Spoiled by Four Billionaires novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Fiance

Cullen says he has been engaged to her since she was three and wants her openly, and she agrees to keep the ring until Dean falls.

"You're what?" I said.

"Engaged," Cullen Bowdoin said. "Since you were three and I was seven."

The kitchen had gone quiet, with three brothers and my mother looking everywhere but at me.

"Is this a joke?" I asked.

"It's a contract," said Alister. "Our fathers signed it to seal a merger."

"I was three."

"Yes."

"You can't engage a toddler."

"We know," said our mother weakly. "We just never undid it."

I stood up from the table.

"I need air," I said.

"There's a terrace," Cullen said. "I'll show you, and then I'll leave you alone if you want."

His voice was low and even.

I should have said no.

Instead I followed him up two flights of stairs and through a glass door.

The terrace faced the Charles River, with the city lights laid out below.

I wrapped my arms around myself.

The air smelled of rain.

Cullen leaned on the rail a few feet away and didn't crowd me.

"I'm not going to marry a man I met ten minutes ago," I said.

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I've waited twenty years to find out what you'd be like," he said.

I turned to look at him.

His face was serious, with a nose that had been broken once and set a little crooked.

"I didn't wait in a sad way," he said. "I dated. I worked. But I never put the ring away. My father gave it to me when I was seven, and I kept it."

"That's sad."

"A little."

I almost smiled.

"Look," I said. "Tonight I was told in front of forty people that I was a stepping stone."

"I heard."

"I need to see that man fall, and I don't have time to learn how to be someone's fiancee."

"I could help with that."

"With what?"

"His firm's biggest client is my company. His fiancee's father needs a Bowdoin contract to stay alive." He said it without any pleasure at all. "If I walk into a room with you on my arm, Dean Ketterman will have to watch."

I looked down at the river.

"You want me to wear your ring so I can ruin a man."

"I want you to wear it until you say you're done," he said. "On your terms. And if you decide at the end that you never want to see me again, I'll sign every paper my father ever signed and tear them up."

"You'd do that?"

"I'd do it tonight."

I looked at him harder.

He wasn't smiling and he wasn't pushing.

His gray eyes held mine without blinking, and something low in my stomach tightened that I hadn't asked for.

"You're very good looking," I said, before I could stop myself.

His mouth moved.

"That's not a no."

"It's not a yes either."

"Understood."

"Don't think this is about you."

"I wouldn't dare."

"I'll do it," I said. "Till he falls."

He took a small velvet box from his pocket.

He had carried it up the stairs.

Inside was a ring with a pale blue stone, plain and old, the kind of ring that had been kept in a drawer on purpose.

"Your hand," he said, and I held it out like a woman learning to swim.

His fingers were warm and dry.

He slid the ring on and didn't let go right away.

His thumb moved once across my knuckle.

"I've wanted to see this on you for a long time," he said, very quietly.

Heat went up my arm and into my face.

I pulled my hand away.

"Till he falls," I said again, mostly to remind myself.

"Till he falls."

He walked me back to the door.

"Cullen."

"Yes?"

"I don't know you."

"No," he said. "But I'd like you to."

I went downstairs, and Linus pushed a plate of lasagna into my hands and made me eat every bite.

Bram showed me the room that had been mine as a child.

The house had kept it, nineteen years of dust sheets and fresh flowers, with a yellow bedspread and a stuffed rabbit missing one eye.

I sat on the bed and held the rabbit.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

It was a text from a number I didn't recognize.

"Nessa. I saw the Ardmore car outside the tower. I made a terrible mistake. I love you. Please call me."

I read it twice.

Then I held the screen up and laughed, one short ugly laugh.

Dean had needed exactly three hours to find out who I was.

My thumb hovered over the reply box.

I didn't type anything.

Down the hall, Alister's voice said, "She's got a message from him, I'd put money on it," and Bram's said, "Ten dollars says he's crying."

I took a screenshot and sent it to the family group chat that Bram had already made for me.

It was named "Operation Dean."

The first reply came in four seconds.

"Let him come," Alister wrote.

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