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“Done? Just like that?”
“Would you prefer for me to counter?”
I narrow my eyes. “I’m not finished.”
He waves me on. “By all means, go ahead.”
“I want health insurance for me and my mom. And you have to take care of all of her medical expenses, too.”
He cocks his head to the side. “That was my idea.”
“We might even need a full-time nurse.” That idea came to me last night while I was rubbing my mom’s shoulders and trying to help her back to bed.
You should be a normal twenty-four-year-old, Laila,she said.You shouldn’t have to take care of me.
I don’t mind taking care of my mom. It’s the least I can do after everything my father did to her. To us.
But some help would be nice.
“I told you: whatever you need, it’s done.”
I’m tempted to ask for all of my heart’s desires.A fully-functioning yoga studio. A live-in chef. A pony! No, a unicorn!
The weight of his full attention is crushing, but as he runs a hand down the sharp edge of his jaw, his golden wedding band catches my eye.
“We need to talk about your wife.”
His mouth tightens and any spark of amusement in his eyes goes up in a puff of smoke. “If you insist.”
“What’s the deal with you two? I can’t imagine she’d be okay with you—”Fucking another woman. “—having a baby with someone else.”
For the first time, he looks somewhat less than utterly in control. It’s equal parts anger and anguish, with a dash ofHow the fuck did this happen to me?thrown in for good measure.
“If you must know, it was an arranged marriage.”
“People still do that?”
“My kind of people do.” He straightens a stack of papers on his desk. “It was a match between two parties for the purpose of business.”
“Money,” I summarize. “You did it for money.”
Not that I have much room to talk. I’m here offering up my womb and the next year of my life for ten thousand dollars a month. Pot, meet kettle. Both black as hell.
I continue before he can point out as much. “Didn’t you want to hold out for?—”
“For what,roza?” He fixes me with an amused smirk. “For love? Is that what you were going to ask?”
“Well, yes. Why not?”
My parents' marriage wasn’t exactly a shining example of holy, star-crossed matrimony, but not every marriage is such a dumpster fire. Somewhere in the world, there are husbands who dote on their wives; fathers who show up for their children even when there isn’t insurance money dangling over their former spouse’s cancer-riddled body.
My mother is a saint and can do no wrong in my eyes. But I’m still pissed she told my dad about her cancer when he called last week, demanding to know about her will and estate planning. The last thing that greedy shark needs is chum in the water.
“Because I’m the kind of man who leads with his head, not his heart,” Arsen says icily. “I’m not interested in romantic entanglements. I don’t want the complications or the responsibilities of what a real relationship would require. I want freedom—even if I have to find it within the confines of marriage.”
“So, when you said you and your wife are not able to have children…” I have time to reconsider the question, but all otherrules of propriety have gone out the window. What lines are left to cross? “… did you even try?”
His answer is immediate and shameless. “I have no interest in being in the same room with the woman, much less doing what would be required to get her pregnant.”
