A DESPERATE DEAL

chapter 2: The marriage contract

The air in Damian Cole’s office smelled like money and cold.

Not just cologne, not just leather chairs and polished glass. It smelled like power like the kind of money that could buy buildings, buy people, buy silence. The AC was so low Ada’s arms had goosebumps under her old blouse.

Ada stood in front of his desk, her hands clenched so tight her nails dug into her palms and left small red moons. The contract on his desk had her name printed on it ADA JOHNSON and underneath it, her entire future, typed in black and white.

“Sign it,” Damian said.

He didn’t look up from his laptop, his fingers moved fast across the keyboard, fast and precise, like her life was just another email he needed to clear before lunch. His voice was flat, like he was ordering coffee. No please, no emotion.

Ada swallowed, her throat was dry like she had swallowed sand.

“Sir, I don’t understand,” she whispered. Her voice was shaking. “You want me to marry you? I don’t even know you we met two minutes ago.”

Finally, he looked up.

His eyes were black, no warmth, just business. Sharp, tired, and completely uninterested in her panic.

“Marriage. One year you will play my wife,” he said, as if explaining to a child. “Family dinners on Sundays, two corporate galas a month, one photoshoot for Forbes. That’s it. You smile, you hold my hand, you say ‘Yes, darling.’ You will live in my guest wing in Banana Island. You will have a driver, a stylist, an allowance in return, I pay your debts 50 million naira today now.”

He said it so simply like it was a normal job offer.

The room tilted a little.

Her mother’s house. The small yellow house in Surulere with the peeling paint and the mango tree. The only thing her mother had left after her father died five years ago from a stroke. The bank had been calling for weeks. Threatening. Yesterday, two men in suits had come with a paper and shouted at her mother while she was trying to eat her drugs. Her mother had cried all night.

“I... I have a boyfriend,” Ada whispered. The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. She didn’t have anyone. Not since Chinedu left when her dad got sick and said, “Ada, you have too much baggage.” She had been alone for two years, working, hustling, surviving. “He won’t like this I can’t just...”

Damian leaned back in his chair. A slow smile spread on his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was cold, mocking.

“Then he can visit you on Sundays when I’m not using you for family photos. Or he can leave. Most men do it when there’s no money.”

His words stung because they were true.

He slid a pen across the desk. Black, heavy, a Mont Blanc. It rolled slowly and stopped right in front of her, exactly at the line where she was supposed to sign. He had planned this.

Ada stared at it, her heart was beating so loud she was sure he could hear it.

On the desk, beside the contract, was a thin file. She could see her own passport photo paper-clipped to it. Her mother’s hospital bill from LUTH. Her bank statement with only 12,430 naira balance. Even her NYSC certificate.

He knew everything.

RULES OF THE CONTRACT - printed in bold on page 2:

1. No love. No touching unless necessary for appearance. No questions about my private life.

2. Appear at all family events. Smile. Hold my hand. Be the perfect, loving wife. My grandfather must never suspect.

3. No dating other men. No scandals. No interviews. I don’t share what’s mine, even on paper.

4. You will live in my house, but we live separate lives. My life does not concern you.

5. Break any rule and the contract is void immediately, and so is your mother’s house and my money. You will pay back everything with 20% interest.

Fifty million with 20% interest. She would be in debt forever. She would die in debt.

Outside, Lagos traffic was screaming. Horns, danfos shouting, hawkers selling gala. Life was going on outside this cold glass tower. Inside, her heart was screaming louder.

“Why me?” she asked quietly. Her eyes were burning with tears and she refused to let fall. “You’re Damian Cole you can have any woman in Lagos. Models, actresses, influencers with millions of followers. Why me? I’m... I’m nobody.”

Damian stood. He was tall. Very tall. He walked to the floor to ceiling the window. His back was to her. Broad shoulders in a perfect navy suit that probably cost more than her house. For a moment he just looked out at Lagos.

“My grandfather is dying,” he said. His voice was quieter now, lower. The business mask slipped for one second. “He has stage four lung cancer. Three months, maybe less. He raised me after my parents died in a car crash. He built the Cole Group from nothing. His last wish is to see me settled before he goes. He’s been asking every day, ‘When will you bring a wife home, Damian? I want to see my great-grandchildren before I close my eyes.’”

He turned around. His face was hard again.

“I don’t have time for dating. Or love. Or drama. I have 4,000 employees, three companies to run, and a board that wants to see me stable. Love is a liability in my world, Miss Johnson. So I’m buying a solution.”

Buying. Like she was a car, or a building, or a chair for his office.

