Mafia King's Contract Breeder
Chapter 6 The Contract

Chapter 6: 6 The Contract

Lara POV

"I need to see you in my office," Rob said to me when I came in.

"Why? What is this about?" I asked.

"You have a gentleman caller," Rob said sarcastically.

A client?

Why would a client want to see me in Rob’s office?

He led me down the back corridor behind the dressing rooms that smelled perpetually of damp and old carpet. The ceiling was low enough that the light fixtures — bare industrial bulbs in wire cages — felt oppressive, and the walls were the particular beige of places that had given up on aesthetics entirely.

Rob’s office was at the end of it, behind a door with a frosted glass panel that had his name stencilled on it in peeling gold letters. He pushed it open.

The office was small and too full — a desk that took up most of the floor space, filing cabinets along one wall, a dying potted plant that Rob had been slowly murdering for as long as I’d worked here.

There was a man already inside.

He was standing, not sitting — which was the first strange thing, because in Rob’s office, with its low ceiling and general atmosphere of municipal dejection, standing felt almost impossible. And yet somehow he managed it without looking awkward. He stood slightly to the side of the desk, one hand resting on the back of the chair.

This man...how shall I describe him? He did not belong in Rob’s seedy, cramped basement office. The room looked embarrassed by him. He looked like he had stepped off a magazine cover or come alive from a marble statue — dark hair combed in neat waves that held their shape precisely, not a strand out of place. The planes of his face were sharp-edged and symmetrical in that statuesque way. His eyes, when they moved to me, were a cold, pale blue.

I’ve definitely never had a client who looks like this.

"Miss Lara Brinson."

When he said my name it gave me a start. Made me realise I had been staring much longer than polite.

Who was he and why did he know my name already?

His tone gave me the strangest feeling of being summoned to the headteacher’s office.

I became hyperaware that I was still in my casual outfit before work, beanie, mom jeans, and all.

Embarrassed, I tugged the beanie off and scrunched it in my hand, shaking out my red curls quickly.

"Hello."

"Have a seat," said the unreasonably attractive man.

I sat down in the chair. He remained standing, which meant I was now looking up at him, which I suspected was not accidental.

Rob didn’t appear to be here to make introductions. Only to bring me to this man, apparently. As soon as I entered, he closed the door behind me and made himself scarce, leaving me alone with the stranger.

"I would like to make you an offer," he said in a cold, lilting voice, sounding like a man whose every word was carefully considered and calibrated for impact.

There was something familiar about that voice.

An offer, he said.

I nodded eagerly. Whatever kind of weird sex he was into, yes, I would like to tap that.

What? Don’t judge me.

Do you think prostitution usually involves sleeping with devastatingly hot men?

A girl’s got to seize opportunity where she can, okay?

"I need a personal breeder," he said.

A what?

I blinked.

That. That was not what I had expected.

"Sorry?"

He looked down his nose at me, as though I was very dumb for not keeping up with his request.

"I need an heir, but I don’t need a wife. Just a pretty, obedient, toy. That is where you come into it."

Humiliation made me blush so hard that my ears turned pink.

That was soooo problematic that I didn’t know where to start.

I gave him a tight, polite smile.

"I’ll pass, thank you."

Selling my body was one thing. Having a baby for a complete stranger?

I hadn’t sunk that low.

He didn’t even blink.

"You haven’t heard how much I am willing to offer for it."

He pulled out a document and set it down on the desk in front of me.

As he leaned down to flip open the document, I caught a hint of fragrance – cedar and citrus.

The scent invoked a very specific memory.

My gaze snapped up to the stranger, taking him in once more from head to toe.

That voice. That scent. The immaculate, expensive suit.

Wait a minute...could he be...?

The stranger drew my attention back to the contract in front of me. Long fingers reached out and tapped a line close to the bottom.

My eyes narrowed in on the number at the bottom of the page.

I forgot how to breathe.

That was a lot of zeros.

Enough to put Chloe through college. Enough to get that nice flat in South Hartlow, and not worry too much about finding a job at once. Enough to put my current profession behind me.

And it was him.

It must be him.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"That is something you do not need to know unless you are agreeing to my offer," he replied without hesitation.

I could not hold back a gasp of sheer disbelief. A blind contract?

"How am I supposed to decide whether I want to have your baby if I don’t even know who you are?"

"I am sure you understand, this is a very sensitive matter," he said calmly. "I am a man of high profile. I cannot have you spilling my secrets."

I took another close look at him. He looked to be in his thirties, and was too strikingly handsome to forget.

What was he, a celebrity? Some kind of rich heir? Maybe he was married already and was trying to pull one over his wife?

You hear stories of what the rich and famous get up to behind closed doors. And behind airtight contracts, maybe.

"I know who you are," I said boldly.

He stilled, something dark flickering in his eyes for a moment, gone so quickly that I almost missed it.

"Oh?" he said mildly.

"You’re my client. From last night," I said.

His expression didn’t change. The pale eyes just watched me, as though filing away a new piece of information about me.

"You recognise me?" he said.

"Your voice." I swallowed heavily, glancing between the contract on the desk and the devastatingly handsome stranger. "A blindfold doesn’t actually turn me blind, you know."

A slow smile spread across his face.

"Good to know that you were paying attention, little whore," he said in that voice that made even insults feel like a caress. "So you know who I am. We are...intimately acquainted. You know what I have to offer. What do you say?"

"Why me?" I couldn’t resist asking.

What kind of man asked a hooker to have his baby?

Surely he must have other options that weren’t so crazy as this.

"I enjoy playing with you."

He tilted his head, looking at me the way a scientist looked at a lab specimen.

"You are young. Healthy. Reasonably attractive. Give me a child, and you won’t have to survive by selling your body anymore."

Wow, stone cold.

Reasonably?? Reasonably attractive?! That was what he had to say about me?

I flipped through the pages of the contract, mostly for something to do with my hands, the dense lines of text that lined the page not truly registering. My thumb ran along the bottom edge of the final page. The paper was very good quality.

I could see how it was. He was that kind of filthy rich that didn’t do relationships — who saw sex as a transaction and a child as an asset and had arranged the paperwork accordingly. And what he needed, specifically, was a woman desperate enough to go along with that. The kind of woman who could sign things like no rights to the child on the same day she found out she was signing them.

"What do you want in this contract?" I asked, my mind turning the concept over slowly. "What’s the catch?"

"Until you have given me a child, you belong to me," he said, the words rumbling through his chest in an unfairly magnetic way.

A large hand stroked over my cheek and closed around my throat, cold blue eyes staring down at me as though inspecting a thing that he owned already.

"No condoms. No limits. I will decide what is best for you."

A shiver ran down my spine.

Fear.

Obviously fear. But also...there was a tiny thread of desire.

"And once you have delivered the child, the relationship is over. The child will be mine alone, and you can go on your way." He paused a moment, as though gauging my reaction. "A good deal for you, is it not?"

No, I tried to say.

I was usually so good at holding firm with pushy clients.

But was it really such a bad idea for me?

Have sex with one man, instead of half a dozen every night. I never bothered to ask the names of those clients, either. The sex, as I already knew, was not a problem.

Just– having a child. Signing away the child. Could I do that? Could I carry something for nine months and hand it over and not—

I pressed my thumbnail against the corner of the page, leaving a small crescent-shaped indent in that beautiful, expensive paper.

"I need some time to think about it," I said at last.

He pushed the contract in my direction.

"You have until tomorrow night," he said.