Chapter 2 The offer

The rain fell in soft sheets outside the café window, blurring the city into pastel like colors...Amira Lane wiped her hands on her apron and refilled a mug of coffee for the regular in booth three. He didn't say thank you,he never did. But she smiled anyway.

You get used to being invisible when you've spent most of your life blending in.

She checked the time...6:13 PM. Two more hours of her shift. Her feet ached, and her ponytail sagged beneath the humidity, but it wasn't the exhaustion that weighed on her tonight. It was the phone call she'd missed during her break. Unknown number. No voicemail.

Something about it itched at the back of her mind.

"Lane!" her manager, Dora, called from the kitchen. "You've got someone up front. Said it's urgent."

Amira blinked. "Who?"

Dora just shrugged. "Didn't ask. Looks like trouble. Expensive trouble."

That wasn't exactly comforting.

She tossed the towel over her shoulder and walked to the front, where a man in a charcoal suit stood by the pastry case. Late forties, with sharp eyes and the kind of stillness that came from years of authority. He wasn't looking at the menu...he was looking at her.

"Amira Lane?" he asked, voice smooth but commanding.

"Yes?"

He extended a card. Wolfe Holdings. Legal Division.

"Mr. Richard Wolfe would like to speak with you."

She stared at him. "Wolfe;as in the corporate empire Wolfe?"

The man nodded once. "He believes you'd be uniquely suited for a personal contract."

"I'm not looking for a job."

"This isn't employment in the traditional sense."

Something about the way he said that made her uneasy. "Then what is it?"

"You'd be compensated generously. Housing, security, a monthly stipend. Your education history, volunteer work, and your time as a caregiver to your aunt were all taken into account."

She swallowed. How did they know that?

"I'm not interested in being someone's charity case," she said tightly.

"It's not charity," he replied, and for the first time, something softened in his tone. "It's a little girl who needs someone kind in her corner. And a man too broken to admit he can't fix it alone."

Her breath caught.

She didn't know who this man was talking about...but she recognized the ache underneath those words. She'd lived it. She was it.

"How long?" she asked after a beat.

"One year. In name only. But you'd live in the residence. The child would see you as a parental figure."

"And the father?" she asked, folding her arms.

"Difficult," the man admitted. "But not cruel."

Amira wasn't so sure. The rich rarely thought their coldness was cruelty. It was just "expectation."

Still, something in her heart pulled...maybe curiosity, maybe foolishness.

She took the card. "I'll think about it."

"Tomorrow morning. Ten A.M. This address." He pointed to the back of the card. "If you don't come, we'll assume it's a no."

He left as suddenly as he came, disappearing into a black car that merged with traffic like a shadow swallowed by night.

Amira stood at the window, watching the rain trail down the glass. Something about all of this felt reckless. Insane, even.

But so was barely affording rent. She was living every day just trying to survive.

And more than that... maybe, just maybe, some part of her still believed she was meant to make a difference in someone's life.

She had always wanted a warm family and a comfortable home just like any other person

All this just seemed like a chance at building bonds ,but would that even come easy?

She slipped the card into her pocket, heart racing.

Tomorrow would be the beginning of something.

She just didn't know if it would be salvation...or disaster.