Chapter 8 Told Sarah
Isabella’s POV
Sarah had gone very quiet.
Not the distracted kind. Not the polite listening kind where she nodded and murmured encouragement while mentally planning dinner.
This was the dangerous kind of quiet , the kind where her eyes unfocused, her mouth parted slightly, and I could almost see her brain replaying everything I’d just said, slotting each piece into place and realizing none of it could ever be taken back.
“So,” she finally said, slowly, carefully, like the wrong word might shatter me. “Let me make sure I understand this.”
I nodded, curled into the corner of her couch with my knees tucked to my chest. I hadn’t even taken my coat off. I didn’t trust my hands not to shake if I gave them something else to do.
“He wants you to marry him,” she continued. “Not because he wants a wife. Because his board wants optics.” She paused. “For how long?”
“A year,” I said quietly. “That’s what he said. Long enough for the board members to stop sniffing around his private life like bloodhounds.”
I swallowed. “He didn’t spell it out in detail, but the message was clear. One year of playing house. Just long enough for his board to stop asking questions.”
Sarah’s expression shifted , tightened. “And after you give birth…” Her voice cracked, just barely. “He plans to pay you off and remove you from the equation.”
My throat burned. I had to swallow twice before I could speak.
“He said it wouldn’t be my child,” I whispered.
“He said it would be his. That I’d have no claim. No rights. No place in the child’s life.”
I shook my head, disbelief mixing with panic.
“Like I could carry a baby for nine months,” I went on, my voice trembling now, “feel it move, feel it grow inside me, and then just… sign it away. Walk away from my own flesh and blood like I’m returning a dress that doesn’t fit.”
My hands tightened around the cup.
“I don’t know which hell I’m supposed to choose, Sarah.”
She stared at me, horror bleeding slowly across her face.
“How can he think that’s okay?” she asked, her voice dropping into something low and shaken.
“Your own baby, Isabella. Your body. Your blood , ” She stopped, dragging a hand through her hair until it stood up in frantic spikes.
“That’s monstrous. There is something deeply, fundamentally broken in a man who thinks he can buy a womb and then issue a refund.”
“He doesn’t see it that way,” I said quietly, staring at the steam rising from my cold coffee. “To Alexander, it’s just efficiency. A problem solved with a check and a signature. He doesn’t deal in emotions; he deals in results.”
Sarah’s jaw clenched so hard I thought I heard her teeth grind. “And if you say no? If you tell him to take his legacy and shove it?”
My stomach pitched, a violent roll of nausea that made the world tilt. Even now , after saying it out loud once , the words felt poisonous, like I was inviting the devil into the room just by breathing them.
“He hands my mom’s location to the people who own my dad’s debt. He said they’re done with the meager monthly payments. They don’t want the crumbs I’ve been scraping together anymore. They want the whole loaf, and they want it now.”
I looked at my hands, the skin red from scrubbing coffee counters for years.
“ I’ve been working my ass off, Sarah. Juggling college, pulling double shifts, living on ramen and prayer just to pay those collectors.
Trust me , these aren’t the kind of people who send you a polite late notice in the mail.
You don’t cross them. I’ve been paying every single month just to keep their shadows away.
Sarah went completely still. It was that terrifying, heavy silence that happens right before a storm breaks , the kind of quiet that makes you realize the world as you knew it just ended.
“You told me before that your dad owed money,” she said, her voice unnervingly careful. “But you never told me it was... this. Isabella, who are these people? Who have you been sending your life’s blood to every single month?”
“I don’t know everything,” I admitted, the first tear finally escaping and trekking a hot path down my cheek.
“And God, Sarah, I never wanted to. I never asked my mom for the gritty details because , ” My voice wobbled, breaking on a jagged sob.
“Because it already hurt enough just to survive the aftermath. I didn’t want names to go with the nightmares.”
She didn’t push. She just waited, letting the silence do its heavy work, her eyes filled with a fierce, protective rage that was the only thing keeping me from shattering into a million pieces.
“My dad wasn’t a bad man,” I said finally, my voice sounding like it was coming from a long way off.
“He was a good father. He was the guy who stayed up late to help me with math and made the best pancakes on Sundays. He just… didn’t have a normal job. Not really. He was always ‘between things.
’ I didn’t understand until I was fifteen that ‘between things’ meant working for people he never should’ve been within a hundred miles of.”
I took a shaky breath, the air feeling thin and cold.
