THE BULLY’s CONTRACT

Elena’s pov

The Mirror was a liar. It told me I was too much. Too much curve, too much soft flesh, too much of a burden. But the scale in my stepmothers dressing room was the real judge, blinking its red numbers like a warning light whenever I stepped on it.

“Twenty pounds, Elena” Beatrice hissed,looming over me like a vulture. “ I’ve spent three weeks starving you, and you still look like a common milkmaid. How am I supposed to present you to Julian Silverton looking like…. this?”

“It doesn’t matter how I look, he’s buying a contract not a wife.” I whispered with cracked voice.

“He’s buying the Silverton legacy’s reputation because for some reason your dumb father had to owe such an unreasonable amount of money and use you as collateral before he kicked the bucket,” Sienna said tauntingly.

She pinched the skin on my arm, hard “Look at you. You’re going to walk down that aisle and everyone will wonder if the Great Julian Silverton has finally lost his mind or his eyesight.”

I flinched, pulling away from her grip.

The storm in my mind drowned under their laughter.

“I won’t do it,” I said, the words suddenly solid in the air.

Beatrice froze, “What did you say?”

“I won’t marry him. I’ll run. I’ll tell the press it’s a forced union. I’ll burn your reputation and theirs to the ground before I let you sell me like livestock.”

I turned to face her, my heart hammering like they were about to explode. “ Unless Mia comes with me.”

Mia. My twelve year old sister. The only piece of my mother I had left. I couldn’t leave her here with these people I thought deeply.

“You’re in no position to negotiate you ungrateful cow,” Beatrice snarled, stepping into my space.

“Actually I am, " I countered, gaining courage from places I didn't know existed because I was ready to lose everything, even my free will but I wasn’t ready to lose my sister.

“Julian Silverton needs to marry me by Tomorrow to secure his inheritance and if I’m not there his grandfather's billions will go to his cousin. You need this marriage to pay off Dads debt, sponsor your careless spendings and keep the house. So, here’s the deal: MIA comes to the Silverton estate with me. She lives under my protection or you can go to your debtors' prison alone.” I spoke with trembling courage.

The slap Beatrice gave me across my cheek made the world tilt for a second. I didn’t feel the pain until I tasted the copper of my own blood against my teeth.

I raised my face slowly to see Beatrice’s eyes turn murderous, mixed with a flicker of calculation. She needs the money more than she hated me and she was upset that I knew that.

“Fine,” she spat. “She goes. But if you breathe a word of this deal to Julian, I will make sure she never sees the sun again.”

I nodded watching their backs as they left.

They’re selling me. I looked at my fathers journals one last time, feeling like I was being buried alive next to his grave at the cemetery.

I immediately turned to pack a small bag for Mia, when I saw I black town car pull into the driveway. A man stepped out, his presence so commanding that the very air seemed to thin. It was him. Julian

Silverton.

“What was he doing here?” I asked myself.

The rumors I had heard was enough to know how inhumane he was and how spoilt he had become due to Nepotism.

“We have guests at the house,” Beatrice said sharply as she burst through the door.“Not that you’re in any state to receive them. That dress is straining at the seams, darling. It makes you look like…… you could burst any moment.”

“I don’t care about what he thinks” I snapped.

“You will!” Beatrice cut me off with a stern look. “Let me also remind you that they’re the solution to your little…. green problem. The banks are seizing the house on Monday, Elena, if you don’t you marry Julian Silverton.

If you refuse…. Hmmmmm, I’ll sell your precious fathers greenhouses to his rivals by morning.”

“Ahhh pl..ease don’t do that” I pleaded, facing down in submission.

“I thought as much” Beatrice said as she walked out angrily.

……………………………………………………….

I stood at the top of the grand staircase, clutching Mia’s hand so tightly her small fingers twitched. Below, in the foyer stood the man who held our lives in his palm.

Julian Silverton looked like he had been sculpted from ice and moonlight. His suit was bespoke, charcoal grey fitting a body frame that was lean, athletic and intimidating.

He carefully looked around until his gaze landed on me.

I walked down the stairs, every step feeling like a descent into a lion's den.

I felt every weight of my body from the softness of my pot stomach to the width of my shoulder and for the first time in my life, I hated it because he was looking at it.

“So,”Julian said, his voice deep, as he walked around me like a buyer at auction. “This is the chubby little scientist my grandfather is forcing me to bed?”

His words hit me like an arrow shot into my chest, my stepsister Sienna let out a mocking chuckle loud enough for me to hear.

He stopped in front of me, his eyes, a piercing predatory blue scanning my face before dropping to my waist. A small,cruel smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“ I was told you were sturdy Elena but I didn’t realize I was marrying the whole garden, " he mocked. Tell me, do the floor boards in the penthouse need to be checked before you move in or do you plan on starting a diet before the ceremony?”

The air left my lungs. The internal courage id spent years building of myself- the one that said I was beautiful and capable, shattered. I felt like a child, exposed and humiliated in front of my sister.

Sienna and Beatrice wasted no time in bursting into loud chaotic laughter which made tears build up around my eyeballs.

“I eat as much as I need to survive this family, Mr.Julian, I snapped back with trembling voice and controlling tears acting as a shield for my crumbling pride. “Perhaps if you spent less time at the gym and more time on your personality, you wouldn’t have to buy a wife.”

The room went deathly silent. Beatrice gasped.

Julian’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer leaning down until his lips brushed against the shell of my ear.

“Careful little bird,” he whispered. “I bought the cage, the bird, and the song. He forcefully grabbed my chin making me squeal.

“You will only speak to me when necessary and never would you talk back to me, understood?”

“Please let go off me, you’re hurting me”