Amelia laughed once, disbelieving. “So you need bait.”
His gaze did not flinch. “I need someone real.”
“And if she comes after me again?”
“She won’t touch you.”
The certainty in his tone should have comforted her. Instead it sent a strange shiver through her.
He named the price. Her father transferred to the best private clinic in the city. Every medical bill paid. A half-million-dollar settlement when the arrangement ended. For a moment the numbers sounded unreal, like amounts people invented in movies to show what ordinary people would never touch.
Amelia thought of eviction notices. Of the pharmacy line. Of Arthur trying to hide pain behind jokes. Of her mother dying tired.
“Why me?” she whispered. “You could find an actress.”
Langston leaned back, studying her. “Actresses imitate strength. You slapped a Vanderhoven in a room full of armed men and still stood there afterward. That tells me more than beauty ever could.”
Something dangerous moved through the silence between them.
Amelia should have said no.
Instead she heard herself ask, “How long?”
“One month.”
She closed her eyes, seeing her father’s trembling hands, the stack of bills, the stripped cupboards in their apartment.
When she opened them again, there was resignation in her voice, but also something harder. “Then we do it my way too. I don’t play dumb, and I don’t sleep with you for the cameras.”
A flicker of respect, almost amused, crossed Langston’s face. “Agreed.”
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