by Shen, L. J.
I was not accustomed to gravitating toward a specific human being.
Frankly, I didn’t know if I was capable of desiring a woman. If I were, I had no doubt it came with side effects I wasn’t going to like.
Persephone tried again, puffing on the cigar gently, then handed it back to me. The tips of our fingers brushed. A zing of electricity shot up my spine in a sensation I could only describe as both horrible and pleasant.
I wanted to kiss her and throw her out of the car, preferably at the same time.
Fortunately for my legal department, I did neither.
“What else would our marriage entail?” She lowered her lashes, licking her lower lip.
“You will be available to me for social gatherings, volunteer at my charity of choice, and play your part as a dutiful wife.”
“Hmm.” She relaxed into the seat, cherishing the luxurious leather like a spoiled cat. “Anything more?”
“You will have to sign an airtight NDA and a draconic pre-nuptial agreement. But as long as you’re my wife, you’ll be provided for. Generously so.”
“What if you decide to divorce me for someone else?”
I can barely come to terms with one marriage. Two would be a stretch.
“I wouldn’t let that worry keep you up at night,” I said tersely. “I don’t have feelings, Flower Girl, which means I can’t give them to you nor can I take them from you. I will not develop any toward anyone else.”
“Other than our heirs,” she said the last word in a terrible English accent, peppering it with air quotes.
I suspected my neutrality toward people would extend to my future children. But telling her that seemed counterproductive to putting a baby in her.
“Naturally.” I moved on to the other topic on our agenda. “As previously mentioned, sex is not a part of the bargain. I will satisfy my sexual needs elsewhere. The encounters will be discreet and confidential, but they will happen, and I expect no fits of drama from your end.”
For all my faults—and hell knew there were many—increased sexual appetite wasn’t one of them. Twice a month was enough to keep me sated.
She scrunched her nose. “You mean you’ll still go to hookers?”
“They prefer to be called sex workers these days.”
“Why?”
“I imagine because hooker has a degrading connotation and implies both criminal and immortal activity. Though I do not engage in deep conversation with the women I hire to suck my cock.”
“No, why do you hire escorts? You can have any woman you want.”
“And I can have any woman I want because of my bank account. Which brings us to square one—why not pay for the service and skip the dinner and chitchat?”
“What’s wrong with dinner and chitchat?” she pressed.
“They require socializing, and I am firmly against the concept.”
“What made you the way you are?”
“The way I am?” I snarled.
“Cold. Ruthless. Jaded.” Her eyes roamed my face as though the answer was written plainly on it.
“A mixture of crushing expectations, a bad year, and lackluster upbringing.”
Everything about my life had been designed to keep me on the straight and narrow. That was the only way for me to run the empire I’d been born to lead. I came into this world with a certain disadvantage, knowing my family frowned upon weaknesses. I had to fight the way I was created to survive and took it day by day.
Her gaze clung to mine. “I don’t buy your story.”
“Lucky for me, I’m not James Patterson.”
“Will we be sharing joint custody of our poor children?”
“We could,” I answered evenly, “if you don’t mind them growing up with nannies half the time. I’ll be busy running Royal Pipelines and expanding the Fitzpatrick empire.”
Real estate. Commercial banking. Private equity. I wanted to take over the world.
“Let me get this straight.” She rubbed at her forehead, frowning. “You want to have kids, but you don’t want to take care of them or make them with your wife?”
“You seem to be figuring it out well all by yourself.” I puffed on my cigar. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Well, then I suggest you drop me off right here, go back to Minka, and pick up where you both left off.”
Right here was the middle of the highway. Although throwing her out was tempting, it was a headline I was less than eager to explain.
“I can’t raise children,” I said evenly.
“You will not be a deadbeat dad. You will take care of them half the time. And I mean really spend time with them. Change diapers, take them to T-ball practices, and reenact their favorite Disney movies. With full-blown costumes.”
T-ball? Disney? Flower Girl was clearly planning on raising a state university educated dental hygienist, not the next CEO of Royal Pipelines. Luckily, I would be there to steer my spawns in the right direction.
“Sure,” I quipped. “I’ll do all of that nonsense.”
Twice a year since they’ll be in Evon and other European institutions year-round.
She munched on the tip of her hair, which I found surprisingly not disgusting. “I have other conditions, too. I’ll be able to keep my job and move around unrestricted. You will not be putting any surveillance or security on me. I want to live a normal life.”
“You won’t need to work a day in your life.”
The girl was slower than an airport Wi-Fi.
“So?” She looked at me strangely as though she wasn’t following the conversation. That was fine. Between my Mensa member IQ and her beauty, our kids wouldn’t be a complete waste of oxygen. “I don’t work because I have to.” She narrowed her eyes. “I work because I love what I do.”
That word again.
“Fine. Keep your job.”
“What about security?”
“No security.” That would be a waste of my precious resources.
“One more thing—as long as other men are off-limits, so are other women.” She raised a finger in the air.
“This is not how it works.” I put out my cigar, losing patience. I’d negotiated putting three hundred-foot deep holes in the belly of planet Earth in less time than it took me to close a deal with this woman. “You’re the one at my mercy. I make the rules.”
