The Contract Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 5
Chapter 1: The Day Of
In the ER, Ava's shift ends with a man in a charcoal suit waiting at the nurses' station with a folder: her family's debt now belongs to him. He offers a year as his wife, or he calls the loan on Lily's surgery. A rival nurse and a patient's family watch him stand over her.
"Ava, bed six is crashing. Now."
I'm already moving.
It's 6:40 in the morning, and I've been on my feet since seven last night.
Bed six is a man in his sixties with a gray face and a wife holding his shoe.
"Sir, look at me. I'm Ava. You're at Mercy Hudson."
His eyes roll toward me.
I get the pads on his chest and call the rhythm.
The doctor shocks him once.
The line on the monitor jumps, then climbs.
His wife sags against the curtain and laughs and cries at the same time.
"Is he back? Is he back?"
"He's back," I say. "You did good getting him here."
She grabs my hand with both of hers.
Their grown son stands behind her in a work jacket, mouthing thank you.
I tell them I'll be right outside.
Then I peel off my gloves and my hands start to shake.
They always shake after, never during.
"Nice save, Sinclair."
Dana leans on the nurses' station with a coffee, smiling the way she smiles when she wants something.
She's been on this unit three years and has wanted my day shifts for two of them.
"Thanks."
"Funny. You always get the dramatic ones."
I don't answer.
I have eleven charts to close and a sister with a doctor's appointment at nine.
I'm halfway through the first chart when Dana stops talking.
The whole station goes quiet.
I look up.
A man stands at the counter with his hands in his pockets.
He's tall, six-three at least, and he fills the space like he owns the lease.
Charcoal three-piece suit. White shirt. A gray tie, perfectly flat.
Black hair cut so short and clean it looks drawn on.
He is not sick, and he is not anybody's family.
Nobody dressed like that walks into an ER at dawn by accident.
"Ava Sinclair."
It isn't a question.
"Visiting hours start at nine," I say. "If you need triage, the desk by the door will help you."
"I don't need triage."
His eyes are dark brown and completely steady.
"I need ten minutes. You have a break coming."
"I have charts."
"Then I'll wait."
He does.
He stands at my counter while I finish the first chart, then the second.
He doesn't check his watch.
The son from bed six drifts over for a cup of water and stares at him.
Dana stares too, openly.
By the third chart, my hands have stopped shaking, and I'm angry that I noticed.
I put down the pen.
"Who are you?"
"Damien Kastar."
He takes a navy folder from inside his jacket and lays it on the counter between us.
"Open it."
"I don't know you."
"You know your mother's signature."
My stomach drops before I look.
The first page is a loan agreement.
Ruth Sinclair, her careful block letters at the bottom.
The date is eleven years ago, the winter Lily was eight and first turned blue on the stairs.
The principal is a number I recognize.
Then the next page, and the next.
Interest. Penalties. A balance at the bottom, circled in red.
$2,100,000.
I read it twice.
The second time, the numbers go soft at the edges.
"No," I say. "That's wrong. She borrowed forty thousand."
"She borrowed forty thousand. From a lender who didn't mind how long it took."
"She's cleaned offices every night for eleven years."
"I know."
I look up.
"Kastar Holdings bought the note last month," he says. "I own it now. All of it."
The son from bed six has stopped pretending to get water.
His mother has come to the curtain, one hand over her mouth.
Dana doesn't even bother to look away.
My face goes hot.
"This isn't the place," I say.
"You didn't answer your phone. Or your door."
"So you came to my job?"
"I came where you'd have to stand still."
Something cold runs down my back.
He says it so calmly, like a man describing a parking spot.
"What do you want?"
"Your sister's heart surgery is the most expensive line in that file."
He taps the third page once.
"The lender was already refusing to extend it. I can call the whole balance due today, and her care stops. Or I can pay for it."
I can't make my voice work.
"Lily is nineteen," he says. "She has maybe a year before her heart can't wait. You know that better than I do."
I do.
I know it at three in the morning, in the dark, every night.
"You're blackmailing me," I say, low.
"I'm making you an offer."
"Same thing."
"No." His jaw doesn't move. "In a blackmail, you don't get to say no."
I laugh, and it comes out broken.
"Then say it. Say the offer."
"Marry me."
The monitor in bed four beeps into the silence.
Somebody behind me drops a clipboard.
"One year," he says. "A contract. You live in my home, you appear beside me, you wear my name. At the end of it, the full balance is forgiven. Every dollar."
"You're insane."
"I'm exact."
"Why me?"
For half a second, something moves behind his eyes.
Then it's gone, and he says, "That's not part of the offer."
Dana makes a small sound in her throat.
The son from bed six says, very quietly, "Jesus."
I grip the edge of the counter.
I think of Lily laughing at something on her phone with her feet up on the couch.
I think of her lips going gray on the stairs.
I think of Mom's hands, cracked from bleach, counting bills at the kitchen table.
"And if I say no?"
"Then I call the loan at noon."
He says it without heat.
That's the worst part.
He reaches into his jacket again and takes out a black pen.
It's heavy and plain, the kind of pen that signs things that matter.
A second document comes out of the folder.
I see the word CONTRACT across the top, and my own name typed underneath it.
Typed already.
Before he ever walked in here.
He lays the pen on the counter and slides it across to me until it touches my fingers.
"Lily's surgery is scheduled for Monday," he says. "If you sign today."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend