The Offer
Aria Monroe had never felt so cheap—and never looked more expensive.
A borrowed designer dress hugged her curves. A glossy bun swept her hair from her trembling face. She wore desperation like perfume—sweet, suffocating, and impossible to ignore.
Her heels clicked against the marble floor of Blackwood International, the sound echoing down the corridor like a countdown. Every step toward his office was a surrender.
She wasn’t here for love.
She was here to beg.
“Mr. Blackwood will see you now,” the assistant said, not bothering to look up.
Aria took a breath that didn't reach her lungs and stepped into the office of the man who had once unknowingly fathered her child—and had forgotten her entirely.
Dominic Blackwood sat behind a glass desk, shadowed by the floor-to-ceiling windows of his empire. His presence was cold, polished, immovable. He didn’t look up from the folder in front of him when he spoke.
“You’re late.”
Aria swallowed. “Traffic.”
He finally looked at her.
His eyes—those same sharp, storm-gray eyes her son had inherited—scanned her like a file to be processed, not a woman to be remembered.
“You understand the terms?” he asked.
Her stomach twisted. She’d read them a hundred times. One year of marriage. Public appearances. Shared residence. No questions. No intimacy unless requested.
And in exchange? Enough money to pay for Lena’s treatment, cover years of med school debt, and finally breathe.
“I do.”
His brow lifted. “You’re quiet. Cold feet already, Miss Monroe?”
She met his gaze, steel behind her softness. “No. I’m just wondering if you always speak to your future wife like a stranger.”
There was the briefest flicker in his expression—confusion? Recognition?—but it was gone before it could form.
“We won’t be husband and wife,” he said coolly. “We’ll be a brand.”
Aria’s fingers curled at her sides.
He doesn’t remember the hotel. The night. The way I whispered his name in the dark.
And that was good. That was the point.
“I can play your perfect wife,” she said quietly. “Just don’t expect me to be your puppet.”
Dominic stood, walking around the desk until he was just inches from her. “Good. I prefer my puppets without strings.”
For a moment, they stared—two strangers tied by a past only one of them knew.
Then he extended his hand.
Aria reached for it, sealing the contract that would change everything.
The press would call it a merger.
Society would call it a scandal.
Only she would know it was a sacrifice.
And somewhere across the city, a little boy named Leo asked why he didn’t have a dad.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Blackwood,” he said, lips barely curving.
“Your life no longer belongs to you.”
