Contracted to the Billionaire

Episode 4

With the new knowledge that I was sitting beside the Jax Smith, I got even more embarrassed to be there.

I shifted away from him uncomfortably as he looked at me with his brows raised in amusement. Then, be threw his head back in laughter.

“You seem to recognize me, but your reaction seems as though you have heard something horrible about me. Have you?” he inquired.

“No.” I shook my head. There was a heavy urge to tell him about my mother and ask for a little bit of mercy on his part, enough for him to extend the time we were supposed to clear our debts, but I kept quiet about it first. He was my first patron, and I wasn’t looking to blow it up in flames.

“I might not be here for direct s****l favors, but I’m surely here to be entertained. I have enough on my mind, and the last thing on your mind should be anything that doesn’t entail entertaining me.” His voice was cold now, as if he was losing his patience with me.

“You can tell me anything you want – I’ll do it.”

Once again, he laughed as he looked at me in amusement.

“Have you not been put on a little bit of training by Amanda? You don’t even know what to do? You can’t gauge what I want just by looking at me. Has the quality really reduced to become this bad?”

“No, I’m sorry.” I shook my head. I couldn’t afford him taking his complaint to Amanda. “It’s just… It’s my first day, and I’m a little nervous so…”

For lack of any more words to say, I got off my spot on the seat and slowly sat on his laps, leaning so close to him and wrapping my arms around his neck.

“I know this isn’t the most ideal situation you would want to find yourself in, but I need to ask a favor.”

His brows creased.

“You’re absolutely right. This is anything but ideal right now,” he scoffed, placing his arm around my waist and pulling me closer, the strings of tension between us knotting even tighter than normal. “What do you want from me?”

“If I do anything you want me to, I don’t want you to pay me,” I said.

This request seemed to take him aback as he looked at me with a suspicious frown.

“Did you get tested for STDs yet?” he asked, pulling away.

“I submitted my most recent STDs test to Amanda this morning.” I almost rolled my eyes at his thoughts. “I just… Whatever money you’re to pay me, I want you to take it out of my mother’s debts. She owes your company. She took out some money for my cancer treatment, and this is the only way I can help her. It doesn’t matter if I have to give you s****l favors or not.”

Jax was quiet. He stared at me with an undecipherable expression on his face.

“Your mother owes my company?” he attempted to confirm, and I nodded in response.

“That’s why you reacted that way when I introduced myself to you.” He figured with a dark chuckle.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what exactly I was apologizing for.

“We can talk about this if you would like.” He shrugged. “How much is your mother owing me right now?”

“About two and a half million dollars.” Even saying it filled me with stomach-churning shame at how much money it was.

“Has she paid anything at all?”

“Well, we were owing three million. She’s paid fine hundred in a year, but she was given two years. She has just one year to pay up the rest of the money. I don’t think she can handle all of that by herself, and that’s why I’m here. We were recently attacked by a group of men who claimed that my father owes them a lot of money. My father left us when I was much younger, and we have to pay the loan sharks back in a month.”

I didn’t know why I had gone as far as mentioning the loan sharks to him, but it was relieving getting it off my chest.

Jax’s eyes still held no specific emotion, but I could tell that he was thinking about and going over my words carefully.

“Seraphine,” he said, his arms wrapping tighter around my waist as he looked as if an invisible lightbulb had gone off above his head. “What if I make you a deal? Your mother won’t have to bother about paying up the rest of the debts, and I’ll spare some change for you to give to the loan sharks.”

I gasped at the offer, looking around to see if I could point out a hidden camera that was filming me being pranked.

“What do you mean? Of course I can make a deal like that. What cost does it come with?”

~

“I am not selling my daughter off,” Mom protested, shaking her head as one week later, Jax stood in the kitchen with a contract in his hand.

“You won’t be selling me off, Mom. I already made this decision,” I told her, taking her hand and gently squeezing it to assure her that I was fine with my decision.

“If you’re doing this for me, don’t do it. We’ll find a way to go around it. I’ll work ten times harder to pay off the debt. You can’t possibly sign yourself off to a man you don’t even know. What kind of a parent would I be if I let you do this?”

“I’m an adult, Mom,” I spoke sternly, but my voice still had cracks in it that I prayed she wouldn’t notice. “I’ll be signing the papers. All I need is your support. You don’t have to be a part of it, you just have to trust me.”

“I trust you, Seraphine. I just don’t know if I can trust him,” she voiced, looking at Jax, who had his arms crossed with a crooked smile on his face.

“You can count on me to take care of your daughter, Mrs. Heathrow. It’s clearly stated in the contract that I’ll never subject her to any form of abuse whatsoever,” he assured.

It took my mother a long time of looking between me and Jax to finally give a sigh of defeat.

“Sign it.”

And in just minutes, I was married to Jax after signing the marriage contract.

I had just subjected myself to hell, but I just didn’t know it yet.

The last words I heard from my mother before I moved out of the apartment to live with Jax in his private residence were: “As much as I don’t feel good about this, I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done so far, Seraphine. I hope your marriage doesn’t turn out to be like mine.”

“I hope so.”

But the first thing I encountered when I stepped into

Jax’s house filled me with immediate regret.