Damien's POV
I threw the whiskey glass at the wall and watched it explode into a thousand pieces.
"She's perfect," my father said, not even flinching. Marcus Wolfe never flinched. "Young, healthy, desperate. She'll sign."
"I don't care if she's perfect." I turned away from the broken glass, my jaw tight. "I told you I'd handle this my own way."
"Your way?" My father laughed, cold and sharp. "Your way was dating that artist for three months. The one who sold our private photos to the tabloids. Or maybe the model who tried to blackmail you? You're thirty-five, Damien. Every woman you touch either wants your money or wants to destroy you."
He wasn't wrong. That's what made me so angry.
I walked to my office window, staring down at Manhattan sixty floors below. Tiny cars. Tiny people. From up here, everything looked small and manageable. I'd built my tech empire by staying above it all, never getting close enough to anyone to get hurt.
My mother taught me that lesson when I was eight years old.
She'd married my father for love—stupid, blind love. He'd married her for her family's shipping connections. When she figured out the truth, when she realized she was just a business deal to him, something broke inside her. She died when I was twelve. The doctors said heart failure. I knew better. She died of a broken heart.
I swore I'd never be that stupid.
"This girl," I said quietly, still looking out the window. "Aria Zhang. What do we know about her?"
My father opened a file on my desk. "Twenty-three years old. Dropped out of NYU to work minimum wage jobs. Father's a gambling addict. Younger brother, age twelve. They owe Chen's crew two hundred thousand. Vincent bought the debt this afternoon."
"So she's trapped."
"She's motivated," my father corrected. "There's a difference. Trapped people are unpredictable. Motivated people are controllable."
I hated how much sense he made.
"One year," I said. "She lives here, we produce an heir, she leaves. Clean and simple."
"Exactly. No emotional attachment. No messy divorce. No woman trying to take half your empire or expose family business." My father stood up, straightening his suit. "The Volkov family has been pressuring you to marry Elena for two years. This solves that problem too. Once you have an heir, they lose leverage."
The Volkov family. Russian mafia connections my father had cultivated for decades. Elena Volkov had decided I was going to be her husband, and what Elena wanted, she usually got. Unless I could prove I was already married and producing legitimate heirs.
Politics. Always politics.
"What if she refuses?" I asked.
My father smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Vincent made the alternatives very clear. She'll sign."
Something twisted in my chest. I ignored it. Feelings were useless.
"I want to meet her first," I heard myself say.
My father's eyebrows rose. "Why? This isn't a romance, Damien. It's a transaction."
"Because I don't buy anything without inspecting it first." The words tasted bitter in my mouth, but I kept my face blank. "Set up a meeting. Tomorrow."
"Fine." My father headed for the door, then paused. "One more thing. Don't be kind to her. Kind gives them hope. Hope makes them think they matter. She's a means to an end. The moment you forget that, she becomes dangerous."
He left.
I stood alone in my office, surrounded by awards and expensive furniture and the broken glass from my whiskey. Everything I'd built. Everything I'd sacrificed for.
My phone buzzed. A message from Vincent: She took the contract. Reading it now. Will confirm tomorrow.
I should have felt satisfied. Relieved. The plan was working.
Instead, I felt... nothing. Just the familiar emptiness that had lived in my chest since my mother died.
I pulled up the file photo of Aria Zhang on my computer. She looked young in the picture, maybe taken a year ago. Plain face, sad eyes, messy hair pulled back. She looked tired. Scared. Ordinary.
In one year, I'd make her pregnant, take my child, and send her away with enough money to never worry again. She'd be fine. Better than fine. Rich and free.
So why did I feel like I was about to make the worst mistake of my life?
My office door burst open. Vincent rushed in, his face tense.
"We have a problem," he said.
My blood went cold. "What kind of problem?"
"Someone put a note in the contract. A warning telling her to run." Vincent pulled out his phone, showing me a photo of handwriting I didn't recognize. "It wasn't me. Wasn't your father. Wasn't anyone on our team."
The words on the note burned into my brain: Don't trust anything they tell you. Run while you still can.
"Who?" I demanded.
"I don't know. But someone wants to sabotage this deal. Someone who had access to our files, our plans." Vincent's jaw tightened. "Someone close to us."
A traitor. In my organization. Someone who knew about the contract, about Aria, about everything.
"Lock it down," I ordered. "Find them. Now."
Vincent nodded and left quickly.
I stared at the note again, my mind racing. Who would do this? Why? What did they gain from warning her?
And the bigger question—the one that made my hands shake—was simple:
Would Aria Zhang run?
Or would she walk straight into my trap?
My phone buzzed again. Another message from Vincent: She's coming to the penthouse. Tomorrow night, 8 PM. She wants to meet you before signing.
My heart beat faster. I told myself it was just anticipation. Just business.
But deep down, some part of me—the part I'd buried after my mother died—whispered something terrifying:
What if she's not like the others? What if this girl breaks you the way your mother was broken?
I crushed that voice immediately.
Aria Zhang was a contract. A transaction. A means to an end.
Nothing more.
I had to believe that.
Because if I was wrong—if I let myself feel anything for her—we'd both be destroyed.
Tomorrow night, I'd meet the woman who would carry my child.
The woman I'd already decided to throw away.
I just had to make sure I didn't look into her eyes too long.
Because something told me that if I did, I might see something I couldn't ignore.
Something human.
Something real.
And that would ruin everything.