Become His Stepmother
1685 Words
I got home that night but sleep would not come. I lay on my small bed staring at the ceiling, the muffled sounds of the city drifting in through the thin glass of my window. Robert’s words kept circling through my mind like a melody I could not silence.
Marry me. Become Mrs. Rothwell.
I turned over and pressed my face into the pillow. He was insane, I told myself. Completely out of his mind. Who proposed to a woman on a sidewalk only minutes after watching his own son humiliate her in front of two hundred guests?
One moment I felt furious at the sheer audacity of it. The next, I caught myself wondering what Xavier would even say if he knew. I hated myself for letting the thought linger even a second longer than it should have.
What kind of person am I becoming? I should be grieving over Xavier, not lying here thinking about his father.
I finally drifted into a shallow sleep near dawn, only to wake a few hours later feeling more drained than when I had closed my eyes. My small apartment seemed smaller than usual that morning, the walls pressing in around me.
Sunlight filtered through the cracked blinds and fell across the stack of papers on my kitchen table. Student loan statements. A rent notice. A letter from the hospital regarding my mother’s recent checkup.
I poured myself a cup of cheap coffee and sat staring at the pile, feeling the weight of it settle over my chest.
Meanwhile, Xavier is probably waking up in some penthouse, celebrating his engagement with Elena, without sparing me another thought.
The unfairness of it all rose in my throat again, sharp and bitter. I had worked two jobs throughout college. I had quietly helped chip away at my father’s debts. I had believed, foolishly, in a love that turned out to be conditional all along.
And now here I sat, alone, with nothing in my life changed except the depth of my humiliation.
My phone rang. An unfamiliar number. I knew who it was before I even lifted it to my ear.
“Good morning, Ariella,” Robert said, his voice unhurried, almost familiar, as though we had known each other for years rather than having met for the first time the night before.
“You’re out of your mind,” I said immediately. “I told you last night I’m not interested. Don’t call me again about this.”
Robert remained composed, as he always seemed to be.
“You never actually asked me why I chose you. Meet me for coffee. Somewhere public. One conversation. That’s all I’m asking.”
I wanted to end the call right there. But something in his voice made me hesitate. Curiosity, perhaps. Or the part of me that still burned from the night before, desperate for some kind of answer.
“Fine. One meeting. Nothing else. And it had better be somewhere crowded.”
We met at a quiet table tucked into the corner of a busy downtown cafe. I arrived first, dressed in jeans and a simple sweater, and felt entirely out of place the moment Robert walked through the door in another impeccably tailored suit. He sat across from me and ordered black coffee without glancing at the menu.
“Why me?” I asked before he had even settled into his chair. “Why not some billionaire widow? Why not a socialite from your own circle? Why involve someone like me in all of this?”
Robert took a slow sip of his coffee before answering.
“Because every woman in my circle comes with ties. Family obligations. Board connections. Old debts owed to one faction or another.
The inheritance clause my late wife’s family wrote into the trust requires that I remarry before the end of this fiscal year, or the holding company reverts to a board vote I am almost certain to lose.
Whoever I marry will be scrutinized by people looking for any reason to challenge that marriage in court. A woman with no ties to my world is the only kind no one can claim was planted there by an enemy.”
I crossed my arms.
“So I’m useful because I’m a nobody.”
“You’re useful,” Robert said evenly, “because you’re unimpeachable. No one can buy you. No one can claim you. That, in my world, is a rarer thing than money.”
I studied him for a long moment, searching for the catch.
“That still doesn’t fully explain why it has to be me specifically, out of every unconnected woman in this city.”
“Over the years, I’ve learned more about you than you probably realize,” he said.
“I paid attention whenever Xavier brought you around. The two jobs you worked while finishing your studies. The way you quietly helped pay down part of your father’s debts without ever asking my son for anything in return, even when money was tight between you. You fought for everything you have, and you never once tried to leverage the Rothwell name to get it.”
He paused, and something in his expression shifted, just slightly.
“When Xavier brought you into this family, I thought you were the first good decision he’d made in years.”
My breath caught. Whatever I had expected him to say, it was not that. I looked down at my coffee, unsettled by how much the admission had affected me.
“Do you want revenge?” Robert asked plainly.
“No,” I said too quickly, the word leaving my lips before I could properly consider it.
He did not believe me, and it showed in the steady patience of his expression.
“Xavier humiliated you in front of everyone he knows. Elena spoke to you as though you were beneath her notice. The guests laughed at your expense. Do you truly intend to return to your apartment and pretend none of that happened?”
He allowed the silence to stretch before continuing, his tone quieter now, almost reflective.
“Xavier spent most of his life trying to earn my approval. I won’t pretend that was always fair to him. He chose Elena because the board wanted that merger, and because he has never learned how to want something without first asking whether I would allow it. That isn’t an excuse. But it isn’t simple cruelty either.”
“The consequences of becoming my wife are obvious,” he went on. “Society would treat you very differently than it did last night.”
He let the sentence sit there, unfinished, and did not fill in the rest. He did not need to.
My mind filled it in for him anyway, against my own will.
I imagined walking back into that ballroom on Robert’s arm.
I imagined the silence that would fall over the room before the whispers started.
I imagined Xavier’s face, the careful composure cracking for just a second before he caught himself.
“Whether you like it or not, Ariella,” Robert said, watching me closely, “if you marry me, Xavier becomes your stepson.”
The words hit me like cold water. I stared at him, momentarily unable to speak.
Xavier. My stepson.
The sentence refused to settle into anything that made sense.
I pictured him at the dinner table, forced to call me by some new, impossible title.
I pictured the look on his face the first time he had to introduce me that way to someone outside the family.
“Say that again,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You heard me correctly the first time.”
I pressed my palm flat against the table to steady myself.
“You’re asking me to become his stepmother.”
“I’m asking you to become my wife,” Robert corrected. “Everything else is simply what follows.”
“You’re using me,” I accused him.
“I am,” Robert admitted without hesitation. “I won’t dress it up as anything else. But I am not asking you to trust me. I’m only asking you to read the contract.”
He slid a thick envelope across the table toward me.
I stared at it as though it might come alive in my hands.
“Why are you still protecting his feelings,” Robert asked quietly, “when he never once protected yours?”
The question landed like a blow.
I looked away, my eyes stinging with tears I refused to let fall.
Why am I still protecting him? He never protected me. Not once.
The memory of that night rushed back, raw and unrelenting.
The whispers.
The laughter.
Elena’s triumphant smile.
For the first time, something darker stirred beneath my grief.
Not only anger or heartbreak now, but a quiet, dangerous curiosity about what my own life could look like if I stopped trying to be the good, forgiving woman everyone expected me to be.
Robert rose to leave.
“Take it home. Read it carefully. You have seven days to decide. Think it over, Ariella. Not only in terms of what it does to Xavier. Think of your future. Your family. What you actually deserve after everything you have endured.”
Once he had gone, I opened the contract with trembling hands, expecting page after page of dense financial clauses and legal language concerning money and inheritance.
One condition caught my attention immediately, standing apart from the rest.
Should I marry Robert, I would be required to move into the Rothwell mansion without delay.
The same mansion where Xavier currently lived.
The same mansion where Elena was already preparing to assume her place as the future Mrs. Rothwell.
I turned to the final page and found a short note written in Robert’s strong, deliberate hand.
If you sign, the first person you will see tomorrow morning is Xavier Rothwell.
I stared at the note.
My hands began to shake.
If I signed this contract, Xavier Rothwell would wake up with a new stepmother.
- Writer
