Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Four: The condition

Monday morning arrived with a grey drizzle over Newark, the kind that made the glass towers downtown look like they were dissolving into the sky. Audrey was three sips into her second coffee and halfway through a loan portfolio spreadsheet when her secretary knocked and let herself in.

"Ms. Bellamy, Mr. King's office called. He'd like to meet with you today, if possible. This morning, actually."

Audrey looked up slowly. "Today? We're not due to meet for another five days."

"That's what I told his PA, but he said it was imperative."

Audrey turned the word over in her mind like a coin she didn't trust the weight of. "Imperative" could mean he'd found something damning in the loan portfolio review. "Imperative" could mean the deal was dead before it had even properly begun. Or "imperative" could mean he'd said yes, and simply couldn't wait five days to gloat about the terms he intended to set.

She had learned, over the last three years of keeping her father's bank alive by sheer will and spreadsheets, not to walk into any room without a plan. So she spent the two hours and the drive downtown running through all of them. If he said no, she would thank him for his time and call the three smaller firms she'd been quietly stringing along as backups. If he said yes, she would try to contain her joy so as not to look too dependent. Whatever the terms were, she would negotiate them the way her father had taught her: as if she had other, better options waiting outside the door, even when she didn't.

By the time she stepped into the elevator at King Capital, she'd talked herself into something that felt almost like calm.

It lasted until she saw him.

Marshall was standing at the window when she was shown in, hands in his pockets, the city spread grey and wet below him. He didn't turn around immediately, and Audrey used the few seconds before he did to admire his build. His expensive suit, obviously tailor-made, seemed to have been crafted on his handsome frame to such perfection that it looked like second skin. The carve of his haircut and the waves of his jet-black hair—everything was so magnificent to behold.

She brought herself back to the present and understood that his back to a client and his silence were a subtle way of instilling dominance and making the other party less confident. Well, she was ready for whatever came her way, so long as her company was saved. She took a deep breath and braced herself for the meeting just before he turned to her.

"Ms. Bellamy," he said finally, turning. "Thank you for coming on short notice."

"Your message said imperative."

"It is." He gestured to the chair across from his desk, and she sat, back straight, hands folded, giving nothing away. He remained standing a moment longer than necessary, which she recognized, uncomfortably, as its own kind of tell. "I've briefed the board," he said. "They're inclined to move forward with the investment, pending the full loan review, which is on track. Bellamy Trust would receive the capital injection you outlined, structured as a long-term strategic partnership rather than an acquisition. That part hasn't changed."

Audrey felt something in her chest loosen, just slightly. "That's good news."

"There's a condition," he said.

Of course there is, she thought. She'd known there would be one; she just hadn't expected it to arrive with that particular stillness in his voice, the one that told her she wasn't going to like it.

"I need this to look, publicly, like more than a business arrangement," he said. "A financial stake in a bank this size, made this quickly, will draw questions—specifically from people I'd rather not answer to."

"Cross," Audrey said.

She'd done her research too. Something flickered in his expression—surprise, maybe, that she'd bothered to know his competition. "Among others," he said. "The simplest way to make this look like a personal investment rather than a hostile positioning move is for it to be personal. Or appear to be." He raised his hands to make the air-quote gesture.

"Appear to be, meaning what, exactly?" Audrey repeated slowly.

"I need a fiancée for the next several months. Someone with standing, intelligence, and a reason not to talk about it publicly. You meet all three requirements, and the arrangement would resolve a personal complication of my own at the same time. It would be mutually beneficial. Your bank gets funded. My board and my rivals see a man settling down, not a hedge fund making a move. Nothing changes about how either company is actually run."

He said it the way he might present a term sheet clean, clipped, bloodless and that, more than the words themselves, was what set something alight in Audrey's chest.

"You want me to pretend to be engaged to you," she said, "so that you look less predatory to your competitors."

"I want a business arrangement that solves two problems at once."

"You want a "prop", Mr. King." She stood, because sitting suddenly felt like conceding something.

"You want me to put on a ring and stand next to you at whatever events require it, so the market doesn't ask uncomfortable questions about why a hedge fund billionaire is suddenly interested in a regional bank he's never so much as mentioned before. And in exchange, you'll fund the loan my father's mistakes left behind. Is that the offer?"

"That's the offer," he said, and to his credit, he didn't flinch from it.

She paused, took a minute to calm herself, while he watched different emotions move across her beautiful face.

"Everything they say about you is true, then." The words were out before she'd fully decided to let them go, low and furious.

"Ruthless. Selfish. A man who sees people as line items to be moved around a balance sheet until they're useful. I came in here hoping I was wrong about you."

Something shifted behind his eyes not hurt, exactly, but close to it, quickly smothered.

"You came in here needing forty million dollars, Ms. Bellamy. I'd think carefully about which one of us is in a position to be selective."

"Don't," she said, "mistake my need for capital for a lack of self-respect. I'll find another investor before I agree to be your prop for the next six months."

"You've had one month to find interested investors. Yet you haven't. Because there isn't one, not one who'll move fast enough to save the bank before the central bank's compliance deadline, and you know it better than I do." His voice hadn't risen, but it had gone hard, precise, the version of him she imagined the boardrooms feared.

"I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm asking you to let people believe something that costs you nothing and saves your father's bank."

"It costs me plenty," she snapped. "It costs me my name attached to a lie. It costs me standing next to a man who thinks marriage even a pretend one is a line item." For a moment neither of them spoke. Rain ticked against the window. Somewhere below, the city went on, indifferent to the two people standing in the glass tower arguing about a fiction neither of them wanted and both of them, apparently, needed. Marshall studied her the way he studied a difficult market carefully, and with the faint, infuriating suggestion of respect that came from watching something refuse to move the way he expected.

In seven years of running King Capital, he had learned exactly how people behaved when they needed something from him: they softened, they flattered, they found ways to make his conditions sound reasonable even when they weren't. Audrey Bellamy had walked into his office, called him ruthless to his face, and hadn't backed down an inch. He didn't say it out loud, but some quiet, unwelcome part of him thought: "good." "Think about it," he said instead, evenly. "You have until our next meeting."

"I don't need until then." Audrey picked up her bag, chin level, refusing to let her voice shake even though her hands, tucked at her sides, very much were shaking.

"The answer is no." She walked out without waiting for a response, and Marshall let her go with mixed emotions. He could not tell whether he admired her tenacity or felt disappointed that she had rejected his offer. One thing he was certain of was that he would see her again, and he would have his way because he had decided she was perfect for the dare with his brother.