Don't Toy with My Heart, Mr. Billionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Padlocked
Brent padlocks Lilia's toy shop in front of her customers, and a stranger who came to browse offers her a year-long marriage; she counters, signs on the counter, and Brent tells her what the man sells.
The padlock went through the front door of my shop at ten past four on a Monday.
I heard it from the back room, where I was pricing a box of glass wands.
By the time I got out front, four men in gray jackets were stacking my display shelves on the sidewalk.
Eleven customers stood frozen between the vibrators and the lube.
One of them was holding a lavender silicone rabbit.
"Excuse me," I said. "What are you doing?"
"Collecting," said a voice from the door.
Brent Sorrel walked in wearing a navy quarter-zip and the smile I used to think was kind.
We were engaged for two years.
He put the money into Velvet Hour, and I put in everything else.
"Three hundred and eighty thousand, Lilia," he said. "Your payment was due Friday."
"You said you'd give me until the end of the month."
"I said a lot of things."
He looked around at my customers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the shop is closed. Please put the merchandise down. It's evidence."
Somebody laughed.
Somebody else put down a pink vibrator and wiped her hand on her jeans.
My face went hot, and I decided on the spot that he didn't get to see me cry.
"You can't take my inventory," I said. "The lien covers the equipment, not the stock."
"The lien covers whatever my lawyer says it covers."
He took the lavender rabbit out of the woman's hands and held it up by its ears.
"Look at this. Three years she's been selling these. Not one of them as good as me."
That got a bigger laugh.
I'd designed that rabbit myself, with a motor I'd sourced from a supplier in Ohio, and it was the best seller I had.
Shawna came out of the back with her red bob in her face and a box cutter in her hand.
"I will end you," she told Brent.
"Shawna, put it down."
"He's stealing the stock."
"I know. Put it down anyway."
She put it down.
And that's when the man in the corner spoke.
I hadn't noticed him until then.
He'd been standing by the massage candles for ten minutes in a charcoal suit that cost more than my rent.
He was reading a bottle of oil like it was a contract.
"How much?" he said.
His voice was low and flat and didn't carry at all, and the whole shop went quiet to hear it.
Brent turned around.
"Sorry?"
"The debt. How much?"
"Three hundred and eighty thousand. And you are?"
The man didn't answer him.
He walked across the shop to me, past the four men in gray jackets, and the men moved out of his way without being asked.
He was very tall.
Black hair, gray eyes, and a face with nothing on it at all.
"Do you want to keep this shop?" he said.
"Yes."
"Do you want to keep it badly enough to marry me?"
I looked at Shawna.
Shawna looked at me and mouthed, what.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Is that a joke?"
"I don't joke."
"Then it's a robbery."
"It's a contract. One year. I pay your debt and buy the building."
"In exchange I live in your house, wear your ring and stand where you tell me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I need a wife in eighteen days. You need three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I don't think either of us has a better offer."
Brent laughed, loud and ugly.
"Buddy, she sells vibrators. Nobody's going to believe you married her."
The man still didn't look at him.
He looked at me.
"Do you want me to leave?" he said.
I didn't know his name.
I didn't know what his house looked like.
I knew a man I'd loved had just made a joke of three years of my life.
He'd done it with a lavender rabbit, in front of eleven strangers.
And I knew this one had asked me a question and then waited for the answer, which Brent never did.
"Five million," I said.
The man's eyes moved a fraction.
"Five million, plus the debt, plus the building. I keep my name."
"Go on."
"I keep my shop and my line, and no one tells me what to sell."
"Lilia," Shawna whispered.
"And I want it in writing. Now."
"That's more than I offered."
"You said you didn't have a better offer."
The corner of his mouth moved.
It wasn't quite a smile.
He took a pen from his jacket, pulled a folded paper from the other side, and laid it on my counter next to the register.
It had been typed before he walked into my shop, with a blank where the money went.
I should have asked about that.
I wrote my number in the blank and signed on the line, between a bottle of cherry lube and a box of gift bows.
"Leon Merrick," he said, signing below me.
"Lilia DeGraff."
"I know."
Brent's smile had gone strange.
"Merrick," he said. "As in Merrick Defense?"
Leon put the cap back on his pen.
"Lilia," Brent said, and for the first time all afternoon he wasn't performing. "Do you know what that man sells?"
I looked at the contract, and at the name on it.
Then I looked up at the man who had just bought my life for a year.
"No," I said.
"Weapons," Brent said. "To the kind of men who go to war."
Leon took my hand off the counter and led me out the door past the padlock, and I let him.
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