Make Me Scream, Daddy

Chapter 6

He waves the gun towards my hand and his cologne hits me. It wraps around me, seduces me into a hazy-headed daze.

“Fire one clip, Olivia,” he purrs. “You might even enjoy it.”

“I doubt that very much.” My body is humming as I reluctantly take the gun from his hand.

It’s heavier than it looks, cold and deadly against my palm. I step up to the stall. I’m hyper-aware of Stefan moving behind me. The air between us feels charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.

“If I shoot you, let it be known to all watching that it was an accident.” My heels are locked together, knees rigid as I lift my arms and aim the gun. “… Probably.”

Suddenly, his body heat envelops me from behind. I freeze. His thighs brush the backs of my legs. “Your stance is all wrong.”

His voice drops low, private. This is wrong. He’s too close, too hot.

He kicks my ankles apart and it’s impossible not to imagine this playing out at the end of his bed. God, it must be massive. Some double-wide California king cloaked in black satin, if I had to guess.

His thumb presses into a knot of tension at the base of my neck. I bite back a wildly inappropriate moan.

“Relax,” he purrs. “You’re too tight.”

I’m absolutely not thinking about other contexts for those words. I’m definitely not imagining those hands elsewhere.

I’m a professional. A doctor. A businesswoman here to save my clinic.

“I’m holding a deadly weapon,” I manage. “Tension seems appropriate.”

“If we’re going to work together, Olivia, I need you not to lie to me.” A low chuckle vibrates against my back as his words whisper against my neck. “The gun isn’t what’s making you tense.”

His calloused hands slide down my arms, adjusting my grip as he goes. The casual intimacy makes it hard to breathe. His fingers brush mine as they position my index finger over the trigger.

“Now, see those lines on top?” His breath stirs the hair at my temple. “Align them with your target.”

I’m staring straight ahead, but seeing nothing. My vision is red-tinged, pulsing to the beat of the drum between my legs. He’s so close I can feel his heartbeat against my spine.

It’s steady. Controlled. Everything mine is not.

“Breathe in.” His palm spreads across my hip, steady and warm. My skin burns through the thin fabric of my skirt. “Out…” His touch lifts, and I almost sway backward without the balance. “Now… kill him.”

The shot cracks like thunder. The recoil slams me back against Stefan’s chest and his arm instantly circles my waist to steady me.

My ears ring. My heart hammers. The paper target stands completely unharmed, but a section of the wall ten feet to the left is smoking. It’s a bad day to be a brick.

“Again,” he commands, not releasing me.

So I shoot again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, his body becomes more familiar against mine, his hands more confident in their corrections.

That being said, I continue to miss spectacularly. Stefan finds new ways to insult my aim with each horrible shot, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement in his voice that makes me determined to prove him wrong.

When I empty the clip, he hands me another. That one goes wanting, too. But on the third clip, finally, I pull the trigger—and praise Jesus, the bullet grazes the target’s shoulder. The very edge of the paper tears, but joy slams me straight in the chest.

“Good,” he murmurs as I whirl around, grinning triumphantly.

“Progress! I almost⁠—”

But then I realize he’s close. Much closer than I thought. And so, as I spin around, I come to a grinding halt with my lips half an inch from his.

Time slows, stills. His eyes drop to my mouth and my lungs forget how oxygen works.

“You’re a natural, Dr. Aster.”

My mouth opens and closes. I drop the gun to my side, stammering, “S-sorry.” I hate how breathless I sound. How pathetic I sound, apologizing for being close to him.

Especially when I can’t make myself pull away.

I need distance from his heat, his scent, the way his proximity scrambles my thoughts. What the hell is wrong with me? I came here to save my business, not drool over Boston’s most notorious billionaire.

My mother’s voice echoes in my head: Focus, Olivia. Excellence requires discipline.

The adrenaline from firing the gun courses through my veins, looking for an outlet I absolutely cannot afford. Which, I realize half an hour too late, was the plan. This is exactly what men like Stefan Safonov count on—the rush, the thrill, the momentary weakness that makes smart women do stupid things.

