Chapter 3 : The Proposal

The silence between us was suffocating.

He stood there like he belonged tall, composed, his tailored suit absorbing the morning light while I stood barefoot in an oversized T-shirt, holding the truth that could destroy what was left of my life.

My throat was too dry to speak. “How did you… how did you even find me?”

Slade’s eyes swept over me once  not cruelly, but calculating, like he was memorizing a secret. “Finding people is easy when you have the right resources.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” I snapped.

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate. “I remembered your name. I made a few calls. I had to be sure you were all right.”

“All right?” I laughed, hollow and sharp. “I’m pregnant with a stranger’s child. Nothing about this is all right.”

Something brief flickered in his eyes. “You weren’t supposed to be alone in this.”

I shook my head, anger breaking through the fear. “We barely know each other. You don’t owe me anything.”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “But maybe I want to.”

I turned away, clutching the edge of the counter to steady myself. My heart was a wild thing inside my chest, torn between disbelief and the weight of everything collapsing around me.

“Does he know?” Slade asked behind me, his voice lower now.

“Who?”

“The man who hurt you.”

My breath caught. “You mean my ex-husband?”

“Yes.”

I swallowed hard. “No. And he won’t. This isn’t his problem anymore.”

Slade’s jaw tightened. “But it could be his lesson.”

I frowned, turning to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked at me for a long time, so long that I started to feel stripped bare under that gaze. When he finally spoke, his words landed like a blade.

“I want you to marry me.”

For a second, I thought I’d misheard him. “What?”

“Marry me,” he repeated, as calmly as if he were discussing a business deal. “A contract marriage. Six months. You’ll be protected, and the world will know you’re mine. In return, I’ll make sure your ex-husband regrets ever letting you go.”

The air in the room seemed to vanish.

I stared at him, my voice trembling. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

“Why me? You don’t even know me.”

He took another step forward until only inches separated us. “Because I don’t need to know you to recognize strength when I see it. Because you didn’t run last night when you could have. And because the man who hurt you is the same man who tried to ruin one of my companies two years ago.”

I froze. “Shawn?”

He nodded once. “Shawn Black made enemies in more places than his marriage, Ariana. I was one of them. I planned to destroy him slowly, but now” his gaze dropped briefly to my stomach “now there’s a cleaner way.”

I backed up a step, the wall cold against my spine. “You’re using me.”

His expression didn’t change. “I’m offering you protection. Stability. A future for your child. In exchange, I get what I want revenge, and a wife the world will envy.”

The words cut, but the calmness behind them made them impossible to dismiss.

“I don’t want revenge,” I said finally, voice shaking. “I just want to forget.”

“Then let me help you do that,” he murmured. “Let me make him irrelevant.”

For the first time, his tone softened  not pitying, but sincere in a way that frightened me more than his coldness ever could.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “This isn’t right.”

He reached into his jacket, pulled out a small velvet box, and set it on the table between us. “You don’t have to answer now. Think about it. But remember that the moment the world finds out you’re carrying my child, every reporter, every investor, and every vulture who wants a story will come for you. I can make that disappear.”

“My child?” I echoed, my cheeks burning. “You don’t even know if……”

“I do,” he interrupted softly. “It’s mine.”

The certainty in his voice made my pulse skip.

He glanced at his watch, composed again, the moment gone. “I’ll have my driver pick you up tomorrow at noon. If you come, I’ll take that as a yes.”

And just like that, he turned and walked away  leaving me standing in the middle of my small apartment, surrounded by silence and the faint trace of his cologne, the proposal still echoing in my ears.

That night, I sat on my bed staring at the velvet box. I hadn’t opened it, but I already knew what was inside a ring that meant nothing and everything at once.

Part of me wanted to throw it out the window, pretend the last twenty-four hours never happened. But another part  the broken, desperate part that still bled from Shawn’s betrayal whispered that maybe, just maybe, this was my chance to rise from the ashes.

To make him see what he’d lost.

To protect my baby.

To take control of the story before it destroyed me.

The rain started again outside, soft and endless. I closed my eyes, whispering to no one, “What are you doing, Ariana?”

But deep down, I already knew.

Tomorrow, I would get into that car.

And everything would change.