THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT BABY

CHAPTER 1: A Deal With The Devil* The hospital smell was choking me. "Aria, if we don't get the money by 7 AM tomorrow, we have to discharge your mother. I am sorry." I stared at the doctor, my hands shaking. "Discharge? If you discharge her, she will die! The kidney failure -" "We know. But the surgery costs fifty thousand dollars, Aria. Your insurance expired. We have held her for three days already." Fifty thousand dollars. $50,000. I had forty-two dollars in my bank account. My phone buzzed. It was my landlord. _GET OUT BY TONIGHT OR I CALL POLICE. 3 MONTHS RENT = $3,600._ I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to die. My mother was lying on that hospital bed, pale, with tubes all over her body. She was the only family I had left since my father died. And I was about to lose her because I was poor. I walked out of the hospital into the cold New York night rain. No umbrella. I didn't care. I sat on the sidewalk and finally broke down. That was when a black Maybach stopped in front of me. The window rolled down. "Aria Cole?" I looked up. A man in a black suit, older, with glasses. He looked like a lawyer. "Who are you?" "Mr. Black has been looking for you. My name is Mr. Henderson, his attorney. He wants to see you. Now." "I don't know any Mr. Black. Leave me alone!" "He knows you need fifty thousand dollars by tomorrow morning," the man said calmly. My blood froze. How did he know? "What?" "Your mother, Linda Cole, needs a kidney transplant. You need fifty thousand dollars. You work two jobs and you are about to be homeless. Mr. Black can solve all your problems tonight. But he doesn't like to wait. So, are you coming or should I tell him you are not interested?" I should have been scared. This was how girls disappeared in movies. But what choice did I have? My mother would die. "Where is he?" I whispered. The man opened the car door. "Come." Twenty minutes later, we were in front of the tallest building in Manhattan. BLACK EMPIRE. The name was written in gold. The elevator took us to the 100th floor. The doors opened to an office that looked like heaven. Floor to ceiling windows showing all of New York. And in the middle of it, with his back to me, was a man. He was tall. Over six feet. Black shirt, black pants. His hair was dark and perfectly styled. Even from behind, I could feel power coming from him. "Ethan, the girl is here," the lawyer said and left, closing the door. The man turned around slowly. And I forgot how to breathe. He was... not human. He was too handsome to be human. Sharp jawline, cold grey eyes like a storm, lips that looked like they never smiled. He looked like he was 32, but with the eyes of someone who had seen everything and cared about nothing. He looked at me from head to toe. My cheap wet dress sticking to my body. My old shoes. My messy hair. My crying face. His eyes showed no pity. Only calculation. "Aria Cole. Twenty-three years old. No father. Mother dying. College dropout because you couldn't pay tuition. Currently working as a waitress and a night cleaner. Bank balance: forty-two dollars." He knew everything. "Who are you?" My voice was shaking. "Ethan Black." The name hit me like thunder. Ethan Black. The billionaire. The CEO of Black Empire. Worth 20 billion dollars. The most feared man in New York. The man who was on the cover of Forbes last week with the headline: THE MAN WHO FEELS NOTHING. What did a man like that want with me? "Why am I here?" He walked to his desk and picked up a file and threw it at me. I caught it. It was a contract. I read the first line and my hands started shaking violently. *CONTRACT MARRIAGE AND CHILD-BEARING AGREEMENT* "What is this?!" I shouted. "Sit." "I won't sit! What is this nonsense? Child-bearing agreement? Are you insane?" He walked towards me, slowly, like a predator. He stopped inches from me. I could smell his expensive cologne. I could see the coldness in his grey eyes. "You need fifty thousand dollars by 7 AM. I need a wife and a child by next year. This is business. Don't flatter yourself that I am interested in you." "A wife? A child?" "My grandfather is dying," he said coldly, walking back to his window. "He built this company. In his will, he wrote that I will only inherit full control of Black Empire if I am married and have an heir before I turn 33. I turn 33 in fourteen months. If I fail, everything goes to my cousin, who will destroy this company." He looked at me again. "I don't believe in love. I don't believe in marriage. Women want my money. I want an heir. So I need a contract wife. Someone clean. Someone with no family to interfere. Someone desperate enough to agree to my terms and then disappear. You fit perfectly." I felt insulted and terrified at the same time. "So you want me to... marry you and have your baby?" "Correct." "Are you crazy? I just met you! I don't even know you!" "You will know the important things. Rule one: This marriage is for one year only. Rule two: You will get pregnant through IVF. I will not touch you. Rule three: After you give birth, you give me the baby and you leave. You will never see the child again." Never see my own child? My chest hurt. "And what do I get?" He smirked for the first time. A cold, heartless smirk. "Two million dollars." The world stopped. Two... million... "You will get fifty thousand dollars tonight for your mother's surgery. Full payment for the best hospital in America. After you get pregnant, you will get five hundred thousand. After you give birth and hand over the baby, you will get the remaining one point five million dollars. And you will sign an NDA and vanish from my life forever." Two million dollars. My mother would live. I would never have to work as a cleaner again. I could go back to college. I could live. But my baby... give away my own baby? "No," I whispered. "I can't sell my baby. I can't." "Then watch your mother die at 7 AM tomorrow," he said without any emotion. "Because no other hospital will take her without money. And you will be homeless tonight. Your landlord already changed your locks. I checked." Tears fell from my eyes. How could someone be so cruel? "Why me? You can get any supermodel, any rich girl in New York to do this!" "Because rich girls want love. They want my name forever. They want to be Mrs. Black. You," he stepped closer and lifted my chin with his cold finger, forcing me to look into his stormy eyes, "you just want your mother to live. You will not fall in love with me. You will not fight for custody. You are perfect because you are nothing." You are nothing. Those words broke me. I slapped his hand away. "Don't touch me!" He looked at his hand, surprised, then his eyes turned darker. "You have ten minutes to decide, Aria Cole. Sign it and your mother lives and you become a millionaire. Don't sign it and go back to the rain and watch her die. I don't have time for emotional drama." He pressed a button on his desk. "Henderson, bring in the check and prepare the hospital transfer." The lawyer came in with a check. I saw it. $50,000. Made out to Mount Sinai Hospital. And my mother's transfer papers to the best private wing. They had it all ready. As if they knew I would say yes. I looked at the check. I looked at the cold, heartless billionaire who was offering to buy my womb. I thought of my mother, who worked three jobs to raise me after my father died. Who never let me go hungry. Who was now dying because I was useless. If I said no, I was killing her. If I said yes, I was selling my future child. What kind of choice was this? My hands were shaking as I picked up the pen. "Will... will the baby be okay? Will you be a good father?" I asked, tears blurring my vision. For a second, something flickered in his grey eyes. Something human. But it vanished instantly. "My child will have everything money can buy. Everything you could never give him. That is better than love." I closed my eyes and signed. Aria Cole. The moment I signed, he took the contract and looked at it. "Good girl," he whispered, his voice now dangerously close to my ear, making my whole body shiver. "Welcome to hell, Mrs. Black." He picked up his phone. "Transfer Mrs. Linda Cole to private wing now. Surgery at 6 AM. And send someone to get my wife some dry clothes. She is wet and she is now carrying my future heir. I don't want her catching a cold." My wife. I had just sold myself to Ethan Black. And I had no idea that from this night, my life would never be the same again.