I Marry My Billionaire Boss to Save My Sister novel · Chapter 3 of 32
Chapter 3: Rourke
Rourke's car is waiting outside Lily's building. He offers Ava a cleaner deal: leave Damien and he will clear the debt. She refuses to his face. Rourke says Damien's last fiancée did not survive the arrangement.
"Who is Rourke?" Lily whispered.
"Nobody," I said.
My father's grin slipped.
It was a small slip, but I saw it.
"Dad, who is Rourke?"
"A friend." He studied the ceiling. "A man who looks after people."
"Get out," I said.
"It's my apartment."
"Get out of my sister's apartment."
He stood up slowly, the way a man does when he wants you to see him decide.
At the door he looked back at Lily.
"Don't wait up," he said.
The stairwell swallowed his footsteps.
Lily put her face in her hands.
"He knew about the contract before I did," she said. "How did he know?"
"I'm going to find out."
I stayed until she ate half a piece of toast.
I stayed until she fell asleep on the couch under my coat.
Then I went down the stairs with my keys in my fist.
The snow had slowed to fat, lazy flakes.
Marcus's car was gone.
Another one sat in its place.
Long, silver-gray, with the engine running and the rear window already sliding down.
"Ms. Sinclair."
A man sat in the back seat with a paper cup of coffee on his knee.
Fifty-five, silver hair, a camel coat, a face made for charity dinners.
He smiled like we'd been introduced.
"Vincent Rourke. Your father speaks very warmly of you."
"My father speaks warmly of anyone who buys him a drink."
He laughed, delighted.
"Get in, please. It's freezing, and I'd hate for a nurse to catch cold."
"I'll stand."
"Of course you will."
He sipped his coffee.
"I'll be brief. You signed with Damien Kastar this morning."
I said nothing.
"A year of playing house, and in exchange, he forgives what your family owes him." He tilted his head. "It's a fine offer. Mine is better."
"I'm not interested."
"You haven't heard it."
"I don't need to."
"Walk away from him today. Don't go back to the penthouse. I will clear every dollar your father owes. Your sister's name comes off every paper. No year, no ring, no man who looks at you like a line item."
The snow gathered on my shoulders.
For one second, I let myself imagine it.
Lily asleep in her own bed.
No stranger's clipboard at her door.
Then I thought about the man in the tan coat, and who had sent him.
"What do you get?" I asked.
"The pleasure of being useful."
"Try again."
His smile stayed exactly where it was.
"I get Damien without a wife."
"So I'm not a rescue. I'm a move."
"Everyone is a move, my dear. Some of us are kind about it."
"My father works for you."
"Your father owes me. That's different. It's worse for him."
I stepped up to the open window.
I bent until my face was level with his.
"No," I said.
"You haven't thought."
"I've thought. You sent a man to my sister's door at dawn so I'd be scared enough to take your deal. Then you waited in the cold for me to come down."
"Resourceful of me."
"Cruel of you. Take your coffee and go."
The smile finally moved.
It didn't fall.
It sharpened.
"Brave," he said. "Your mother would have liked that."
Every muscle in my back locked.
"Don't say her."
"Cancer, wasn't it? Nineteen years old, and you held her hand through the last of it." He turned the cup in his fingers. "I do my reading."
"Drive away."
"In a moment. You should know who you've married."
"I haven't married anyone yet."
"Haven't you?"
He set the coffee in the holder.
"Damien Kastar had a fiancée once. Lovely girl. Quiet. Not unlike you."
I waited.
"She did not survive the arrangement," Rourke said.
The cold went through my coat.
"You're lying."
"I never lie to people I intend to do business with."
From inside his coat, he drew a photograph and held it through the window between two fingers.
I didn't want to take it.
My hand took it anyway.
A woman lay in a hospital bed, pale as the sheets, tubes at her nose.
Dark hair spread across the pillow.
Her eyes were open, and they were looking straight at the camera.
At the edge of the frame, a man's hand gripped the bed rail.
A dark sleeve.
A silver cuff link.
I knew that cuff link.
I had watched it catch the dawn light four hours ago.
The window began to rise.
"Ask him," Rourke said.
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