“He was working underground. Running jobs for men who dealt in dangerous things. Criminal things. I don’t think he understood how deep the water was when he first stepped in, but by the time he realized he was drowning, his feet couldn’t touch the bottom.”
“And when he tried to swim back to shore?” Sarah asked gently.
“He tried to get out,” I said, a hollow laugh escaping me. “Every time he tried, they promised it would be one last job. Just one more, and the slate is clean. That went on longer than it should have. They kept him on a leash, dangling the carrot of a normal life.”
I paused, the memory of that final week hitting me like a physical weight.
“On the final job, there was a shipment. Drugs. A lot of them. A quantity worth an obscene, life-altering amount of money. They disappeared while they were under his watch. Just… vanished into thin air.”
Sarah’s eyes widened, her hands gripping the edge of the sofa. “They think he stole them.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Or lost it. Or sold it. No one really knows what happened that night. But in their world, the details don’t matter. They’re convinced he was responsible. And they want payment.”
Sarah’s lips parted. “And then he was killed.”
“Not long after the shipment went missing.” I stared at a crack in her kitchen tile like it might open up and swallow me whole. “But death doesn’t erase debt. It just… transfers it.”
Her expression shifted slowly, like a storm rolling in. “They put it on your mother.”
I nodded.
“And a debt that size isn’t just money,” I said. “It’s leverage. It’s fear. It’s a reminder that you don’t get to walk away.”
I dragged in a breath that scraped on the way down. “My mom can’t handle that kind of pressure, Sarah. You’ve seen her. She barely makes it through a grocery run without panicking. She’s fragile. She wouldn’t survive men like that knocking on her door.”
“So you stepped in.”
“I had to.” My shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. “I’m the only one left.”
Sarah leaned back in her chair like she needed space from the weight of it. “So Alexander , ”
“He knows.He dug. Ten years of erased records. He has every secret I’ve spent a decade burying lined up in a neat little row. And he’s using them.”
“So your choices are…” she said carefully, “marry the devil, carry his heir, and then disappear like you were never there?”
“Or don’t,” I choked, a jagged sob ripping up my throat. “And let my mother pay for my father’s sins in the worst way possible. He made it clear. If I walk, they walk in. I’m the only barrier between her and men who don’t understand the word mercy.”
The words hung there.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
There was more. And I knew telling her would be the final blow to whatever dignity I had left.
My fingers drifted to a torn hangnail. I picked at it like I could peel the truth smaller.
But there was no dressing this up.
“There’s more,” I said quietly, heat flooding my face.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “More? How could there possibly be more? Did he ask for your soul in writing?”
“No.” I forced myself to meet her eyes. “I almost slept with him. Tonight. In the shop.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Almost,” I rushed out. “On the counter.”
“Isabella.” Her voice was sharp now. “The man just blackmailed you. Threatened your mother. And you were what , five minutes away from hooking up with him on the same surface we use to serve lattes?”
I buried my face in my hands. My skin still felt branded where he’d touched me.
“I know. I know how insane it sounds.” My voice trembled. “I’m terrified of him. Of what he can do. But when he touched me…” I swallowed. “It was like my brain shut off. Like every survival instinct I have just… abandoned me. My body didn’t care about the threats. It just wanted him.”
Sarah stared at me like she was watching a train derail in slow motion.
“Well,” she said finally, leaning back until her chair creaked, “if you’re going to be a hostage, I suppose there are worse-looking captors.”
I shot her a glare through my fingers.
She exhaled hard.
“He’s a monster, Isabella. Ruthless. Manipulative. And yes, unfortunately, devastatingly attractive. But if your body is already reacting like this to a man you’re supposed to hate…” Her eyes darkened. “How are you going to survive living with him for a year?”
I followed her gaze to the vellum envelope on the table. The Kingsley crest stamped in wax didn’t look decorative anymore. It looked branded , sharp, intentional, permanent. Like something that marked ownership.
“I don’t know,” I admitted softly.
Then I lifted my chin.
“But I do know one thing. I cannot get pregnant.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “And how exactly are you planning to pull that off?”
I held her gaze, desperation burning hot behind my ribs.
“ I don’t know yet, but I’m going over that contract line by line. Every clause. Every comma. If he ‘can’t’ get me pregnant, I still get paid. I’ll frame it as compensation for lost time. Operational inefficiency. Whatever corporate language he respects.”
Sarah studied me carefully. “And then?”