My Billionaire Boss Paid Me to Be His Girlfriend

The storm broke at two in the morning.

I woke to the sound of lightning cracking over the Sound, illuminating the dark timbers of the master suite in sharp, violent flashes of blue and white.

Adrian was not on the chaise.

The blanket was folded neatly at the foot of the velvet sofa, untouched. The French doors to the terrace were open an inch, letting in the cold, wet draft of the ocean and the distant sound of raised voices from the floor below.

A cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach.

I slipped out of bed, pulled on a heavy silk robe over my nightgown, and walked quietly toward the door.

The hallway of the east wing was deserted, but the amber light from the grand library at the end of the corridor spilled across the Persian runners. As I drew closer, the voices became distinct—sharp, vicious, and unmistakable.

"It is a fraud, Aunt Rosa!" Marco’s voice was triumphant, ringing off the mahogany shelves. "A complete and total fraud! She isn't his fiancée! She is an employee he bought off the street for fifty thousand dollars!"

I froze, my hand hovering against the cold plaster wall. My blood turned to ice.

"Watch your tongue, Marco," Adrian’s voice was deadly low, vibrating with an ancient, murderous fury. "You leave this room right now, or you won't walk out of it."

"Let him speak, Adrian," Rosa’s voice commanded. It was frail, but it carried the weight of fifty years of absolute authority. "Show me the paper, Marco."

A rustle of parchment followed.

"A retainer agreement," Marco sneered. "Drawn up last Friday night in his Midtown office. Signed by your son, and signed by Emily Vance. Fifty thousand dollars for seven days of theatrical performance. One week to pretend she loves him so you would sign over the voting shares before you die!"

Silence fell over the library.

It was a silence so heavy, so suffocating, that even the storm outside seemed to fade into the background.

I stepped into the doorway.

The library was illuminated only by the dying embers of the hearth and a single green-shaded banker’s lamp on the massive desk. Rosa sat in a high-backed leather chair, holding the three-page contract I had signed on that rainy Friday night.

Her hands were shaking faintly.

Adrian stood on the other side of the desk, his fists clenched at his sides, his face pale with a rage so terrifying it looked like a mask of carved marble. Julian stood by the window, watching with a cowardly smirk, while Marco leaned over the desk like a hyena over a carcass.

Rosa slowly lifted her eyes from the paper.

She looked past Adrian. She looked past Marco.

Her green eyes found me standing in the doorway, wrapped in my robe, my face pale, the eight-carat diamond hanging heavy and cold on my left hand.

"Emily," Rosa said. Her voice wasn't angry. It was infinitely worse: it was broken.

"Donna Rosa," I whispered.

"Is this your signature?" she asked, holding up the final page.

Adrian spun around. When he saw me, the rage in his eyes fractured, replaced by an agonizing look of desperation. "Emily, don't. Go back to the room."

"Is it your signature, child?" Rosa repeated, ignoring her son entirely.

I looked at the old woman. I looked at the tiredness in her eyes, the frailty of her shoulders beneath the dark shawl, and the hope that had lived in her face for the last four days.

I couldn't lie to her. Not anymore.

"Yes," I said, my voice barely audible over the wind rattling the terrace glass. "It is."

Marco let out a triumphant bark of laughter. "You see? The girl admits it! She's a paid whore from Queens brought in to steal the succession!"

"Shut up!" Adrian roared.

He didn't just shove Marco this time. He lunged across the desk, caught Marco by the throat, and slammed him down across the mahogany table with enough force to crack the wood. Books tumbled to the floor; inkwells shattered. Marco choked, his eyes bulging as Adrian’s fingers crushed his windpipe.

"Adrian!" Rosa’s voice cracked through the room like a gunshot. "Release him!"

Adrian didn't move for two seconds. His knuckles were white, his face twisted in a murderous snarl. Then, with a look of pure disgust, he threw Marco back onto the carpet. Marco scrambled backward on his hands and knees, coughing and wheezing, clutching his throat.

"Get out," Rosa said to Marco and Julian.

"Aunt Rosa, the shares—" Julian stammered.

"GET OUT!"

The roar of the matriarch rattled the glass in the bookcases.

Julian grabbed Marco by the arm, and the two of them scrambled out of the library, practically tripping over each other in their haste to escape the room.

The heavy double doors clicked shut behind them.

There was only the ticking clock, the dying fire, and the three of us.

Adrian turned to his mother. "Rosa, listen to me—"

"You lied to me," Rosa whispered, looking at the contract on the desk. "You brought a stranger into Sofia’s ring. You staged a circus in my house because you thought I was a fool who could be bought with a pretty smile and a fake romance."

"It started as a lie," Adrian said, his voice raw, cracking with an emotion I had never seen in him. He took a step toward her, his hands open, pleading. "It was a mistake. I was desperate to give you peace. But it isn't a lie anymore. Mother, I swear to you on my father’s grave, I love her. I am in love with her."

Rosa looked up at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

"How can I believe a man who pays fifty thousand dollars for a woman's devotion?" she whispered.

She turned her gaze to me.

"And you," Rosa said softly. "I thought you had a spine. I thought you were the steel this family needed. But you were just another clerk doing what she was paid to do."

The words cut deeper than any insult Julian or Marco could have ever spoken. A tear broke free, tracking hot and silent down my cheek.

"I didn't take the money for myself, Donna Rosa," I said, my voice trembling but clear. "My brother is paralyzed. He needed the clinic."

Rosa looked down at the contract again, her old fingers tracing the ink of my name. "A noble reason for a dishonorable act."

She closed the folder, picked up her blackthorn cane, and slowly, painfully stood up from the chair.

"Tomorrow night is my seventieth birthday," Rosa said, her back to us as she walked toward the side door that led to her private apartments. "The lawyers will be here with the final deeds for the estate. I have not decided what I will sign."

She paused at the door, her hand on the brass handle.

"Take off the ring, Emily," she said without looking back. "It does not belong to you."

The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

The silence that followed was absolute.

I looked at Adrian. He stood in the center of the ruined library, his head bowed, his hands shaking at his sides. For the first time in the two years I had known him, Adrian Moretti looked completely defeated.

I looked down at my left hand.

Slowly, carefully, I pulled the eight-carat antique diamond from my finger. The metal felt ice-cold.

I walked over to the desk and set the ring down on top of the black contract.

"Emily," Adrian whispered, looking up. His green eyes were red-rimmed, filled with an agony that tore my heart to shreds. "Don't."

"She's right, Adrian," I said, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my robe. "A foundation built on a fifty-thousand-dollar lie can never stand. If you want this company, you have to win it as yourself. Not with me as your prop."

"You are not a prop!" he shouted, stepping toward me, his hands reaching for my shoulders. "I love you! Did you not hear what I told her?"

"I heard you," I whispered, stepping back out of his reach. "And God help me, I love you too. But I won't be the reason your mother dies with a broken heart."