“Am I?” She blinked at me innocently. “Because, correct me if I’m wrong, but you seemed to have told me you have another wife lined up, and a nice, long list of potential candidates if she doesn’t work out. Yet here you are with me. For a reason I can’t fathom, we want each other. Let’s not pretend otherwise, Kill.”
Kill.
Only my friends called me that. All two of them.
“The only reason I prefer you to Minka is because if you die, the women in my life would be upset, and the one thing I dislike more than humans are distressed humans.”
“I don’t care what excuse you give yourself for marrying me,” she said plainly. “If we get married, we’ll be equal. At least, you’ll pretend we are.”
I popped my knuckles in succession.
She was pissing me off. That was a feeling, and I didn’t do those.
“Let me put this plainly.” I smiled politely. “I’m not going to stay celibate for months or even weeks.”
“You won’t have to. You’ll have a wife.”
She was so red at this point, I wondered if she was going to combust in my back seat. That would be a hassle to clean from the brand-new Escalade. Not to mention tricky to explain.
“No.” I felt my muscles tightening under my suit.
“No, what?”
“I won’t sleep with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you don’t attract me,” I deadpanned.
I was no longer pissed off. I was sweating now, too. Why couldn’t I stick to my Minka plan? Persephone was my idea of hell. I
couldn’t treat her with the same brashness I handled Sailor and Emmabelle because she was an innocent little thing like my sister, yet I had to remind her who was calling all the shots.
“How, pray tell, do you mean to impregnate me, if you don’t want to have sex with me?” She scowled, looking frustratingly adorable while doing so. “You are familiar with how babies come to be, right? Because none of the versions include a cabbage.”
I began scrolling through my phone, answering emails.
“I know how babies are made, Persephone. That’s why I bought a stork,” I said gravely.
She looked shocked for a second, before letting out a giggle. It was a cute giggle, too. Soft and throaty. If I had a heart—it would squeeze.
“I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Kill.”
“I didn’t know you were so hard-pressed to get laid,” I volleyed back, still typing an email to Keith, aka Lord of the Sleep. “To answer your question, we’ll use IVF. You’ll be knocked up in no time, and we won’t have to know each other biblically.”
“What’s wrong with the Bible?” She eyed me.
“False advertisement.” I smirked sardonically. “God doesn’t exist.”
Physically wounded from my last comment, Persephone coiled in her side of the back seat. Apparently, she drew the line at God.
“I really ought to hate you.”
“Don’t bother. Hate is just love with fear and jealousy thrown into the mix.”
“Why me? Why not my sister?” She squared her shoulders, clutching onto the remainder of her defiance with bleeding fingernails.
Because she’s probably seen more dick than a train station urinal.
I’d broken many people in my life to know what they looked like a second before submitting.
Persephone was fully bent and on the verge of snapping.
Once broken, she’d be easy to reassemble to fit my lifestyle and needs.
“Because she possesses virtually all of the traits I despise in a person—from being eccentric, entitled, bigmouthed, and opinionated to simply being alive.”
“Yet you always ogle her.” The quietness in her voice left no room for doubt. Persephone didn’t like it when I looked at her sister.
“I looked at her because I didn’t want to look at you,” I grumbled.
“Why didn’t you want to look at me?”
Because you make my pulse beat faster, and that could ruin everything I’ve ever worked for.
I tossed my phone aside. What was I thinking, marrying this woman?
What was I thinking, putting my silly, unexplainable weakness in my path?
“Does it matter why I couldn’t look at you? I’m looking at you now, and I’ve come to terms with what I see. Speaking of your sister, she would have taken no longer than five minutes of negotiations and a quickie to convince. Yet you’re the one I chose.”
Flower Girl’s face twisted in abhorrence because she knew I was right. Emmabelle displayed the moral compass of a fortune cookie. On paper, she was a better match for my brash personality. In practice, however, Persephone was the one who kept my mind reeling.
“We’re done here. Email me your ring measurements.” I pressed the button to roll down the partition.
She held up a palm. “Two more conditions before I accept.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to advise her to take these conditions and shove them inside her pert little ass. But even I acknowledged that she was about to sign off her entire life to one of America’s most hated men. If she wanted a nice Hermès bag and new pair of tits as a wedding gift, I could accommodate that.
“Shoot.”
“One—I want us to conceive our children the old-fashioned way. I know you think it’s pitiful and pathetic of me, but I don’t care. I don’t want to go through IVF treatments. I don’t want to take someone else’s place in my quest for a baby before I tried the natural way. I know I’m not your taste, but if I come this far for you, it is only fair that you will…”
“Come inside you,” I finished for her. “Got it.”
I loathed the idea of sleeping with Persephone. The very concept of touching her made my skin crawl. Not because I didn’t find her attractive. The opposite was true. Ultimately, though, between impregnating her and having her killed, I preferred the former. Marginally.
“Your funeral,” I drawled. “I’m a notoriously selfish man, in bed and out of it. What’s the other condition?”
