CHAPTER 2: THE OPPORTUNITY

Amelia's POV

That very evening, I had changed my mind about meeting Damon Blackwood couple of times. I was totally curious and now remembered he was Raven's brother.

I had decided that a billionaire inviting a heartbroken woman to dinner was either a generous gesture or the beginning of a very expensive mistake.

I almost cancelled and said wasn't going. Then I remembered Gavi's face when he announced his engagement, as if three years of my life were nothing worth mentioning.

I wasn't going to let that man make me afraid of every opportunity that came my way. So I put on my blue dress, fixed my hair, and left my apartment.

The restaurant Damon had chosen overlooked the city. Everything from the polished floors to the quiet music suggested that ordinary people came here only when they had something worth celebrating.

I was beginning to wonder whether getting a job interview counted. A waiter led me to a corner table. Damon stood when I approached.

He looked so different from the man who handed me water at the engagement party. Tonight, without a crowd around him, he seemed less distant.

You came? You sounded very confident that I would.” “I was hopeful. There's a difference. I sat down. “Then let's not waste your hope. What is this opportunity?”

He smiled. “You don't believe in warming up to a conversation, do you “Not when the person across from me belongs to the family that celebrated my humiliation yesterday.”

His smile disappeared. Fair enough.

He sat down and motioned for the waiter to bring us water. I noticed that he didn't order for me or ask what I wanted as though my preferences were already his to decide.

It was a small thing, though.

He finally started the conversation. I watched you at the engagement party, not just when you were speaking to Gavi on the terrace. I watched you answer questions from the investors when his presentation went wrong.”

“Why?”

Because I wanted to know why a man who claimed to have built a successful company couldn't answer basic questions about his own proposal.

“He knows his business.”

“Are you inviting me here to discuss my ex-boyfriend?”

“No,” Damon replied, “I'm inviting you here to make you a proposition.”

“What kind of proposition?”

“Marry me.” His voice was calm, casual, as if he were discussing a minor business merger over appetizers. “A one-year contract marriage.”

The quiet ambiance of the high-end restaurant seemed to freeze instantly around us..

Are you out of your mind?

“I can assure you my mind is perfectly sound, Amelia.”

“Your sister is engaged to my ex-boyfriend!” I leaned forward, trying to keep my voice low so the surrounding tables wouldn't hear, but my pulse was hammering against my ribs.

“The same man who humiliated me in front of half of New York yesterday evening! And your brilliant solution is for me to marry you?”

“Precisely.”

“I am not interested in being anyone's revenge weapon, Damon,“I spent three years playing second fiddle to Gavi’s ambitions. I am not going to let another powerful man use me to make a point, settle a family score, or get back at someone else.”

For the first time that evening, Damon’s expression changed so deep. The quiet amusement left his features, replaced by a dark, intense gravity.

“Then don't be one,” he sa:d softly, his tone cutting straight through my defensive anger. “Marry me because you want a life that belongs to you again. Not because you want him to regret losing you.”

Damon didn't flinch under my glare.

“Gavi took credit for your work, discarded you when it was convenient, and offered you money to disappear quietly because he thinks you're weak enough to obey. Signing a contract with me doesn't make you my pawn, Amelia. It makes us partners. One year. We present a united front in public. In return, you get the full backing of the Blackwood name, total financial independence, and a platform to build whatever company or reputation you want without asking anyone for permission.”

“And what do you get?” I challenged, searching his face for the hidden trick. “A billionaire doesn't propose marriage to a stranger out of charity. What's the catch?”

“I have my own reasons, which I will share with you when the time is right,” he answered smoothly. “And as for the :terms: separate bedrooms, complete freedom over your daily life, and no expectations of a real romance. Neither of us is required to fall in love.”

I studied him. My heart was panting silently as I processed the absurd, dangerous reality of what he was offering. Becoming Gavi’s future sister-in-law. Forcing Gavi to look at me every single day as the wife of the one man he could never control or buy out.

“And if I do?” The question slipped out of my mouth before I could filter it.

Damon didn't answer immediately. He looked at me. “That,” Damon said quietly, “would be the one thing neither of us could put in a contract.”

A heavy silence stretched between us. I was the first to break eye contact, looking down at my hands. I hated how deep his voice sounded. I hated that, even after everything Gavi had put me through, a reckless, wild part of me was tempted by the sheer audacity of what Damon was proposing.

Most of all, I hated that Damon seemed to know exactly when to push and when to give me space.

“I need time,” I said. My voice barely above a whisper.

“Take all the time you need,” Damon replied, pulling his business card from his jacket and sliding it across the white tablecloth toward me. “My offer stands. But remember what I told you, Amelia: you don't owe Gavi Richard your silence, and you certainly don't owe him your future.”