I Signed A Secret Contract To Give A Billionaire An Heir — But I Broke The Only Rule
Part 1
The smell of cold ink and old paper made my stomach turn.
One hundred thousand dollars was enough to buy my father out of bankruptcy, secure a quiet cottage, and completely purchase my soul.
All I had to do was lie in the dark with a stranger, swell with his child, and walk away the moment the umbilical cord was severed.
Signing the document didn’t bring tears to my eyes.
I just wondered if the black stains would ever wash off my fingers.
My father’s gambling had torn the Hughes name to shreds, leaving me surviving on pennies a week mending lace.
Mr. Davis slid the heavy parchment across the mahogany desk, his hands smelling of stale tobacco.
He didn’t look at me, preferring to study the peeling wallpaper.
The arrangement is strictly clinical.
His employer requires an heir, and you require salvation from the gutters.
I let out a short, scraping laugh.
And the child?
You will surrender all rights upon birth.
You will be dead to them, and they to you.
I packed my single carpet bag in the damp chill of my boarding house room.
Three cotton dresses and a pair of worn boots were the sum total of my worth.
The carriage sent for me was unmarked black lacquer, smelling intensely of leather and lavender.
We drove for hours, leaving the choked streets of the city for the sprawling, bruised sky of the countryside.
Kensington Manor loomed through the fog like a limestone beast.
Its iron gates shrieked as they were pushed open.
Mrs. Miller was waiting on the sweeping front steps.
She was stiff as an ironing board, assessing me in one sweeping, dismissive glance.
Mr. Kensington is waiting in the library.
I followed her through corridors that echoed with our footsteps.
The air felt heavy with the scent of beeswax and old, damp wool.
There were no portraits on the walls, making the house feel more like a mausoleum than a home.
The library doors were heavy oak.
A single fire burned in the hearth, throwing erratic shadows across the Turkish rug.
He was standing by the window, his back to me.
Craig Kensington was taller than I expected, his shoulders broad under a tailored black coat.
He didn’t turn around.
They tell me you didn’t haggle over the price.
His voice was a deep, rough baritone that scratched against the quiet of the room.
There is no point in haggling when the price already buys everything I own.
My voice shook slightly.
I swallowed hard, hating myself for showing weakness.
He finally turned.
Staying near the edge of the firelight offered him some protection, but it was enough.
Half of his face was perfectly aristocratic, featuring a sharp jaw and an eye the color of storm-tossed water.
The other half was ruined.
A fire in his youth had melted the skin, drawing the corner of his mouth into a permanent, tight grimace.
The ear on that side was gone.
He watched me, waiting for the flinch.
I felt the instinctive animal urge to drop my gaze to the floor.
I forced myself to look at him, taking in the pink and white ridges of scarred flesh.
It is an ugly thing.
I have seen men starve to death in the gutters.
Skin is just skin.
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock.
The contract is on the desk.
We begin tonight.
The room assigned to me was massive and suffocatingly opulent.
The bed was a four-poster monster draped in heavy crimson velvet.
Silk sheets felt cold and slippery to the touch.
I sat on the edge, a sheer white cotton nightgown covering me from neck to ankle.
It felt like a shroud.
At exactly ten o’clock, the handle clicked.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Craig stepped in carrying a single oil lamp.
He locked the door behind him, the metallic slide of the bolt echoing loudly.
You may turn off the lamp if you wish.
I don’t mind the light.
I do.
He walked over and blew it out.
The room plunged into darkness, save for the dying embers in the hearth.
I lay back on the pillows, staring up at the invisible canopy above me.
It is just biology.
The mattress dipped under his weight.
He smelled of sandalwood, clean linen, and a faint, sharp tang of medicinal soap.
We lay there in the dark for a long time.
The silence stretched tight, vibrating with unspoken dread.
I don’t know how to do this.
You don’t have to do anything.
His tone was utterly bleak, breaking something in me.
Not my heart, but my pride.
He shifted his weight, his knee knocking hard against my thigh.
I let out a sharp breath of pain.
Apologies.
It’s fine.
There was no kissing, no soft words, just the rustle of cotton and the abrupt weight of him settling over me.
I stared into the blackness, digging my fingernails into my own palms to anchor myself to the present.
He kept his face turned away, his forearm resting across my collarbone to bear his own weight.
It was an oddly considerate gesture in an otherwise clinical act.
He was gone minutes later, leaving me alone with the smell of sandalwood and a cold, damp patch on the sheets.
Three weeks passed in a blur of gray rain and silence.
My days were entirely my own.
I walked the long galleries, running my fingers over the dusty spines of encyclopedias.
He only came to me at night.
The routine became deeply ingrained, yet it never grew less awkward.
Then the edges of the transaction began to fray.
One night it was bitterly cold, the fire having died out hours before.
When Craig climbed into bed, I was shivering uncontrollably.
He stopped mid-motion.
Instead of the usual quick, detached routine, he pulled the heavy blankets up around my shoulders.
He lay down beside me, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me flush against his chest.
I stiffened entirely.
We had never touched outside of the act itself.
Relax.
I am just warming you.
He didn’t initiate anything that night.
I felt the steady, powerful thud of his heart against my shoulder blade.
It was terrifyingly intimate.
Being treated like a human being made the lines of our contract blur.
The next night, he came in late smelling faintly of brandy.
He didn’t move to undress, standing as a dark silhouette against the moonlight.
I went to my club in the city today.
The alcohol had loosened his tongue.
A man I went to college with was there.
He couldn’t stomach my face.
He couldn’t even offer me a drink.
People are cowards.
They fear what reminds them of their own fragility.
He stepped closer to the bed.
Do you fear me?
No.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, reaching out in the dark.
His fingers brushed against my jaw.
I flinched from the sudden, shocking gentleness of the touch.
The contract was a shield.
But sitting here with a broken man touching my face as if I were made of glass, the shields were cracking.
I reached up and caught his wrist.
I meant to push his hand away, to maintain the cold distance we needed.
Instead, my hand slid up his arm until my fingers found his face.
Every muscle in his body turned to stone.
My fingertips mapped the smooth skin of his right cheek before moving to the left side.
He let out a choked breath, trying to pull away.
Hold still.
I traced the raised, jagged ridges of the burn scars.
It wasn’t a romantic gesture.
It was me telling him without words that I would not look at my shoes.
He trembled violently, dropping his head to press his ruined cheek into my palm.
The sound that tore from his throat was more agonizing than a sob.
We didn’t fulfill the contract that night.
He simply lay beside me, holding onto my hand like a drowning man clutching a piece of driftwood.
The nausea hit me a few weeks later, dragging me from sleep with the taste of bile thick in my throat.
Dr. Evans confirmed the pregnancy the next morning with brisk, clinical detachment.
You are with child.
I will inform Mr. Kensington.
I sat on the edge of the massive bed, staring at my bare feet.
A heavy, suffocating weight dropped onto my chest.
There was a stranger growing inside me, a parasite made of my desperation and Craig’s grief.
I waited to feel a spark of maternal joy.
Nothing came except a cold, calculating terror.
I had signed away my rights to the child, but I never planned on falling for the man who bought it.
