"I’ll give you the money as a gift, Aurora," Aiden says. "You don’t have to pay me back. All you have to do is marry me and give me an heir." Aiden King is cruel, cold, and heartless. A devil in a designer suit. People call him every evil thing imaginable . To the world, he’s a monster without feelings, but to me, he’s the man who once saved my life. He's my best friend's brother who I've been hopelessly in love with since I was in highschool but he made his feelings for me quite clear when he embarrassed me after I told him how I felt. Now I don't have a choice but to go back to the first man who broke my heart and ask him for help but his help comes with a price. The question is will this story end in heartbreak or happily ever after?
View MoreAURORA’S POV
"I can't believe you'd stoop so low. Cheating on me with my own cousin is disgusting and gambling our savings away is just cruel" my heart breaking with each word. Sign these divorce papers now." I said flinging the divorce papers in his face then walked out the room with tears streaming down my face. Those were the last words I told my ex husband eight months ago when I found him in bed with my cousin.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
The stones on the sidewalk hurt my feet as I parked my bike in the park . It was dark outside and the weather looked like it was about to rain. I hoped it wouldn't start until I got home . I just got back from my babysitting job because I needed the money.
After my divorce from that scumbag, I moved in with my sister, Annabelle. I’ve been working overtime for months, trying to save enough money to get my own place. My ex husband gambled away our savings. I know I was stupid to trust him, but I was young and thought I was in love. I ran to my door and felt relief when I got inside
"Annabelle, are you home? I brought lunch," I called out as I walked into the house, but there was no answer. Suddenly, someone grabbed me from behind and shoved me against the door
"Mrs Reynolds. It’s a pleasure to meet you," said a man’s voice. "I’m Peter Vory. Your husband told us so much about you. He also said that I could get my money from you." He tightened his grip on my neck. My heart stopped. Everyone in the city knew who Peter Vory was. He’s part of the Mafia and runs a club that’s really a front to launder money. Thomas swore that he was a bouncer for him and promised to find a decent job but that was just one of his many lies. Unfortunately Thomas owed Peter money and I've been stalked for weeks now by his henchmen. At first I just thought that maybe it was because they were watching me to see if Thomas would try to contact me so they could get their money back but I guess I thought wrong.
"It’s Miss Knight now, because I divorced him months ago." I replied .
"Well, I asked for a threesome with Blake Riley and Julia Roberts, but I’m not getting that, am I?" Peter sneered. "Here’s the dealy Thomas Reynolds owes me a lot of money, and he said you have it. He claims you stole it."
I stared at him in shock. "That’s a lie! I didn’t steal anything! Thomas cheated on me and wasted your money gambling. The rest he spent on his mistress."
Peter smirked. "It’s your word against his, and I really don’t care. I just want my money. Call him and tell him to pay up."
I looked to my left and noticed the man who’d been following me for months standing nearby. Annabelle had told me to go to the police, but the process seemed overwhelming, so I ignored him.
Peter caught my reaction and grinned. "Ah, I see you’ve already met Kenneth, my right hand man. I needed to make sure you wouldn’t run like you ran away from your husband. Thomas has left the country, and you won’t tell me where he is, will you?"
"His ex wife doesn’t know where he is," I snapped, trying to pull my hand away. He held on tightly. "And she knows how to use pepper spray, so stay back." I didn’t want Annabelle to hear and get involved. She had already done so much for me.
"Use your skills to find him," Peter said mockingly. "You found him once, so you can do it again."
"I haven’t spoken to him in months, and I don’t care to. I have nothing to do with him," I said, trying to push him away, but his grip tightened.
"Then his debt is now yours. What happened to ‘for better or worse’? How does the vow go?" Peter asked with a smirk.
"Beats me, Boss. Never been married," Kenneth replied.
"Smart man," Peter said with an evil smirk on his lips.
Peter kissed the back of my hand, then slid his tongue between my fingers, showing me what he wanted to do to the rest of my body. I swallowed and breathed through my nose. He was scaring me, and he knew it. Peter was a loan shark who always made sure he got his money, and Thomas owed him over three million dollars. He held my wet hand to his cheek, rubbing it against his face.
"Sorry, Aurora. Nothing personal. I need to collect a debt. If I don't soon, people will think it's okay to take money from me without paying. If you're interested in paying a different way, I can make a deal. I'm not unreasonable. But no matter what, you'll pay your husband's debt, and you better hurry because the interest keeps growing."
"What do you mean?" My heart was pounding, and I felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. This was the first time Peter and Kenneth had hinted at this kind of thing. I was a preschool teacher, how could I possibly come up with three million?. Even my kidneys weren't worth that much. And yes, I actually googled it.
