Page 9 of The Billionaire's Bargain

I freeze, clutching a worn sweater. "What?"

"Don't pack anything. I'll provide everything you need."

There's something about the way he says it—like he's erasing me, like my few shabby possessions offend him—that finally breaks through my daze of desperate relief.

"I need my own things," I insist, continuing to pack.

His hand covers mine, stilling my movements. His skin is warm, dry, the nails perfectly manicured against my bitten-down ones. "Alice," he says, my name a gentle warning. "Part of our arrangement is that I take care of you. Completely."

"But—"

"Nothing from this life comes with us." His voice softens marginally. "Fresh start. Clean slate."

What he means is: no reminders of who I was before I belonged to him. No evidence of my independence, my separate existence. The rational part of me recognizes this as a classic control tactic. The desperate part of me—the part watching my mother waste away, watching my brother's future disappear—doesn't care.

"I need my photo of us," I say, reaching for the silver frame on my nightstand. "My mom, Toby, and me. From before she got sick."

Something passes across his face—compassion.

"One photo," he agrees. "But only because you'll see them regularly. I'm not separating you from your family, Alice. I'm improving their circumstances. And yours."

The photo frame feels heavy in my hands. It's the only thing I'll take from my old life into whatever awaits me in Alexander Grant's world. I should feel grief, or fear, or at minimum, anxiety. Instead, all I feel is a numb sense of inevitability, like I've been moving toward this moment from the first day he walked into the diner.

"Ready?" Alexander asks, though it's not really a question.

I glance around my small bedroom one last time—the faded posters, the books from the college classes I never got to finish, the dent in the wall from when Toby threw a baseball indoors despite my warnings. Twenty-three years of life, about to be left behind.

"Yes," I lie, clutching the photo to my chest.

Alexander's hand settles at the small of my back, five points of heat through my thin t-shirt, guiding me toward the door. Before we leave, he pauses at the kitchen counter and tears up the check he'd left earlier.

"You won't need this now," he says, letting the pieces fall like confetti. "Everything will be handled directly."

Outside, a sleek black car idles at the curb, drawing curious stares from the neighbors. Alexander opens the door for me, and I slide inside, enveloped immediately by the smell of leather and his subtle cologne. As he walks around to the driver's side, I press my face against the cool window, looking up at the apartment windows where my mother sleeps, unaware that I've just traded myself for her care.

Alexander settles beside me, his presence immediately filling the car's interior. He doesn't start the engine right away. Instead, he turns to study my face, his dark eyes cataloging every detail as if he's memorizing me—or maybe assessing his purchase.

"Second thoughts?" he asks, though his tone suggests he already knows the answer.

I clutch the photo frame tighter. "Would it matter if I did?"

His mouth curves in that not-quite smile. "You made the practical choice, Alice." He reaches out, brushes a strand of hair from my face with proprietary gentleness. "And in time, you'll find it was the only choice."

As the car pulls away from the curb, I don't look back at the apartment building. I keep my eyes fixed ahead, just like Alexander does. The future rushes toward us, sleek and dark and inevitable as the car eating up the distance between my old life and whatever waits at the end of this ride.

I've made the practical choice.

God help me.

five

. . .

Alexander

I watchAlice's eyes widen as we pull through the gates of my estate, her small hands twisting in her lap. The same hands that served me coffee, hands I've imagined on my body countless times. She looks so fucking breakable sitting there in my Bentley, swallowed by leather seats worth more than she makes in a year. Every instinct screams at me to pull her into my lap, to taste her mouth, to make her mine in every way possible. But I grip the door handle instead, my knuckles whitening. I've waited this long. I can wait a little longer.

"This is...all yours?" she whispers as the mansion comes into view, three stories of limestone and glass perched on the edge of the cliffside, the ocean stretching endlessly behind it.

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