“No escorts until I conceive. You can’t hop in and out of my bed and still visit your European girlfriends.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she mimicked my dry, indifferent tone. “When you need satisfaction, you will come to me. We’ll service each other until I fall pregnant.”
Her pink cheeks implied she was mortified by the situation, but she said those things anyway, which I couldn’t help but appreciate.
We were still driving around. I looked down at my Rolex and realized we’d been going back and forth for two and a half hours.
Where did the time go, and how on earth could I claim it back?
I turned to look at her again. Her face was twice its usual size, cut and bruised.
I knew the little idiot was going to walk away from this deal if I said no.
She did it before and would not hesitate to do it again.
A lamb marching straight into Colin Byrne’s arms for slaughter.
“You drive a hard bargain. Welcome to the dark side, Persephone. Leave your heart at the door.”
The next day, Devon Whitehall knocked on my apartment door, looking like sin in a stripy navy-blue suit and a dashing haircut. I, in contrast, was wearing Walmart’s finest dress from six winters ago paired with shoes that had seen better days and a discounted windbreaker from Salvation Army.
Carrie Bradshaw, right behind you!
“Mr. Whitehall?” I hugged my door, stifling a yawn.
He shouldered past me, soldiering into the studio apartment where Emmabelle was asleep in our shared bed, clad in nothing but a thin red negligee, one bronzed leg flung over the duvet.
She caught his attention, making him pause and admire the view.
“And who is this foam-born Aphrodite?”
“That would be my sister, Mr. Zeus. Now if you’d be as kind as to peel your creepy eyes off her legs…”
Devon turned toward me reluctantly, shoving a mass of paperwork in my chest. Like Cillian, Whitehall had the uncanny ability to make the air stir around him. But while Kill made me want to die in his arms, Devon sent off a different vibe. A mysterious one.
“I filled out most of it. Sign where indicated with arrow flags and your initials on the bottom of each page. Go through your spouse’s details one more time and ensure all the information is correct. There’s a list of outstanding documentation I’ll need you to hand over before the marriage can be resolved. It’s on the last page. Get it to me by tomorrow morning. It’ll take the court two business days to process the application, in which you agree not to claim any of your and Mr. Veitch’s mutual funds or possessions.”
“We have no mutual funds or possessions.”
“Precisely.”
Asking him how he planned to grant me a speedy divorce was futile.
Cillian Fitzpatrick was a resourceful man and only worked with the cream of the crop. With people like Devon Whitehall and Sam Brennan on retainer, he could do just about anything, short of plucking the moon from the sky just so he could enjoy a bit more darkness.
I clutched the papers to my rib cage, excitement and dread swirling in my gut.
“Thank you, Devon. That’s—”
“Bugger, don’t thank me, you silly little thing.” He lifted a hand, indicating for me to stop.
“I didn’t do this out of the goodness of my heart. I did it because your future husband needs a baby-maker, preferably the kind that would bring positive press to his doorstep. Which is why you will also find in this load of legal documents a nondisclosure agreement and a prenup, bo
th of which I advise you to read carefully in the company of a proper solicitor.” He plucked a few notes from his wallet, tucking them between my fingers. “Here’s some cash in case you can’t afford one. Consider this my wedding gift to you. There’s a sheet of dos and don’ts attached, some stipulations you verbally agreed to yesterday. No house-sharing, a non-compete clause…”
“Non-compete?” I blinked. “I’m not planning to open a petroleum company anytime soon.”
I mean, never say never, but this was a pretty unlikely scenario.
Devon smirked.
“Having access to the Fitzpatrick clan means you can spy for the competitors or decide to work for someone who’d pose a conflict of interest.”
“I’d never do that.”
“Clearly, darling.” He patted my head as though I was a puppy he was about to turn his back on before adopting its sibling. “We trust you completely. And by ‘completely’ I mean, about eighty-three percent. The other seventeen is why we prefer to have it in writing. You’ll have to mortgage your inner organs if your never turns into a maybe.”
“How do you live with yourself?” I murmured absently, flipping through the pages. I meant that as a general statement. Devon, Kill, Sam…they were so jaded, I sometimes wondered if they believed in anything at all.
Devon laughed easily, his gaze sliding toward my sister again.
“Considering your face was smashed by mobsters, I wouldn’t judge your future husband for wanting to protect his assets.”
Future husband.
The words hadn’t sank in. Not yet.
“Do you mind?” I jerked my head in Belle’s direction. She usually slept like the dead, but I didn’t want to take any risks. “My sister doesn’t know what happened.”
“Is she blind?” He cocked an eyebrow, his eyes zeroing in on my black shiner.
“She thinks I got robbed.”
“No offense, but you don’t look like the type to carry extra cash.” A pause. “Or coins. Or food stamps. You’re dreadfully gaunt.”
I wanted him out of the apartment, out of this building, and out of my life before Belle woke up. I still hadn’t told her about Cillian. By the time I got home yesterday, she’d already left for work and returned sometime after five in the morning, when I was asleep. We were having dinner and drinks at Ash’s tonight, and I thought it would be a good idea to break the news then.