"I'm saying if you can't pay, you'll have to work for it."
"Just say it, Peter "I snapped, ready to grab my purse and spray pepper spray into both their faces. As sleazy as he was, I doubted he would give up that amount of money just to have sex with me.
"Serving men who aren't very clean or good looking." Peter smiled like he was sorry. "You're a very beautiful woman, Aurora, even in those cheap clothes." He tugged at my dirty dress. "Work six months in my strip club, doing double shifts every day, and we can call it even."
I slapped him, my whole body shaking with anger.
"How dare you? I'd rather die than be a stripper!," He moved back, but I scratched his cheek. Kenneth stepped forward to stop me, but Peter waved him away and laughed.
"You won't be dancing," he said. "You'll be on your back in the VIP room. Though I can't promise you won't be on your knees too, if they're willing to pay extra." Peter wanted to sell me if I couldn't pay the money Thomas owed him. In the eight months since Thomas left, I had hoped he would come back and fix the mess he left behind, but he hadn't. I thought he might finally give me the divorce I had asked for before he disappeared. I held onto my anger, not wanting to accept that this was now my problem. But now, I realized Peter had known the truth all along, Thomas wasn't coming back. His problems were mine now. And I had to find a way to fix this, fast.
"What if I don't pay?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"Then I'll have to make an example out of you. It will hurt me more than you, I promise. It's always sad when the wife has to deal with her husband's mess." He stopped by the door, shaking his head. "But if I let this slide, I'll lose my street credit. You will pay. Either in money, with your body, or with your blood. See you later, Aurora and next time we meet I expect to be paid fully unless you will find out why they call me a monster”. With that, he walked out leaving me devastated with tears rolling down my cheeks.
AIDEN'S POV "Well,I guess it's because I have something called Tourette's syndrome." I leaned back in the chair, looking at all the white around me. It felt calm, and that made me feel better. There was a long silence from the other side of the window. "How long have you known?" "About a week." I heard pages turning on a clipboard from the other side. I smiled sadly. Usually, it's the patient who doesn’t know. "How can that be? It says here your tic attack happened two days ago," another voice said. It was a middle aged woman's voice. Both doctors had accents. One sounded Italian, and the other probably Swiss from the French side. "Yes," I said slowly, giving them time to write. "But I felt the attack coming in the days before, so I looked it up." "So you knew it was going to happen?" the Swiss doctor asked, surprised. "The attack." I nodded. She gasped. "Poor thing," she said. It wasn’t very doctor-like. "Well that's a new one. I’ve never been called that before,"
AIDEN'S POV THE PAST The first time I went to a juvenile treatment clinic was when I was fourteen. Earlier that week, I hurt myself so badly that I was still bleeding and had lost some teeth. My face was so swollen that it took three people to recognize me when they found me on the library floor. My mother went with me to the clinic in Switzerland. She didn’t want to go. I wore a coat, hat, and sunglasses to hide my bruises, like a celebrity trying to stay unnoticed. My mother didn’t say much on the flight from England to Zurich, except for one quiet sentence after the flight attendants had passed by. “Your father can’t know.” That was the first thing she said. Not asking how I was. Not asking how it happened. “Your father can’t know.” I didn’t say anything. She was right. Father couldn’t find out. And honestly, there was no way to explain what happened. One moment, I was sitting in the library studying hard to be first in my class like always, feeling a strange pressure i
AURORA'S POV I couldn’t lie, so I gave a small smile and shrugged, trying to look confident. “Your secret is not really a secret anymore. That’s not good for someone who is the head of Green Living. Anyway, I’m here to tell you that was the last time you hit your son. I’m going to report this to Child Protective Services. I’ve done this before, so I’ll tell you what will happen. I’ll file a report, and CPS will come to your house within a day to check on the kids. They’ll see the bruises on Tinder and find other signs of abuse or neglect. When they do, they’ll take the kids to a foster home and charge you with a crime.” Morgana looked like she was going to choke. “I’ve worked with many schools and know some people at CPS. I can probably help Morgana get full custody, since she didn’t hurt the kids. Now, as for you” I looked at Morgana. She slid down the wall, crying hard on the floor and face was wet with tears. “You should always put your kids first.” “I did.” Morgana he
AURORA'S POV “I’m leaving after today, but things are going to change here. I wanted to tell you.” I sat Tinder down in front of the burnt cookies. We didn’t eat them. His big brown eyes looked at me like I was the only thing keeping him safe. “Change how?” he asked. “Your dad isn’t being nice to you. He’s doing bad things, and I can’t always be here to help you. One day, you’ll grow up and think about what I’m going to do. And even though there's a possibility that you might hate me, or thank me in the future.” I shook my head as my eyes started to fill with tears, but I didn’t let them fall because Tinder needed me to stay strong. He deserved more. He deserved everything. “No matter how you feel about me later, I’ll understand. I think your dad is going to get into big trouble soon because of me. But you will still have your mom and your brother. They are the ones I want you to think about, okay? They are what matter most.” He nodded slowly. It was a lot to hear. Even I didn’t
AURORA'S POV When Daniel knocked on the door, I pulled him inside really fast. He was wearing a black shirt, jeans, and had his usual serious face. “His laptop will probably have a password,” I said, still holding the door, my heart beating fast. I never broke the law. Not for anything or anyone. I didn’t even cross the street when the light was red. My love for my husband was making me crazy. Daniel walked past the living room without looking at the boy and went up the stairs. I followed him and pointed at Herold’s office. Daniel put on some gloves, took a tool from his backpack, and opened the locked door easily. We both went inside. I kept thinking about Tinder, who was downstairs watching TV, waiting for me. I felt very bad. I was about to change his life forever. Even though I knew it was the right thing because of his bad father, I also knew Tinder might hate me for it. “So Aiden was right,” Daniel said with no feeling, turning on the laptop and sitting in Herold’s chair.
