The Billionaire's Cursed Heir

CHARLOTTE My phone buzzes at 11:47 p.m., and I already know before I look that it's going to be bad news. Mr. Grayson's condition has stabilized, but Dr. Patterson has requested we discuss updated costs for the procedure at your earliest convenience. Updated costs. I read it three times, waiting for the words to mean something different, but they don't. They mean more money. Money I don't have, on top of money I already don't have. I close the message and look up at the empty office. Everyone else left hours ago. The city glitters through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Blackwood Tower, indifferent to the fact that I haven't eaten since breakfast, or that my hands won't stop shaking every time my phone lights up. Six months ago, I was a receptionist at a small firm downtown, answering phones and pretending I didn't notice my paycheck shrinking against Ethan's medical bills. Then a woman I'd never met before called out of nowhere. She said she'd heard I was sharp and undervalued, and asked if I wanted a real job: executive assistant to one of the wealthiest men in the city. I never asked how she knew my name. I never asked why she cared, or how she'd gotten my number in the first place. I was too desperate for the raise to question the gift. Some nights, like tonight, I wonder if it really was a gift, or something else wearing a gift's shape. I open my laptop and pull up the number I've been avoiding all evening. $47,000. That's what stands between Ethan and a chance at living past thirty, and the updated costs in that message just made it worse, not better. My phone buzzes again. Ethan this time. How's the job going? Miss you. I stare at those four words until they swim. He doesn't know how bad it's gotten. I haven't told him the specialist raised the surgery cost twice now, or that I sold my mother's ring last week and it still wasn't enough. He's fighting to survive. The last thing he needs is to know I'm drowning too. Good. Miss you more, I type back, and hate myself a little for the lie. I close the banking app before I can watch the number get smaller in my head and bigger in reality. Instead, I pull up the spreadsheet I built to track every possible way to raise money faster. Overtime. A second job. Selling the last thing I own that's worth anything, which is basically nothing. None of it adds up to $47,000 in three weeks, and now the hospital wants to talk about updated costs on top of it. The elevator chimes. I freeze. Nobody comes to the executive floor at midnight except one person, and my pulse kicks up before I even see him. Damian Blackwood steps out of the elevator like he owns the air in the room, because he does. Dark suit, no tie, sleeves rolled to his forearms, the only sign he's had a long day too. He doesn't look surprised to see me. He looks like he expected it, like he timed his arrival to catch me exactly like this. "Ms. Rivers." His voice is flat, controlled, the kind of voice that never asks for anything because it doesn't have to. "Still here. At midnight." "Finishing the quarterly file." I close my laptop half a second too fast. His eyes catch it. Of course they do. Nothing gets past him. He walks to his office door, then stops. Doesn't turn around. "You've missed two lunches this week. Rescheduled a dentist appointment twice. And yesterday you asked HR about early wage access." He finally looks at me. "I read HR reports, Ms. Rivers. It's part of the job." Heat crawls up my neck. "That's not... I'm handling it." "Are you." It's not a question. It's an accusation dressed as one, and it lands exactly where it's meant to. I stand, gathering my bag, my dignity, whatever's left of both. "I appreciate the concern, Mr. Blackwood, but my personal finances aren't company business." "They are when they affect your performance." He steps closer, and I hate that I notice the way the light catches the sharp line of his jaw, the way he fills a doorway like it was built for him. "You're the best assistant I've had in three years. I'd rather not lose you to a hospital bill." My breath catches. "How do you know about..." "I know everything that happens in this building." No apology in his voice. Just fact. "Including that your boyfriend needs a surgery you can't afford, and that the man you worked for before me put his hands on you when you asked for a raise instead." The room tilts. I grip the edge of my desk. My throat closes around a dozen questions, how deep does his information go, who told him, what else does he know that I've never said out loud, but none of them make it past my lips. "Get out of my life," I whisper, but there's no force behind it. I'm too tired to fight a war I'm already losing. "I could," he says. "Or I could offer you a way out you haven't considered." Something in his voice shifts, colder, more deliberate, like he's been rehearsing this moment before he even stepped off the elevator. Like this whole conversation was never really about lunch breaks or dentist appointments at all. "There's nothing you could offer me that I'd want," I say, even as some traitorous part of me leans toward him instead of the door. He almost smiles. Almost. "Not yet," he says. "But you will. Every family has a price, Ms. Rivers. Yours just started tonight." He turns and walks into his office, leaving the door open behind him, an invitation I don't want to take and can't afford to refuse. I stand frozen in the dark, my phone buzzing again in my hand. Ethan. Another message I haven't opened. And underneath it, the hospital's updated costs, still waiting, still climbing. Whatever Damian Blackwood is about to offer me, I already know two things with terrifying certainty. I'm going to say yes. And it's already started costing me more than money.