Ada’s eyes burned. She thought of her mother in the hospital bed this morning. Pale, thin, asking with a weak voice, Ada, is the house safe? Did the bank call again? She had lied, No, Mommy, everything is fine.

She thought of the debt collectors who came yesterday. Loud, rude, banging the blue gate her mother had held her chest.

“What if I say no?” she asked. Even though she already knew the answer. Even though her hands were already reaching for the pen because she had no choice.

Damian’s face didn’t change. He walked back to his desk, pressed a button on his intercom.

“Sarah, cancel the hold on the Surulere property foreclosure. Miss Johnson is leaving.”

Ada’s blood ran cold.

“Wait!” she shouted, louder than she meant to. “Wait, please! Don’t! Please don’t do that!”

He looked at her. Cold, calculating.

“Then sign.”

Blackmail. Clean, professional, billionaire blackmail. No shouting, no threats. Just one button.

Ada picked up the pen. It was heavy, cold. Her hand shook so badly the tip rattled against the paper.

The ink was blue. Permanent.

Because it wasn’t just her signature. It was her life. Her freedom, her pride. The last bit of herself she had been holding onto since her father died.

She thought of her mother’s hands. Paper thin. She thought of the mango tree, she thought of her own small bed in that yellow house where she had dreamed of becoming a writer.

She closed her eyes and signed.

Ada Johnson.

The letters were shaky, ugly. Not her normal fine handwriting.

The moment the pen left the paper, something in the room shifted. The air felt heavier.

Damian took the contract. He read her signature, then nodded once. Just once. “Good.”

He pressed another button on his desk. His voice was back to business.

Sarah, transfer 50 million to Miss Johnson’s account now and call LUTH, clear Mrs. Funke Johnson’s bills and move her to Reddington Hospital, private wing today.

Ada’s phone buzzed in her old handbag. Loud in the silent office.

Alert: 50,000,000 NAIRA CREDITED TO YOUR ACCOUNT. SENDER: COLE GROUP HOLDINGS.

She almost dropped the phone. Her hands flew to her mouth. It was real, the debt was gone, her mother was safe Just like that. One signature and 50 million appeared.

Tears finally fell. Hot, fast she didn’t wipe them.

“Your driver will take you home,” Damian said. Already back to his laptop, already dismissing her. Like what just happened was nothing. “First appearance is Sunday at 7PM. Grandfather’s house in Ikoyi. Wear something appropriate. Not cheap. Sarah will send a stylist to your house tomorrow with dresses.”

Not cheap. The words hit her.

Ada stood, her legs felt weak, like after a long sickness. She clutched her bag, that’s it? She just sold one year of her life and that’s it? No congratulations? No explanation?

Damian looked up for half a second, something human flashed in his eyes. Tiredness, maybe regret, maybe pity It was gone as fast as it came.

“That’s it, Mrs. Cole.”

Mrs. Cole.

The title hit her like a slap as she walked out. The door closed behind her with a soft, expensive thud.

In the elevator going down, the glass elevator that showed all of Lagos, she pressed her back to the cold wall and slid down to the floor. She didn’t care who saw her, she covered her mouth to stop the sob that was tearing her chest.

She had just sold herself. For money, for her mother She had become a wife for sale.

The driver was waiting downstairs. Silent, in black suit. He opened the back door of a black G-Wagon that smelled new and expensive.

On the way home, Ada stared at her ring finger. Empty, pale. But in 5 days, there would be a diamond there. A lie she had to wear.

Her phone rang. Mom.

“Hello? Hi, baby. The bank called. They said our debt is cleared? And a big hospital called, they said they are moving me to a fine hospital in Ikoyi? Ada, how? What happened? Did you...?”

Ada forced a smile into her voice, even as tears streamed down her face in the back of the billionaire’s car.

“I got a new job, Mom, a very good one with a very good boss. Don’t worry about anything anymore. We are safe now.”

Another lie. The first of many she would have to tell this year.

That night, she couldn’t sleep. She lay on her small bed in Surulere and stared at the cracked ceiling, listening to the familiar sounds of her street generators, distant music, neighbors shouting.

50 million.

One year.

No love.

Mrs. Cole.

And the worst part? For 3 seconds in that cold office, when Damian looked at her with those tired, human eyes, she had wondered what it would feel like if the contract was real. If he looked at her like a real husband.

She buried her face in the pillow.

“Stop,” she whispered to herself in the dark, her voice broken. “Rule 1: No feelings no feelings, Ada.”

But rules were made to be broken. And her heart, foolish heart, had already started to break the first rule.