Page 4 of Forced Pregnant Bride

Awesome.

“You must be Ms. Skye.” She grinned, showing off her pearly teeth and stamping my conscience with her sincere happiness. “Jake’s already talking about you. It’s good to meet you.”

This time, my smile wobbled, and I didn’t bother with a handshake. Her husband’s imprints still lingered. “Pleased to hear that. Do have a good day,Mr. and Mrs. Warren.”

She waved, and the field-playing, two-timing piece of trash led her out without even glancing over his shoulder.

I sighed. It baffled me how easy it was for men to two-time. How seamless it was for him to switch to the role of a loving, compassionate husband after asking another random woman out to dinner.

In the past, I hadn’t bothered myself with serious intimate relationships, and now, I understood that this fear held me back from trusting anyone completely. You could offer him your whole heart, and he’d trample it under his feet without remorse. In a world like ours, I knew it was hard to find true love, so what was the point of trying anyway? Plus, I wasn’t sure I could stomach being trampled on.

Shaking my head, I slung my purse over my shoulder, turned the lights off, and shut the door behind me.

In Salome’s irritated voice, the words rang in my head: “These creatures.”

Chapter 2 – Timur

“How much?”

I tapped the butt of the pen against the paper spread out on the desk in front of me, perusing over and over again.

It was raining outside. Grey skies, gloomy weather,memories.I fucking hated it. Rainy days had somehow proven to be harbingers of bad days over the years. And today was one of them. Something was amiss with the calculation. The figures didn’t match. My eyebrows formed a line between my forehead, and I restarted the analysis, tracing the tip of the pen over the leading points of recently concluded deals, sliding the ink through logistics settled at the hidden routes, expenses at storehouse locations, profits from the establishment, and….

I slammed the pen against the paper, feeling the black casing crack underneath my palm. “It doesn’t fucking match.”

“How much?” the bald man across the desk nonchalantly repeated, voicing his disinterest in my concerns but rather engrossed in the reason he was seated in my office. I raised my eyes to him.

Sitting comfortably cross-legged on the chair, Byrd flipped two white-wrapped bundles on the table and lifted them to the table-sized scale. Picking out a pocket knife, he cut one open, slid the knife into the powder, and pinched the powder on the tip of his tongue.

“Good stuff.” He dusted his fingers and sat up, taking a toothpick out of his mouth. “How much?”

I narrowed my eyes over the shining light reflection on his head to Arlo, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, his attention on me. “Call Amir. Tell him the figures don’t match—what was bought, sold, and recovered.And I need to know why the fuck it doesn’t in thirty minutes. He has twenty-nine left.”

My underboss nodded, taking out his phone to call the man with his life hanging on the line. Then, I turned to Byrd, knotting my fingers under my chin. “For the pinch?”

He smirked, leaning against the chair and plopping the stupid toothpick back into his mouth. “For two hundred bundles.”

“Five million.”

Byrd sputtered like he’d choked on his bloody toothpick, the smirk melting off his face as he gripped the edge of the desk. “Five…!” His chest heaved, and shock rattled his gentlemanly façade. “No fucking way I’m getting this blow for more than nine-fifty grand.”

My eyes narrowed at his audacity.

In my world and line of work, I’d learned the hard way that good things never came easy, and there were categories of shit: the good shit, the cheap shit, and the bad shit. With those categories came different types of distributors/resellers that we had to deal with: the smart ones, the stupid ones, the cheap ones. And then there was Byrd. Not new to the game, and highly recommended with years of experience. I’d heard about him but never had to deal with him personally. Until now. Clearly, he recognized quality but preferred to get on my fucking nerves.

I inclined backward on my chair, slipping another paper out of a stack. If it wasn’t already obvious, I was in a shitty sour mood and had no time to play games. I ran my fingers through my hair and rolled up my sleeves. I pulled on my tie and snatched a new pen from a stash in my drawer to work.

“Don’t know what shit you’ve heard, and I don’t fucking care to know,” I mumbled, burying my face in a new set of reports from one of the casinos. “But we don’t haggle here. The price is the fucking price. You either take it or get the fuck out.”

I didn’t see his face, but the disapproving grunt he made in his throat reached my ears. My fingers curled around the pen, but I didn’t react. Not yet, anyway.

“Listen, Tim—”

“Nobody fucking calls me Tim.”

Arlo’s uncultured snicker echoed from the back of the room, and I eyed Byrd. He was gripping one arm of the chair for dear life, gaping as if his ears hadn’t heard me. And when I blinked, the message was delivered without a blip.

“Timur,” he hesitantly corrected. “Listen, I’m not trying to start any trouble here. I’m only saying I can’t pay five million when I have an option to deal nine-fifty for the same amount.”

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