Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
I’m either going to walk out of the office with his blessing to marry Ophelia.
Or I’m going to marry her without the blessing.
I’d prefer the former, but I’m making her mine, come hell or high water. There’s a good chance this could jeopardize my mother’s job, so I’ve already vowed to take care of her. I will provide for the women in my life, in spades. They just have to trust in me.
I stop outside the door and knock firmly.
“Come in,” he says tightly.
The floor creaks under my boots as I walk into the office and close the door behind me, falling into one of the chairs facing his desk. His hair is messy, like he’s been doing his best to pull it out, the corners of his mouth turned down.
“Who the hell are you?” he demands, slamming a fist down on the desk. “I should call the fucking police.”
“Why haven’t you?”
His gaze flickers with embarrassment. “Ophelia is eighteen. And she didn’t appear to have been…coerced.”
Satisfaction rolls through me. “No. She definitely wasn’t coerced.” I observe him a moment. Money. This guy has lots of it. Privilege sits on his shoulders like two gold bars. I feel pretty out of place among the opulence of his office, but I’d die before letting him know it.
“Well,” he snaps. “Why are you here? To brag? You obviously accomplished what you came here tonight to do.”
“Not by a long shot,” I say in a low tone. “This isn’t a one-night stand.”
He grinds his jaw. “I beg to differ.”
The beast inside me rears up at the implication that he’d keep me away from Ophelia. Stay calm. Don’t overreact just yet. The man just watched me fuck his daughter doggy style—he’s earned the right to be a little pissed. “I’m here to ask for permission to marry her.”
His stunned silence and subsequent laughter bring my hackles up. “Sure.” He folds his hand on top of one another and leans forward. “Sure, marry my daughter. Just let her know she’ll be forfeiting the twenty-million-dollar trust fund I’ve set aside once she graduates from Princeton. Because I’m not coughing it up if she’s married to someone like you.”
I try not to show my reaction to twenty million dollars, but my insides are crumbling like a sandcastle under a wave. Four years from now, Ophelia could be made in the shade with an Ivy League degree and enough money to build a mansion out of dark chocolate if she so chooses. There’s no way in hell she’d pick me over money like that.
There’s no way in hell she should.
She’s known me for less than a week and has no reason to believe I’ll give her a comfortable future. Hell, I’m fresh out of Rikers. I’ve got years of work before I can even buy her a home. I’ve got nuts of pure, reinforced steel, but even I don’t have the balls to ask her to give up twenty million bucks.
“That must sound like a lot of money to someone like you,” says Ophelia’s father.
“You keep saying that. Someone like me. You don’t even know me.”
He looks me over with distaste. “I know I could never bring you around friends of the family. Or colleagues. You look like a man who carries a knife in his boot. Or maybe one who keeps going when the father of the girl he’s fucking walks in.” He wipes the spittle from his mouth. “And you might think I don’t have an ounce of street smarts, but I recognize prison ink when I see it. You’ve got it all over you. So unless you want to rob my daughter of her future, in addition to her dignity, you need to leave her the hell alone.”
“I love her,” I manage around the lump in my throat. “There isn’t a man alive who would work harder to make her happy. Or provide for her.” Feeling like I’m standing in quicksand, I glance away, toward the wall of windows. “It isn’t easy for me to ask another man for anything, but I’m asking you to give me a shot. Don’t take her trust fund. If I haven’t made good on my promise to give her a comfortable life by the time she graduates college…I’ll bow out. She’ll have all that money to herself and I’ll have no claim on it.”
“You’d leave her alone? Just like that?”
“No, it wouldn’t be just like that. It would rip my fucking heart out. It would kill me,” I push through clenched teeth. “But I’ll beg, bargain and steal for Ophelia.”
“That’s the thing,” he says, his smile gone. “She shouldn’t have to settle for someone who needs to beg, bargain and steal.” After a quiet moment, her father stands and I swear, I can hear the nails being hammered into my coffin. “Stay away from her or her trust fund ceases to exist. Stay away from her or I’ll toss her out of this family so fast, her head will spin. We have a reputation to maintain and you’ll soil it. And her.”