The Contract
628 Words
I read the clause three times.
Everly Kane agrees to remain under the personal protection of Damien Voss until the threat is eliminated.
The words didn’t get any less insane.
I slammed the folder shut, but my hands were already sweating. “Threat? What threat? I sell consulting decks for a living, Mr. Voss. The only thing hunting me is my student loans.”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t even blink.
Instead he reached for the crystal decanter on the sideboard, poured two fingers of something dark and expensive into a glass, and slid it across the marble toward me. The liquid caught the light like liquid gold.
“Drink,” he said. Not a request.
I ignored it. “You bought the land under my mother’s house three years ago. You had a contract with my name on it before I ever graduated college. And now you’re telling me I need protection? From what—bad Wi-Fi?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second, then back up. “The blue door,” he murmured, like he was tasting the memory. “Your mother painted it herself the summer you turned fourteen. She used two coats so the color wouldn’t fade in the rain.”
My stomach flipped.
I had never told anyone that story. Not Priya. Not my exes. Not even the damn internet.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice dropping lower. “You keep the spare key under the third stepping stone because the second one cracked last winter. I know because I had it replaced before the snow hit.”
The room felt too small. The city behind the glass looked fake.
I shoved the folder back toward him. “This isn’t a contract. This is a cage with better stationery.”
Something dangerous flickered across his face—gone so fast I almost missed it. “It’s insurance, Everly. Sign it and you keep your job, your apartment, your entire life. Refuse…” He let the word hang, then finished softly, “and the people watching you stop hiding.”
My pulse hammered in my throat.
I wanted to laugh in his face. I wanted to throw the wine in his. Instead I heard myself ask, “Why me? Why now?”
He studied me the way other men studied stock tickers—calculating, hungry, completely in control.
“Because three years ago a scout sent me a photograph of a girl who smelled like lightning and didn’t know what she was.” His eyes did that gold thing again, brighter this time, like fire behind smoke. “I’ve been keeping you safe ever since. Quietly. From a distance. But the hunters are getting closer.”
My mouth went dry.
He slid a sleek black pen across the table until it stopped right in front of my fingers.
“Sign it,” he said.
Then, softer—so soft it felt like a secret he hated giving away—
“Please.”
The word hit me harder than any command could have. Because Damien Voss didn’t say please. Men like him took what they wanted.
Yet here he was, asking.
I stared at the pen. At the contract. At the man who had rewritten my entire past without me noticing.
My hand moved before my brain caught up.
I picked up the pen.
And right then my phone vibrated on the table—once, sharp, like a warning.
The screen lit up with a number I didn’t recognize.
The text was only three words.
They’re already inside your apartment.
I looked up.
Damien was watching me, perfectly still.
He already knew what the message said.
And for the first time, I saw the wolf behind the billionaire smile.
- Writer
