Chapter 2
Michael held his cigarette loosely between his lips and threw out a number out of nowhere.
Lucia stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at him like he'd lost his mind, not bothering to hide her suspicion. "You've been living off women so long it's fried your brain? Throwing around a hundred million just to mess with me?"
"Too little?" Michael flicked his ash, his face as calm as if he were haggling over cabbage at a market stall. "Two hundred million."
Lucia said nothing. She just laughed coldly, figuring this guy must have given himself alcohol poisoning last night and burned out whatever was left of his brain.
"Three hundred million." Michael kept going, his voice completely flat.
That finally got to her. His whole act was infuriating.
In New York City, you could count on one hand the number of entrepreneurs who could pull out over a hundred million in liquid cash on the spot.
And this guy standing in front of her — cheap clothes, nothing on him but scars and attitude — was seriously out here pretending to be some top-tier billionaire?
"Fine then, if you've got the guts, make it a billion!"
Lucia stepped forward, her heels clicking sharp and clear in the quiet room.
She got right in his face and said coldly, "If you can actually come up with a billion, I walk out that door today and I'm yours. Whenever you want, wherever you want. But if you can't, shut your mouth and get out."
As far as she knew, fewer than ten people in New York could move a billion in cash on the spot. And this guy in front of her was definitely not one of them.
"A billion? Sure."
Michael agreed so fast that Lucia actually wondered if she'd heard him wrong.
She watched as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, pulled out his phone, and looked up at her. "Account number."
Lucia let out a laugh, half-furious, half-amused. She reached into her bag, pulled out a black-and-gold bank card — the kind that screamed private top-tier VIP — held it between two fingers, and slapped it down hard on the coffee table. "Swiss bank. Private account. Go ahead. Transfer it. I'm watching."
Michael glanced at the card number and his fingers moved fast across the screen.
The room went strangely quiet.
Lucia stood there with her arms crossed, a cold smirk on her face, waiting for the moment this guy's bluff fell apart and he had to crawl back with an apology.
Ding.
Less than thirty seconds later, a notification chime went off inside her bag.
She frowned slightly, a vague feeling that something was off, but she reached in and pulled out her phone anyway.
It was an official transaction alert from the Swiss bank.
[Account ending in 8848: A real-time deposit was completed on June 22 at 19:25. Amount: $1,000,000,000.00. Current available balance: $1,012,301,435.20.]
Lucia went completely still, like she'd been struck by lightning.
One, two, three, four, five...
She forgot all about acting like a CEO. She pressed her pale fingers against the screen and counted the zeros one by one.
Nine zeros. Exactly nine.
A billion dollars. Not a cent more, not a cent less.
The light from the screen reflected off her stunned face. Lucia felt her vision blur and her mind go completely blank.
A billion dollars. Even Starship Group would need to call a board meeting and go through weeks of approvals to move that kind of cash.
And this man in front of her had done it in under a minute, as casually as sending ten bucks for breakfast.
"Here's your card."
Michael had somehow crossed the room without her noticing. He held the black-and-gold card between two fingers and pressed it back into her stiff hand.
Lucia took it mechanically, staring at him with empty eyes.
Michael grabbed his black shirt off the hook nearby, pulled it on, and started doing up the buttons as he walked past her toward the door.
At the doorway, he stopped and turned his head, giving a slightly tired smile. "Keep the card safe. And by the way — I'm only twenty-five. My whole life's ahead of me. I'm not looking for a relationship or a wife right now. So forget that part about being mine. Don't go pinning anything on me."
Before he opened the door, Michael's eyes moved over her with open amusement — taking in the way she was still trembling slightly from the shock — before finally settling on her face.
"Honestly though, a woman with your looks and your attitude? You don't come across that often. Last night..." He gave a low whistle. "No complaints."
The door clicked shut behind him.
His footsteps faded down the hallway and disappeared.
The presidential suite fell so silent you could have heard a pin drop.
Lucia was still standing in the same spot, her phone warm in her hand.
Who the hell is he?
She drifted over to the sofa and sank into it, the soft cushions swallowing her up.
She'd only come to the bar last night because her family was pushing her into a marriage she didn't want. She hadn't been willing to give herself to some entitled aristocrat her family had picked out for her, so she'd gone out to get drunk and do something reckless, just once.
But she'd never imagined she'd end up losing her virginity in a blur — and somehow walking away with a billion dollars from a man whose name she didn't even know.
She looked at that long row of dizzying numbers on her screen and let out a short, twisted laugh.
A billion dollars. What does that make me? Someone who sold herself?
The absurdity and the shame hit her at the same time, and her eyes started to sting.
She took a few slow, deep breaths, then opened her contacts with trembling fingers and dialed a familiar number.
The phone rang for a long time before someone picked up. A lazy, half-asleep voice came through. "Hello... Lucia? It's the weekend. What are you doing... I was up until three watching a show..."
"Jessica..."
Lucia's voice came out rough, with a faint tremor she didn't even notice herself.
On the other end, Jessica Davis snapped awake. She could hear something wrong in her best friend's voice. "What's going on, Lucia? You sound off. Where are you?"
Lucia bit down hard on her lower lip, her nails digging into her palm. She glanced over at the sheet and the small red stain on it. She closed her eyes, and finally forced the words out.
"I... I sold my virginity."
"What?!"
"Lucia, do you even hear yourself right now?!"
The shriek from the other end nearly blew out Lucia's eardrum. Jessica's drowsiness vanished on the spot.
Lucia pulled the phone a few inches away from her ear and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window at the city skyline slowly brightening outside. There was no panic in her eyes — just a flat, still calm, like water that had stopped moving.
"I'm not joking, Jessica. Last night I gave my virginity to a stranger. I don't even know his name."
"Are you out of your mind?!" Jessica shot upright in bed, her voice full of disbelief and panic. "You're marrying Richard Miller next month! Do you have any idea what the Millers are worth in this city? If Richard finds out you — what kind of life do you think you're going to have after this?"
At the name "Richard," something cold and unmistakable crossed Lucia's face.
She laughed at herself and said flatly, "A life? Jessica, even if I marry into that family, what kind of life do you think I'd have?"
"But it's still the Millers..."
