BOUND TO THE BILLIONAIRE

Night in Manhattan, New York, was nothing like the calm evenings in Manhattan, Kansas. Here, it felt like everyone was searching for the true meaning of chaos. The Manhattan I once saw on TV, full of dazzling skyscrapers and 24-hour life—was worlds away from the sleepy little town in Kansas where I grew up.

I once dreamed of working here. Strutting down the street in high heels, coffee in hand, heading toward a tall glass building with my name etched on the office door. But dreams come with a price. And my mother couldn’t even afford the cheapest one. I buried that dream the day she told me college wasn’t an option. She simply didn’t have the money.

My mother worked as a cook at a small restaurant, and her salary barely paid the bills. She always said college was pointless. “If you want to be rich, find a rich man, someone who can snap his fingers and summon a private jet,” she once said.

We were polar opposites. Our values never aligned.

She gave birth to me at nineteen, pregnant out of wedlock, and often claimed my father was a well-known businessman in Manhattan, New York. I’ve never met him. But I remember her making calls, threatening to go public with the truth that David Taylor had fathered a child with a woman who wasn’t his wife. The moment money landed in her account, her lips were sealed. Her eyes lit up, her smile returned, and she would stroke my hair while saying I was the best asset she’d ever had.

Unlike in TV dramas where mothers are close to their daughters, mine hardly ever hugged me. I learned to cook for myself from a young age. When she got angry, she’d call me bad luck, or worse, say she regretted giving birth to me.

Those words left scars. Over time, they shaped me into someone skeptical of love. I stopped believing in happily ever afters. Even someone like David Taylor—a man with empires under his name, a king in the towering chaos of New York had secrets buried beneath his polished life. People only saw the image: a loving husband, a proud father to his children. They never knew about the night he slipped—a one-night stand with a woman who didn’t belong in his world, a mistake that ended in a pregnancy.

And then came me. The child never meant to exist.

Even now, my mother often looks at me with eyes full of regret, as if I were the living proof of a past she wishes she could erase. She calls me the child who never should have been.

And now, here I am. Riding in a luxury car like a Bentley Mulsanne, something I never imagined outside of my dreams. Yet here it is, real. This car is likely just one of many in Ashton Reagan Williams’ collection. A thirty-year-old businessman with empires in real estate, fashion, dining, hotels, shopping centers—you name it. I once read that he was on the brink of surpassing David Taylor as the richest man in the industry.

Not that I cared.

I don’t know what got into me. I simply said yes when my mother asked me to take the job. Ashton’s assistant offered me a position as a cook in his mansion. I never made it past high school, but I could cook and I was good at it. I even won a cooking competition hosted by a famous Kansas City restaurant. Apparently, word of my win reached Ashton.

Today, a new chapter begins.

My gaze wandered around the room. I couldn’t help but marvel in silence. Yes, I didn’t dare say a word—only my eyes roamed, taking in the lavish items displayed in every corner.

Several antique vases painted with flowers and dragons pleased my eyes. I didn’t know much about luxury goods, but I could guess just one of those vases might be worth a year’s rent for our house.

Two men in suits opened the double doors and gestured for me to step in with both arms extended. Hesitantly, I walked in. My eyes stayed alert, scanning every corner, until I realized this was a bedroom. A grand one. The bed alone looked like it could fit three, maybe four people. Silk curtains framed the windows, and artistic floral paintings adorned the walls.

What made me freeze was the man sitting at the far end of the room, staring at me coldly. I was even more stunned when the two men in black suits left, shutting the door behind them.

My chest tightened. The pounding in my ribcage took over. At 21, I had never been this close to a man before. I had never even been interested in a relationship. My mother’s past haunted me, always holding me back. Maybe if my view of men—as people who often saw women as nothing but objects—had died off, I might’ve opened up. But it hadn’t.

I didn’t know why I was brought here, or why the man sitting before me whom I believed was Ashton Reagan Williams was watching me with such scrutiny. His face had graced dozens of economic and business news sites. But seeing him in person brought a different impression. He was far more attractive in real life, with sharp jawlines, faint stubble on his cheeks, and eyes like a hawk, piercing and mesmerizing. Perhaps that’s why he earned the title of the most desired bachelor in business.

I snapped back to reality, trying to calm the mixed fear and confusion inside me. He wasn’t going to hurt me, was he? Why hadn’t I been taken to the kitchen instead? Or introduced to the staff, given a rundown of my duties?

“Lily Parker, twenty-one, formerly worked at a flower shop, unmarried, and the daughter of David Taylor. An illegitimate daughter.”

A smirk curled his lips, thick with arrogance. His expression didn’t soften for a second. That gaze still pierced into me—as if it could read me, strip me bare with no effort.

What stunned me even more was, how did he know I was David Taylor’s daughter? An illegitimate child?