Chapter 3
I opened my mouth, but not a single word came out.
It felt like an invisible hand was squeezing my throat.
Alexander stared down at me from above, like I was some criminal caught red-handed trying to break out of a locked room.
The air around us turned icy cold.
People walking by kept sneaking glances at us, probably thinking we were actors shooting some kind of drama.
"Mr. Shaw," I finally forced out, my throat feeling like it had been scraped raw with sandpaper. "I can handle this myself."
"Handle it?" He echoed the word, his tone rising slightly.
His lips curled up a bit.
But it wasn't a smile.
It was the look of a predator, confident his prey had fallen right into the trap.
"Olivia, are you sure you understand what handle means?" Alexander said.
He closed the distance between us with a single step.
My back hit the taxi, trapping me with nowhere left to escape.
He raised his hand, his slender finger tilting my chin up, making me meet his gaze. "This is my child."
He enunciated every syllable with deliberate force. "You have no right to decide anything about it."
I swallowed hard. "But Mr. Shaw, there's nothing between us."
"There is now." He let go of my chin, reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out his phone.
He dialed a number, and the call connected within a second.
"Put the wedding on the schedule," he said, sounding like he was assigning another task. "How soon can we get the certificate?"
A few words buzzed from the other end of the line.
"Friday," he said, then hung up and glanced down at me.
My mind buzzed.
Friday?
Today was already Wednesday.
"Wait—" I finally found my voice. "Mr. Shaw, are you sure you're not getting this all wrong? You can't decide everything because of one accident."
"Get in the car," he cut me off.
I protested, "I didn't agree to this."
"Olivia," Alexander called out.
The way he said my name had changed.
No longer business. His words were laced with icy warning.
"You've got two choices. Get in the car yourself, or I'll carry you in," he added.
As he said "carry," his eyes swept over the crowd, catching the phones people were holding up to secretly film us.
I bit my lip, stood there frozen for three seconds, then finally yanked the car door open.
The Maybach's interior was so quiet it felt suffocating.
The air conditioning was blasting, and the crisp, clean scent of new leather filled the car.
Alexander sat beside me, leaving half an arm's length between us.
He was on the phone.
He kept making calls, one after another. "Have someone send the paperwork to City Hall. Yeah, Friday at nine in the morning, I'll handle her ID myself."
Listening to all this, I felt like I was trapped in some crazy, surreal dream.
I was Olivia Stone, twenty-six, an ordinary college grad, working as a secretary at Shaw Enterprises for two and a half years, making 4,000 dollars a month.
I rented a tiny, run-down apartment, drove an electric car I'd finished paying off, and my bank account barely cracked five figures.
And then there was Alexander, thirty-one, the third-generation CEO of Shaw Enterprises, rumored to be worth over ten billion dollars, single, childless, a total neat freak, and famously uninterested in women.
And now, this guy was telling me we were getting married on Friday.
"Mr. Shaw," I said, staring at my knees, "you need to calm down."
He hung up the last call and turned to look at me. "I'm perfectly calm."
"This isn't calm." I took a deep breath. "I'm an ordinary secretary. There's really no need for all this..."
"You're carrying my child," he cut me off.
I replied, "So you could pay me off, and I'll—"
"Olivia." Alexander's voice dropped to a dangerous low.
Instinctively, I shut up.
His gaze slid from my face down to my stomach, lingered there for a couple of seconds, then came back up to meet my eyes.
"Tell me, Olivia, how much do you think my child is worth?" he asked.
I couldn't get a word out.
After a long silence, I finally managed to squeak out, my voice barely above a whisper.
I asked, "Don't you remember what happened that night?"