Sold to the CEO, Loved by the Devil

Everyone in New York feared Dominic Blackwood.

Sienna Hart had never even heard his name, until the night her father sold her to him.

It began with a phone call at 11:48 p.m.

Sienna was on the night shift at St. Mary's Hospital, holding a cup of cold coffee, with a stranger's blood still drying on her sleeve, when her phone lit up.

Dad.

She almost let it ring. Her father, Harold Langford, had not called her in four months. The last time he did, he asked to borrow money from a nurse who was already drowning in her little brother's medical bills.

Noah was ten years old, and he was asleep in a hospital bed two floors above her. He was the only person in the world Sienna would burn herself down for.

"Dad?"

"Come home." Harold's voice sounded thin and wrong. "Right now, Sienna."

"I'm at work. Noah's ward needs me, I can't just..."

"Please."

She froze. Her father had never said "please" to her in twenty-four years.

Three black cars waited outside the Langford house like a funeral procession. No licence plates. Engines off.

Sienna's heartbeat quickened as she pushed open the front door.

The living room looked like a courtroom. Two men in black suits stood by the entrance, faces blank. A thin man in a grey suit sat on the sofa with a silver briefcase on his knees.

In the armchair sat Diane, her stepmother. Harold had married her barely a year after Sienna's mother died, and in the nine years since, Diane had never once pretended to be kind. Tonight she wore a silk robe, her back perfectly straight, her lips pressed into a thin, hard line.

On the staircase lounged Camille, Diane's daughter and Sienna's stepsister. She was twenty-three, beautiful, spoiled, and obsessed with marrying a rich man. She was painting her nails, with the look of someone settling in to enjoy a show.

And in the middle of the room stood Harold himself, gripping a glass of whiskey so hard that the ice rattled.

"Somebody tell me what is going on," Sienna said.

Nobody answered. Then Harold's knees gave way, and he dropped onto the carpet in front of her.

"Sienna... I have done something terrible."

It came out in pieces, each one worse than the last.

For three years, Harold had been quietly stealing from Blackwood Group, the billion-dollar empire that was the biggest client of his small logistics company. A little at first. Then a lot. Gambling debts, hidden losses, lies stacked on top of lies.

"How much?" Sienna asked.

Her father could not say it. The man in grey said it for him.

"Forty million dollars."

The air left her lungs.

"I am Mr. Grant, legal counsel to Mr. Dominic Blackwood," he went on, in a voice as smooth as glass. "By nine tomorrow morning, your father will be arrested. He will spend the rest of his life in prison."

"Good," Camille murmured, blowing on her nails. "Oh, wait. That affects us too."

"Camille," Diane warned.

Sienna ignored them both. "Then why are you in this house at midnight, instead of a police station?"

Mr. Grant opened his briefcase and slid a thick folder across the table. "Because Mr. Blackwood is willing to make a deal."

"One year," he said. "You marry Mr. Blackwood for one year. In return, your father's debt disappears. Your brother's treatment, every cent, at the best clinic in the country, will be paid in full."

The silence was so heavy it hurt.

Then Sienna laughed.

It was not a happy laugh. It cracked in the middle. "My father steals forty million dollars, and the punishment is a husband?"

"Mr. Blackwood needs a wife within thirty days," said Mr. Grant. "That is all I am permitted to say."

Harold dragged himself closer and caught her hands. "Sienna, please. Noah needs that treatment. Your mother would have wanted..."

She ripped her hands away so hard that he nearly fell.

"Do not," she said, her voice low and shaking with something far more dangerous than tears, "say my mother's name."

Camille jumped to her feet, and her nail polish bottle hit the floor. "This is insane! I am the one who goes to galas. I know how to talk to men like that. Why would he want her?"

Diane's eyes flicked to the lawyer. For once, she wanted to know the answer too.

Mr. Grant did not even blink. "Mr. Blackwood's instructions were very clear. He asked for Sienna Hart. By name."

Something cold slid down Sienna's spine.

By name?

She had never met Dominic Blackwood. She had never even seen his face. A man like that could have any woman in the world. Why would he choose a night-shift nurse with a sick brother and a thief for a father?

She thought of Noah, his small cough, his bright smile even when he was too tired to speak. She thought of the number the doctor had written on a scrap of paper, a number she could not earn in a hundred lifetimes.

"I want to read every word," she said.

Mr. Grant stared at her. Clearly, nobody had ever said that to him.

She was only on page six when the whole house seemed to hold its breath.

Outside, a car door closed. It was not slammed. It was closed, slowly, heavily, like the end of a sentence.

The two men by the door straightened. Harold stopped breathing. Even Camille's smirk vanished.

"He is here," Mr. Grant whispered, and for the first time that night, he looked afraid.

Footsteps crossed the hall, unhurried, each one echoing like a gavel.

The door opened.

The man who walked in wore a black coat dusted with rain. He did not look at anyone, and he did not need to. Every person in the room had already lowered their eyes: her father, her stepmother, even the bodyguards.

Everyone except Sienna.

She looked straight at him.

Dominic Blackwood was taller than she had imagined, with a face that might have been beautiful if it had held any warmth at all. His eyes were dark and cold, sharp enough to cut glass. They landed on her, and they stayed.

"So," he said quietly. "This is the girl they are selling me."

Then his gaze moved slowly around the room, and the temperature seemed to drop.

"Someone in this house," said the Devil of Wall Street, "has been lying to me. And I will find out who."