AURORA'S POV I couldn’t stop thinking about the time Herold shook his son when Tinder had trouble talking. “No.” Tinder picked the salt off his pretzel without thinking. “One time, after a party where I made him mad, he put my head in a sink full of water. In and out, in and out. He-He-He said he would only stop if I stopped acting weird. Bu-but it worked because I stopped for a whole week.” I couldn’t blink,swallow or even breathe. It felt like my world crashed down on me and suddenly, everything made sense. I had stepped into a mess Aiden was trying to keep me away from. I found out a secret I wasn’t supposed to know. “Does your daddy treat your mommy and brother like this too?” “No. He loves Tree and says he will send him to a fancy school in England. I th-think he loves Mommy too. Even if sometimes he pushes her around. He never pushes too hard.” Tinder stopped and frowned, thinking hard. “Only once he pushed her off the railings and she fell down the stairs but she fell o
AURORA'S POV "My goodness, Tinder, how did you get this hurt?" I bent down and gently touched the big cut on his knee. We spent the day together, just the two of us. Morgana and Herold went to a charity event and decided to only take Tree, the "normal" child, the one who didn’t make any funny noises or get attention. Morgana looked guilty when she asked if I could tutor Tinder by myself today. I knew the decision to leave him behind wasn’t hers. I couldn’t help but feel upset with her for not standing up for her principles. For her son. If I could go against one of the strongest men in Boston, a man I loved, why couldn’t she fight for her boy to be treated the same as his brother? I promised myself I would make it a special day for Tinder. A fun day, not a punishment. We went to Mia Sterling’s fancy diner for breakfast, ate pancakes and waffles, then relaxed by Charles River, watching the clouds while I told him stories from Greek mythology, just like Auntie Tia used to do with m
AIDEN'S POV Thomas shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that Aurora and I had a good thing going. I fucked up, but she’s a good girl. She could still forgive me.” That meant she hadn’t forgiven him yet. My heart slowed for the first time since I saw him enter her apartment. I grabbed the leather gloves from my back pocket, slapped them over my thigh, and put them on. His throat moved as he swallowed. Good. He needed to know I wasn’t afraid to get dirty to make my point. “Don’t mistake Aurora’s goodness for being naive,” I warned. “She’s past forgiving you.” “You don’t know her like I do.” He shook his head. “What I do know is that you tried to pay Peter Vory with her as a deal, and that’s why I’m here. Now, you’re going to listen closely and follow my every word, and I’ll let you keep your miserable life. If you go off track, I’ll make sure you crash into a ten-ton truck and feed whatever’s left of you to the hyenas. Got it so far?” He grabbed the ed
AIDEN'S POV Thomas Reynolds’ temporary place to stay was just a small room in the back of a shady poker club in Southie. From the look of the old two story building outside, he was probably sleeping on a dirty cot made of trash, hair, and diseases. Instead of knocking, I kicked the weak screen door down and walked right in. Three tables full of men with dirt and oil on their faces looked up at me, their eyes leaving their cards. “Thomas Reynolds,” I said in a low voice. No need for anything else. The room went silent.I knew showing off my fancy suit and clean haircut would cause trouble, but I didn’t care. Then I pulled out my wallet, and held up a hundred-dollar bill between my fingers, waving it around. “I’ll ask again, where’s Thomas Reynolds?” The men must have noticed the crazy look in my eyes because they shifted in their chairs nervouslyblooking at each other. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, we don’t even know him, why are we protecting him? He’s in the back room!” one man
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