MARRIED TO THE BILLIONAIRE IN A COMA

Chapter 3

Emily POV

I did not sleep that night. I lay in bed with the card sitting on my nightstand, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw the number written under Eleanor Cross's name.

I told myself I was not actually considering it. I told myself the same thing at least ten times, and each time it sounded a little less true.

Around two in the morning, I gave up pretending to sleep and turned on the small lamp beside my bed. I pulled out the folder I kept in the drawer underneath it, the one I hated opening more than almost anything else in my life.

Inside were the letters. Some from collectors. Some from the bank. All of them about the same thing, over and over, in slightly different words each time. My father's business had failed two years before he died, and somehow the debt from it had not died with him. It had simply waited, patient as that machine beside a hospital bed I did not yet know I would ever stand beside, until it landed fully on me.

Sandra never let me forget it either. She brought it up whenever it suited her, always in that same tone, like she was doing me a favor by reminding me.

You should have let the bank take everything back then, Emily. Instead, you tried to be noble, and now look at you.

I closed the folder and pushed it back into the drawer.

I sat there in the lamplight doing the math I always did on nights like that: rent, minimum payments, the interest that never seemed to shrink no matter how much I spent. Even working every shift the store offered me, I was always one bad week away from losing ground I had spent months gaining.

Then there was the number on that card.

It was not just enough to help. It was enough to end it. All of it. Every letter, every phone call, every night like this one.

I told myself it did not matter. I told myself I would call Eleanor Cross in the morning and tell her no, firmly, and then forget this ever happened.

By the time the sun came up, I almost believed myself.

I rehearsed it while I got dressed for work. No, thank you. I am not interested. Please do not contact me again. Short. Clear. The kind of no that does not leave room for anyone to argue.

I said it out loud to my own reflection in the bathroom mirror, the same way I had looked at the woman in the wedding dress weeks later without knowing it yet. My reflection looked tired. It always did lately.

No, thank you. I am not interested.

It sounded convincing enough to my own ears. I decided that was good enough.

I called the number on the card during my lunch break, sitting on an upside-down crate in the back room of the store, surrounded by shoeboxes I still had to unpack.

Eleanor Cross answered on the second ring, like she had been waiting for the call.

"Emily," she said. Not a question. She already knew who was calling.

"I wanted to tell you no," I said. "Thank you for the offer, but I am not interested."

There was a pause. Not a long one, but long enough that I felt the need to fill it.

"I do not know what kind of trouble your son is in," I added, "but I am not the answer to it."

"I understand," she said, and her voice did not carry even a hint of disappointment. That should have been my first warning. "May I ask what changed your mind, if I may call it that? You seemed to be considering it last night."

"I was tired last night," I said. "I am less tired today."

"Of course," she said. "Though I should mention, since you brought up trouble. It is not the kind you are imagining. My son is not in debt. He is not running from anyone. He is simply unavailable in a way that requires a particular kind of solution."

"Unavailable how?"

"That is a conversation for another time," she said smoothly, sidestepping the question the way I would later learn. She sidestepped almost everything she did not want to answer directly. "Since you have made your decision, I will not take more of your time. I do hope things improve for you, Emily. Truly."

Something about the way she said truly made my skin prickle, though I could not have told you why at the time.

"Thank you," I said, because I did not know what else to say.

She hung up first.

I sat there on the crate for a long moment, staring at my phone, feeling strangely unsettled by how easily she had accepted my no. I had expected her to push. I had expected another number, a bigger one, some kind of pressure. Instead, she had simply let me go, polite and calm, like my answer had cost her nothing at all.

I told myself that was a good sign. I told myself it meant I had made the right choice.

I almost believed that too, until I got home.

The apartment smelled like Sandra's perfume before I even got my key fully into the lock, which meant she had let herself in again, something I had asked her more than once not to do. I found her sitting at my small kitchen table, going through the mail I had left stacked by the door.

"Sandra." I dropped my bag on the couch. "You cannot keep doing this."

"Doing what? Visiting my stepdaughter?" She did not look up from the envelope in her hand. "This one is from the bank again. You really should open these the day they arrive, Emily. Ignoring them does not make them smaller."

"That is not yours to open."

She finally looked up, and there was something in her expression I did not like, something close to satisfaction.

"I heard you turned down Eleanor Cross," she said.

My whole body went cold. "How do you know about that?"

"Because I am the one who told her about you," Sandra said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "She came to me first, actually. Asking questions about a suitable young woman. I gave her your name."

"You did what?"

"I told her you were smart, presentable, and in need of exactly the kind of help she was offering." She set the envelope down and folded her hands on the table, watching me with an expression I recognized from years of being on the wrong side of it. "I also told her you would absolutely say yes."

"You had no right..."

"I had every right," she said, cutting me off without raising her voice, which somehow made it worse. "You are drowning, Emily. I am simply the only one in this family willing to say it out loud."

I stood there in my own kitchen, staring at the woman who had never once asked what I wanted before deciding what was best for me, and felt something inside me crack just slightly, right down the center.

"I already told her no," I said, though my voice did not sound as certain as I wanted it to.

Sandra smiled, and it was not a kind smile.

"Did you?" she said. "We will see how long that lasts."