Don't Toy with My Heart, Mr. Billionaire novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Clause Fourteen

Lilia writes her own penalty clause into the contract, moves into the lakeshore house, and the uncle who wants Leon's company walks in at midnight.

The contract was nine pages long, and he made me read all of it in the back of his car.

The driver took Lake Shore Drive without a word.

Leon sat on the other side of the seat with a tablet, answering messages with one thumb.

"Page two," he said, without looking up. "You'll want to read page two."

"I'm reading page one."

"Page one is the part where you agree you're of sound mind."

"Am I?"

"You asked for five million dollars from a stranger. I'd say you're the soundest person I've met this year."

I turned to page two.

It said what he'd said in the shop.

One year, starting on the wedding day.

His debt payment to Brent, in full, by morning.

The building bought in my name.

Two and a half million on the wedding day, two and a half at the end of the year.

Separate bedrooms.

Public affection whenever anyone was watching.

No other partners for either of us until the year was done.

I stopped on the last line.

"Nowhere in here does it say anything about feelings," I said.

"It doesn't need to."

"It says no one falls in love."

"It says no one pretends to in private. That's different."

"Do you always read your own contracts this carefully?"

"I wrote it."

"You wrote it before you met me. How did you know I'd say yes?"

"I didn't. I had three of these in the car."

He said it.

I looked at him.

"Three women already said no?"

"Two. The third one, I hadn't asked yet." He glanced up. "She's a lawyer. She'd have read all of it."

"And I'm the one with the vibrators."

"You're the one who asked for more money."

I laughed, and I hated that I did.

I thought about Brent holding up my rabbit by its ears.

I thought about how much I wanted to watch that man lose something.

And then I looked at the man next to me.

"Have you ever been in love?" I said.

"No."

"Have you ever said the words to anyone?"

"No."

He didn't even look up from the tablet.

Nobody says that unless it's true.

A man who had never said it wouldn't know how to keep from saying it once he meant it.

A man like that would be very easy to teach.

"Do you have a pen?" I said.

He gave me one without asking why.

At the bottom of page nine there was room for additional terms.

I wrote in the margin in small, neat capitals.

CLAUSE 14. THE FIRST PARTY TO SAY "I LOVE YOU" TO THE OTHER PAYS THE OTHER TEN MILLION DOLLARS.

I turned the page toward him.

He read it twice.

"Ten million," he said.

"It's a deterrent."

"Against what?"

"Against you getting any ideas, Mr. Merrick."

"You think I'm the risk."

"I think you've been carrying a contract around Chicago looking for a wife."

"And?"

"Somebody's going to feel something eventually. I'd like it priced in."

He took the pen back.

For a long moment he looked at the clause with no expression on his face.

Then he signed his initials next to it.

"HM," he said. "I'll have it typed."

"You aren't worried?"

"No," he said. "Are you?"

"Not even a little."

I told that lie very well.

His house was a long gray block of glass and stone on a bluff over the lake.

There was a gate and a lawn and nothing on the lawn.

Inside, there were more rooms than furniture.

A woman in a gray cardigan met us at the door and took my coat.

It was a thrift-store denim jacket, and she held it.

She showed me upstairs to a room the size of my whole apartment.

White bed.

White rug.

A window that took up the entire wall and looked straight at the water.

On the dresser there was a phone I'd never seen before.

"Your shop's lock was cut at six," the woman said. "Mr. Merrick's lawyer called Mr. Sorrel and asked him to be there."

"He wasn't thrilled?"

"I wouldn't say so, ma'am."

She had the kind of face that didn't smile until it was ready, and it was nearly ready.

I sat on the bed and stared at the wall of water.

My whole life was in a plastic bin in a rented room on Damen Avenue.

My shop was open.

My name was still mine.

And somewhere downstairs was a man who had never said I love you, who had just given me ten million reasons to make him.

I took off my shoes and my phone rang.

Shawna.

"Tell me he's ugly," she said.

"He's not ugly."

"Tell me he's a killer."

"I don't know yet."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm better than fine. I'm going to be rich and I'm going to be right."

"About what?"

I didn't tell her about Clause 14.

I'd tell her in the morning, when it sounded like a plan instead of a dare.

At midnight the front doorbell rang, long and loud, three times.

I heard a man's voice in the hall, big and red and furious, and I went to the top of the stairs.

Leon stood in the entry in his shirtsleeves, with his tie off.

An older man in a camel overcoat had walked past him and was already halfway into the living room.

"Where is she?" the older man said. "Where is this bride of yours, Leon? I want to see what you bought."

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