Page 2 of His Contract Queen

Ramil knows this.

I’ve let it slide for this long because he’s been useful. Reliable, even. A man with access where others don’t have it acting as a quiet conduit between worlds that prefer not to acknowledge one another is incredibly valuable in my line of work.

For years, he’s done exactly what has been required of him, nothing more, nothing less. That history bought him my patience and a longer leash than most men have ever been granted in my rolodex.

But that ends today.

His public image is polished brighter than the barrel of the service pistol he probably hasn’t fired in years. Private life? Gambling debts so deep, they’re drowning him.

Millions.

Patience is not my virtue. It never has been. It’s been a strategic choice I’ve made because so far, it has served me. Today, it does not. I didn’t come here to listen to carefully rehearsed justifications for why our loan has passed its payment expiration date.

Nor do I care.

“Yes,” he finally answers.

I reward it with an easy smile and lean back in my chair, letting the posture do the talking for me. Power is most effective when it looks effortless. Then, I lift my hand, palm up. One of my subordinates steps forward immediately, placing an unlit cigar into my fingers. I roll it once between them as another flicks a lighter to life and holds the flame steady in front of me, waiting.

This is routine. Exactly where I expect the conversation to stay. What I am not prepared for is the offer that follows.

“I’d like to offer my daughter in exchange to wipe the debt.”

For a moment, my mind refuses to process what I’ve just heard. The flame dances inches from my cigar, forgotten.

For a second, I believe I’ve misheard him.

“Pardon?” I say, certain this must be a misunderstanding. A poor attempt at humor, even.

Ramil continues without flinching. “If you accept the agreement, you’ll be free to do what you want with her. Marry her. Use her as a negotiation tool to gain another syndicate’s allyship. Whatever it is, it’s up to you.” He pauses, then adds, almost clinically, “You will have full ownership over her.”

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been rendered speechless.

Offering up his daughter as payment, not merely as a bride to secure a political tie or negotiate some bloodless alliance like his type would usually lean toward, but asproperty. Ownership? Something to be used, traded, played with at my discretion or discarded if I so choose.

The way he says it, stripped of any shame, turns my stomach in a way I haven’t felt in years.

I’ve watched men beg on their knees, dignity leaking out of them with every shallowed breath they take. I’ve watched them bleed out on marble floors at my feet while swearing they’d never fuck over their families, only to offer up everything else they owned in the same breath. I’ve heard threats screamed through tears, appeals to honor, to legacy, to love.

But this?

This is different.

This isn’t desperation spiraling out of control. This isn’t a man cornered and grasping blindly for appeasement because there is a gun being held to his forehead. This is the cold calculation of a man who has looked at his own child and decided she was worth less than his reputation.

It is unthinkable coming from someone like him.

The rot runs deeper than unpaid markers and bad habits. It lives in the way he’s able to justify this to himself. In the medals pinned to his chest that catch the light every time he breathes in. In the speeches he will no doubt give in the future about sacrifice and service while standing in front of a crowd who wholeheartedly believes he is being sincere.

My code has never been clean, nor has it ever been noble.

But itishonest.

I deal in fear. I don’t pretend otherwise. I don’t hide behind a uniform meant to serve and protect. There are no ceremonies erected in my honor or carefully constructed lies about virtue touted to support someone else’s idealistic view of me. I don’t ask the world to mistake me for something respectable while I do monstrous things in the dark. I know exactly what I am and I refuse to masquerade as anything else.

Hypocrisy disgusts me far more than violence ever could.

Ramil doesn’t even flinch when I don’t respond right away. That, more than anything, tells me how convinced he is of his own righteousness. He takes my silence not as hesitation, but as consideration. As if this is a negotiation that only requires a careful amount of scrutiny to confirm the deal leans in my favor and not a question of morality.