I take a deep breath, pull my shoulders back, and recalibrate. Finally, I take a step away from him. “Now that I’ve proven myself, can we discuss why I’m actually here?”

I sound steady and confident. It’s everything I’m not, but I’m praying to every god I know that Stefan can’t tell how much his little plan got to me.

He regards me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Finally, he nods.

Without saying anything, he points to an adjacent stall. I peer over to see a single sheet of paper waiting there.

The header reads Surrogacy Agreement.

My brain is trying to decipher all the possible meanings when Stefan comes to stand next to me once again. “You wanted investors, but I have a better idea.”

As I read, my blood runs cold, then hot, then cold again. Each bullet point feels like another shot fired, but this time aimed directly at my professional integrity.

“But I… I help women… I need— I needed money,” I blurt. “But you need…” I read the document again. “You want a baby?”

“A surrogate,” Stefan corrects, like he’s explaining something to a particularly slow child.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “You want me to find you a surrogate?”

“In a manner of speaking. I suppose you were right at the start. The surrogate is a means to an end. I want an heir.” His voice is matter-of-fact, as if he’s ordering coffee, not a human being.

“What kind of business do you think I run, Stef—” I catch myself. “Mr. Safonov?”

The almost-familiarity charges the air between us. All I can think is, This must be a mistake. Actually, everything about this interaction has been a mistake. The shooting lesson. The proximity. The moment our eyes met and I thought⁠—

Well, what exactly did I think? That there was something other than self-interest driving his decisions?

“I know exactly what kind of business you run. Your clinic has resources. Contacts. A reputation for discretion.” He leans against the stall divider, but his eyes never leave mine.

“My clinic helps women with fertility issues,” I correct. “We’re not a—a breeding program for billionaires playing eugenics bingo!”

My indignation rises to fill the space where my professional composure should be. This must be why he insisted on the shooting lesson first: to get me off-balance, to create false intimacy, to make me malleable.

The worst part is that it almost worked. For half an hour, I forgot who and what Stefan is.

A man who thinks everything has a price.

“Your high horse is adorable, Dr. Aster,” he says, pulling up his phone. “But let’s discuss reality.”

On the screen are my clinic’s financials—every overdraft and denied loan highlighted in red. My stomach drops to my scuffed shoes.

How on earth did he get this information? What else does he know?

“Your clinic is months from bankruptcy. Dr. Walsh is circling like a vulture. You know what you need to do to get out, which is why you’re here. The Mass Gen partnership you’re chasing?” His smile is cruel now, nothing like the almost-warmth I thought I glimpsed earlier. “It could be yours. I could hand it to you on a silver f*****g platter without even blinking. Or it could vanish. Without me, everything you’ve built collapses within six weeks. It’s your choice: financial ruin, or one simple favor.”

My nails bite into my palms as I weigh his words. Six weeks. That’s all I have left before my dream crashes and burns.

For one shameful moment, I consider it. How easy it would be to just say yes. Just forget my principles for long enough to save everything I’ve built—what’s the harm in that?

I could play the game the way Dr. Walsh did when she pretended she cared, when she walked alongside me as I conducted my research and built my client roster, only to steal it all out from under me with a smile on her face.

“You don’t understand,” I had told her then, watching her pack up my life’s work. “These aren’t just patients. These are women who trust us. People who have put their faith and their families in our hands.”

“No, Olivia,” she’d replied, scorn and pity in her eyes. “You don’t understand. Money is the only language that matters in this world. You speak it or you die.”

Standing before Stefan Safonov, I see the same devil’s bargain in front of me. The same invitation to compromise wrapped in the guise of practicality.

And for a heartbeat, I waver.

I think of my last patient—a waitress with PCOS who wept when she saw her viable embryo on screen. “That’s my baby,” she’d whispered, hope blooming in her eyes for the first time in years.