They Called Me Barren, I Married a Billionaire novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Say It Again

Leona's POV

Nine days later, his grandmother was off the tube and sitting up in bed, telling a nurse that the pudding was an insult.

I came home to the penthouse at ten that night with a paper bag of Thai food and found Elias standing in the kitchen, looking into the open refrigerator.

He had not slept properly in a week.

He had not touched me in a week either.

I put the bag on the island.

"You can't have been standing there since the hospital," I said.

"Only twenty minutes."

"What are you looking for?"

"Something that isn't a banker's lunch."

I started unpacking the cartons.

He closed the refrigerator and leaned against it with his arms folded, watching me.

I knew the look.

He had been giving it to me across rooms for days, and then turning his head the second I noticed.

I set down the noodles.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been not saying for nine days."

"I haven't been doing anything."

"Elias."

He closed his mouth.

"I want to ask you something," I said. "And I want you to answer it plainly, because I'm tired of being managed."

"Ask."

"On the terrace, you told me I was the only woman in that building the clause wouldn't hurt."

His face changed.

"You picked me because I couldn't have a child," I said. "You used the worst thing anyone has ever said about me as the reason I qualified."

"Leona."

"I said yes to it. I'm not pretending I didn't. But it's the thing I can't get past." I pressed my hand to the counter. "Every time you look at me, I wonder if that's what you see. A woman with a defect who's safe."

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