Page 16 of The Demon Prince's Accidental Mate
Belial smiled and waved an arm over the counter. As his hand passed, a piece of crinkled brown parchment appeared, complete with inked writing. Finishing his wave with a flourish, he produced a pen from nowhere, extending the butt end of it toward me with grace.
“Simply sign on the dotted line, and all your problems will go away,” he murmured.
Chapter Nine
Lily
Ilooked at the parchment, then back at Belial. “If this was a movie, your face would be curving upward in some sort of Jim Carrey Grinch-esque grin right about now, wouldn’t it?”
His only response was to extend the pen another inch toward me.
I didn’t take it. I didn’twantto take it, just like I didn’t want to sign his stupid contract. It was my bakery. I finally had a chance to run it the way I wanted, and … and it wasn’t going so well.
That was the truth of it. I was working myself to the bone, getting up at four in the morning to bake for hours before opening, then running back and forth between the register and the ovens, trying to do it all. A one-woman show.
And it was killing me.
“What exactly are you offering?” I asked suspiciously, ignoring the look of delight on his face. “What are the terms and conditions?”
“It’s all right here,” he said, gesturing at the parchment.
Tentatively, I reached out and grabbed it, yanking it away from him and toward me so that he couldn’t grab my hand.
“Ouch,” I hissed. In my rush, I hadn’t gotten my right hand on the paper before pulling with the other. The papercut was a nuisance, nothing more, but on top of everything else going on, it was thelastthing I needed.
I almost tossed the deal away just because of it.
“It’s quite simple, really,” Belial said as I read. “I will invest money here to help your bakery do better.”
The laugh exploded from my chest, sarcastic and dry. “Right,” I drawled. “Because people just come along and offer money like that. No conditions. No terms. Nothing. I know what a bank loan is, and I know a loan shark when I see one. No, thank you, I’m not going to be permanently indebted to you on some technicality.”
“No technicalities.”
I looked up at him sharply. “Bullshit.”
He shook his head.
“Then why come here all big and mean and trying to intimidate me? Acting like you wanted to kill me for accidentally touching your mind.”
Darkness flared behind the yellow-gold of his eyes, but he smothered it quickly. “A business tactic, nothing more, I assure you.”
That was a lie.
“A business tactic?” I repeated, letting him know I wasn’t fooled for a second.
“Yes. To help put you in the mood to do a deal with me.”
“Why do you want this that badly?” I asked. “It’s not like I have some sort of magical cookie recipe or something.”
“My reasons are my own,” he said, reaching out to tap the top edge of the contract. “It’s very simple, though. I give you money. You maintain the payments. If you don’t, I own the bakery.”
The words on the parchment matched what he was saying. And his terms for repayment were generous. Almost too generous. There was more to it than he let on, but I couldn’t see it. Whatever it was, he was hiding it too well.
And I didn’t have much choice. No bank would lend me money. Not without my father there to sign for it. And considering he was dead, that would be difficult to achieve. And then the questions would arise as to why I hadn’t reported his death. And where was his body? Etc.
Perhaps I could report him missing. Say he simply never came back. After a time, they would pronounce him dead. I would take over, and then I could get a loan.
Except that will probably take too long. The bakery will go under long before the government bureaucracy declares him legally dead.
