at the end of it all, I will take your child, and you'll walk away with nothing but money."
The bluntness was almost refreshing after all the corporate speak. "Then why would anyone agree?"
"Because sometimes survival requires sacrifice." He walked to the door, opening it in clear dismissal.
Cool air from the hallway rushed in, carrying the faint scent of coffee and printer toner.
"Twenty-four hours, Ms. Moretti. Choose wisely."
I walked past him with the contract in hand, but stopped right at the door. Something about this felt wrong… not morally wrong, I'd already accepted that… but strategically wrong.
Vincent Ashford didn't make offers like this without leverage, without an angle I wasn't seeing yet.
"Mr. Ashford?" I turned back. He was already reaching for his phone, dismissing me from his attention.
"Yes?"
"This eighteen-month timeline. It's very specific." I kept my voice steady, as if I were discussing a restoration project rather than selling my future. "What happens if you don't meet it?"
Something flickered across his face… surprise that I'd asked, or annoyance that I'd noticed.
"That's not your concern."
"If I'm going to be part of this arrangement, it is." I took a step back into his office, even though everything in me wanted to run. "You're not doing this for fun. Someone's forcing your hand, which means you're just as desperate as I am. So what happens if you fail?"
He studied me for a long moment, and I watched him recalculate whatever assessment he'd made of me in our first meeting. "You're more observant than I gave you credit for."
"I restore paintings for a living, Mr. Ashford. I'm trained to see what's hidden beneath the surface." I lifted the contract slightly. "So I'll read this very carefully. And if I find anything that suggests you're setting me up to fail so you have a convenient scapegoat, I'll walk away, and you can find someone else to use."
His jaw tightened. "I'm not…"
"Twenty-four hours," I interrupted, echoing his words back to him. "I'll choose wisely."
This time when I left, I didn't look back. But as I walked to the elevator, my hands had stopped shaking. Because I'd seen something in Vincent Ashford's eyes when I challenged him: not anger, but respect.
He thought he was buying a desperate woman he could control; he had no idea what he was actually getting.
I had twenty-four hours to read every word of that contract, to research Vincent Ashford and whatever was forcing him into this arrangement, and to figure out exactly how much power I actually had in this negotiation.
Mom always said I inherited Nonna's stubbornness. Tonight, I'd find out if I inherited her survival instincts too.