Chapter 2 2. You're Currency

MAYA

Five hundred million?

The air left my lungs in a rush. My brain tried to do the math, but the numbers were too big and the reality was too small. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Bullshit!" I blurted out. No one was buying anyone in the twenty-first century. "Pfft... Five hundred million? Dad, please tell me I'm at least worth a billion. This is insulting."

I turned to my dad, beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. My voice dropped to a whisper, pleading for a logic that didn't exist. "He meant the company, right Dad? He bought the office and the stocks? Tell me he's talking about the business. Tell me he's talking about the Sullivan name and the real estate."

"Maya, be serious!" my father sobbed, his voice breaking. The sound was pathetic. He looked at me for a split second, his eyes red and heavy with guilt. He couldn't hold my gaze for more than a heartbeat before his head dropped back down to the floor.

This was getting terrifyingly real. I looked back at Silas, and my stomach did a slow, sick flip that felt like the drop of a roller coaster.

"You're joking. This is a prank, right? Where are the cameras?"

I spun around, my heels clicking frantically on the floor as I searched the corners of the ceiling, looking for a lens, a red light, anything. I let out a high, shaky laugh that sounded more like a scream. "Cut the cameras! You can come out now, guys. Prank's over! Ha! Very funny, Dad! You really got me with the sold to a billionaire bit! I almost believed you!"

I waited. I waited for a producer to walk in with a clipboard. I waited for a film crew to pop out from behind the heavy velvet curtains and tell me I was the star of a new reality show. I waited for a single shred of evidence that my life wasn't currently being dismantled.

Silas didn't move. He didn't even blink. He just watched my meltdown with a calm, steady gaze that made my frantic laughter die a slow, pathetic death.

Then, he reached out.

His thumb hooked under my chin, tilting my face up until I had no choice but to look him in the eye. His skin was warm, but his grip was absolute. It wasn't the kind of hold that hurt. It was the kind of hold that told me my permission didn't matter anymore.

"No cameras, Maya," he said, cutting through the silence of the office. "Just a contract and a paid debt."

He leaned in, making me feel suddenly small beneath his gaze.

"You're coming with Daddy."

"Fuck you! Dad, call the lawyers. Call the fucking lawyers! You can't do this to me!"

I was in total, shivering denial. This didn't happen in real life. People didn't get traded like stocks in the twenty-first century. This was a nightmare I just hadn't woken up from yet.

"I can't do that, Maya. Just go with him. It's the best option," my father whispered. He sounded like a broken man, a hollow shell of the father who used to take me for ice cream before he discovered the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

"Best?" I echoed. My eyebrows shot up as I looked at the man who had raised me, the man who was currently handing me over to save his own skin.

"You should listen to your father," Silas added. There was a sudden, sharp edge to his words that cut right through my panic. He wasn't asking me to follow him. He was telling me that my life as I knew it was over.

"Why me?"

The question was barely a breath. The sarcasm was finally, mercifully, drained out of me.

"Because you're the only asset Arthur has left that isn't already underwater," Silas replied, his voice devoid of emotion. "You aren't a daughter today, Maya. You're currency. And your father just spent you."

He was right. The company was a sinking ship. I looked at my father, but he still wouldn't meet my eyes. He had sold the sails to pay for his booze and the oars to pay for his women. I was the only thing left on board to trade for his life.

"What's the plan, then? What happens now?" I swallowed hard, the reality of it clawing at my throat. "What's going to happen to me?"

"Now?" Silas's gaze dropped to my lips, dark and unreadable.

"Now I own the rights to that mouth of yours." He gripped my chin again, his thumb brushing against my lower lip with a pressure that was both a threat and a promise. "Although, I'm still weighing my options. With a mouth as sharp as yours, it's either going to be your greatest asset or your undoing."

He let go of my chin so abruptly my head snapped back slightly.

"Let's go."

"I have plans tonight," I snapped, my voice cracking. "And those plans definitely don't involve being a debt collector's plus-one."

"Plans change, sweetheart," Silas murmured.

He leaned down, his face hovering so close to mine that his breath was warm against my lips, contrasting with the lethal, icy intent in those ocean-blue eyes. For a second, I thought he might kiss me. For a second, I thought he might kill me.

For the first time in my life, I couldn't find a comeback. The sarcasm simply died in my throat, choked out by the weight of his presence.

"Welcome to the Blackwood family. Do try not to die in the first week," he added, a mocking smirk playing on his lips.

He straightened up, adjusting his cuffs with a terrifying level of nonchalance, as if he hadn't just crashed my entire world in under ten minutes.

"It would be such a waste of my Botox money."

Silas's fingers closed around my elbow, and to my horror, a spark of heat shot up my arm. I tried to pull away, but my body seemed to lean into his touch of its own accord, drawn to the very man who was ruining me. He didn't wait for me to find my footing. He simply turned and began to lead me toward the door.

I stumbled once, my vision blurring as the office, the only world I had ever known began to slide past me in a dizzying haze of grief and disbelief.

As the heavy mahogany doors swung open, I saw Marcus's horrified face. He looked like he wanted to reach out, to scream, to do anything but stand there, but his eyes were glued to Silas, filled with the kind of primal fear you only have for things you can't defeat.

Just as the doors swung shut, my phone buzzed in my pocket, making me flinch. It was a jolt of the real world hitting me at the worst possible moment. I didn't need to look at the screen to know who it was.

Liam. It was probably a text telling me he'd booked the table at that Italian place I liked. Maybe a "Can't wait to see you, beautiful." The thought of his sturdy, predictable kindness made my throat ache with a sob I refused to let out.

I wasn't going to my date with Liam. I wasn't going back to my apartment to wipe off my makeup and forget this day ever happened. I wasn't going to see the sun set as a free woman ever again.

I was being collected.

And Silas Blackwood didn't look like the kind of man who ever lost what he owned.