The Billionaire’s Temporary Wife

LIANA The eviction notice was pink. I don't know why that detail stuck with me, sitting at my kitchen table at two in the morning with Ezra finally asleep in the next room. Pink, like it was supposed to be cheerful. Like the words threatening to throw us onto the street in thirty days deserved some color. I'd stopped crying an hour ago. Tears were a luxury I couldn't afford anymore, not when there were bills to pay and a four year old who needed to believe his mama had everything under control. Even when control was the furthest thing from my reality. The number at the bottom of the notice blurred as I stared at it. Twelve thousand dollars in back rent. Twelve thousand dollars I didn't have, would never have, not with the debt collectors already circling like vultures over the two hundred thousand Derek had left in my name before he disappeared. My phone buzzed. Another creditor, third one tonight. I let it go to voicemail, adding it to the seventeen unheard messages already waiting. What was the point? I couldn't make money appear out of thin air, couldn't rewind time and unmeet Derek Morrison, couldn't undo the naive twenty three year old I'd been who thought love meant trusting someone with everything. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the ancient radiator and the distant sound of traffic. This place wasn't much, a cramped two bedroom in a Brooklyn brownstone that had seen better decades, but it was ours. Ezra's drawings covered the fridge, his toys were scattered across the living room floor, and every corner held some memory of the life I'd built for us from nothing. Now even this was being taken away. I pulled my laptop closer, the screen casting blue light across bills and final notices. My freelance design work barely covered groceries anymore. Clients wanted cheaper, faster, better, and there were always a dozen desperate designers willing to undercut my rates. I'd applied for jobs, real jobs with steady paychecks, but every interview ended the same way. They'd see the gap in my resume, the years I'd spent pregnant and then raising Ezra alone, and their interest would cool like coffee left too long on the counter. The job search tab was still open. I scrolled through listings I'd already read a dozen times. Assistant positions paying thirty thousand a year in a city where that didn't cover rent. Receptionist work with hours that would cost more in childcare than I'd earn. Design firms wanting five years of corporate experience I didn't have. My eyes burned. Sleep was becoming theoretical, something other people did while I worked through nights and worried through dawns. Ezra would wake up in four hours, bouncing into my room with his gap toothed smile, asking what was for breakfast and could we go to the park. And I'd smile back, kiss his forehead, pretend everything was fine while the world crumbled around us. The worst part wasn't the debt or the eviction or even the bone deep exhaustion. The worst part was the fear that I was failing him. That my son, my beautiful, innocent boy who deserved everything good in this world, would pay the price for my mistakes. For trusting the wrong man. For being too proud to ask for help until there was no help left to ask for. I closed the laptop before I threw it across the room. Tomorrow I'd figure something out. I always did. Tomorrow I'd make calls, beg for extensions, maybe sell the last piece of jewelry I owned. Tomorrow I'd find a miracle somewhere because the alternative, the one where Ezra and I ended up in a shelter or worse, wasn't something I could let myself imagine. But tonight, in the harsh silence of 2 AM, I let myself feel it. The hopelessness. The anger at Derek for destroying us. The frustration with myself for not being stronger, smarter, better. The crushing weight of being utterly, completely alone. I picked up the pink eviction notice and folded it carefully, then tucked it into the drawer with all the other reminders of how close we were to losing everything. Out of sight but never out of mind. Thirty days. I had thirty days to perform a miracle. I just had no idea that the miracle, when it came, would look like the devil himself offering a deal I couldn't refuse.