THE MIDNIGHT CONTRACT

CHAPTER 4- COLD CALCULATION

Tessy POV

He looked at me the way you'd look at a number that didn't add up, and I had thirty seconds to become worth his time.

"Mr Damon—"

"You have thirty seconds." He checked his watch without checking it, the way people do when they want you to see them, not caring.

"Starting now."

"My brother is dying. He has a matched donor tonight, but the hospital needs payment by eleven, or they will give the organ to someone else.

I came here this morning, I filled out every form, I waited three hours, and your office told me four to six weeks. He doesn't have four to six weeks.

“He has hours."

Thiago didn't move. Two of his security men had drifted closer, close enough that I could feel them at my shoulder without looking.

"How much," he said.

I told him the number.

Something shifted behind his eyes, quick, gone, before I could name it.

"And you came to me. In my own lobby. Shouting my name as if I owe you something."

"I didn't say you owed me anything."

"You implied it. Everyone who does this implies it." He said it flat, bored almost, like he'd heard the exact shape of my sentence a hundred times from a hundred other mouths. "Sick brother, closing the window, needs money by midnight. It's a good story. It's not the first time I've heard it."

"It's not a story."

"Ms.—"

"Moretti."

"Ms Moretti. Northstar doesn't fund sob stories that show up in my lobby uninvited. There's a process. You went through the process. The process said no."

He glanced past me at the security guard.

"Escort her out."

A hand landed on my arm.

"You don't even know if it's true," I said, and I could hear my own voice climbing, and could hear the whole lobby listening.

"You didn't ask one question. You didn't look at one document. You just decided."

"I decided the moment you started shouting in my building."

The guard's grip tightened, turning me toward the door.

"You have more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes," I said, "and you can't spare thirty seconds to actually listen instead of performing for the room."

He didn't answer. He just watched me walk out, expression unchanged, like I was a delivery he was signing for.

I didn't remember the drive home.

I remembered standing in my own sitting room an hour later, still shaking, telling my mother I had nothing, and watching her face do the thing I'd been trying not to do myself.

I remembered Nathan asking what happened and me lying and saying it was fine, we had options, we'd figure it out.

I didn't have options. I had nineteen hours and a phone number for a hospital billing office that would call again whether I was ready or not.

THIAGO’S POV.

Thiago poured a drink he had no intention of finishing and set the glass on the edge of his desk without touching it again, looking out at the city instead. Replaying it anyway, the way you replay something that shouldn't have stuck.

She hadn't cried. That was what kept surfacing. People who came at him like that, angry, desperate, cornered, usually cried once security got a hand on them, some performance of tears meant to shame him into changing his mind. She hadn't. She'd gotten angrier instead, sharper, throwing that line about his money like a slap he was supposed to feel.

He almost had. His hand found the drink he still wasn't going to finish and turned the glass a slow half-circle on the desk instead of lifting it.

His phone lit up on the desk. His lawyer's name.

"Thiago." Marcus never opened with pleasantries. "The Whitfields filed an amended custody petition this afternoon."

"On what grounds?"

"Same as before, dressed up worse. Unstable home environment. A pattern of, quote, emotionally unavailable behavior consistent with your public record."

"My public record?”

"Two broken engagements and a reputation for firing people in elevators, Thiago.

The judge is going to see exactly what they want her to see. A cold, single billionaire raising a traumatized six-year-old alone."

"Gianna is not going to her grandparents."

"Then give the court a different picture. A family that looks like a family."

Thiago said nothing for a moment, staring at the glass he hadn't touched. On the corner of the desk, angled toward his chair and away from the door, a small framed photo of a girl missing her two front teeth grinned up at him.

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm telling you what the judge wants to see, and you can decide what to do with it."

Marcus hung up before Thiago could answer, which was its own kind of answer.

He turned the idea over the way he turned over a bad contract clause, looking for the flaw before he'd commit.

A wife. Someone the court would believe. Someone who could stand next to him and make the picture Marcus described look true instead of staged.

It had nothing to do with the woman who'd shouted his name across his own lobby and hadn't flinched when he had her thrown out.

He picked up his phone, set it back down, picked it up again.

At one in the morning, he called his assistant, who answered in the second ring despite the hour, because that was the only kind of person Thiago Damon kept around him.

"Find the woman from the lobby today," he said.

"Moretti. Tonight. I don't care what it costs.”