“It’s likely they’re armed, or someone is upstairs,” Shawn said to my father.
“I would agree. However, I don’t expect the need for violence at this stage,” father replied.
“Can I have my phone?” I asked because he hadn’t yet given it to me.
He blew out a breath and pulled it from his pocket. “To call your mother,” he declared.
I took it and would have shot off a text to her, but the doors opened, and a big guy met us at the door. “Can I offer you some refreshment?” he said, in a heavy accent. Scottish was my guess.
Father waved him off. “No thanks. Please direct us to the meeting.”
The office building was fairly silent. The Scottish man, whom I couldn’t make out his role, walked us into a glass conference room. We walked past a man in the lobby area who was working on a computer. Only two men waited inside the room. An older man with graying hair and a younger version of that man. Liam.
Our eyes locked and I suddenly felt lighter. There was so much I wanted to tell him; especially how sorry I was for all of this to happen.
Liam stepped forward but shy of getting close enough to take me in his arms.
“Nicolas Cortez, this is my father, Mr. King.”
My father extended a hand. “Mr. King, can I call you, Royce?”
Even I could see it for the test it was. The elder King’s answer would let everyone know just how welcome Father was.
“Call me Ted. Everyone does.”
Confusion covered my father’s face. “Ted?” he said, suspiciously.
“Short for Theodore. Everyone has a middle name,” he said.
Father nodded. “Fine. Ted. You may of course call me Nicolas. This is my daughter, Natalia.”
“Natalie,” I said before I thought about it.
Father shot me a cautionary glance and I closed my mouth shut. “Has your son told you why we are here?” he asked Liam’s father.
“I’d prefer if you told me,” Liam’s father said.
I found myself searching for the resemblances between them. It was there in the eyes and the mouth.
“I’m willing to pay you a generous sum of money for your son to marry my daughter.”
Ted looked thoughtful. “Sounds like human trafficking.”
“Remember who is paying who?” Father said.
“I haven’t asked for anything. What do you get out of this?” Ted asked.
“Favors, introductions, maybe a partnership.”
“Sounds illegal. I’m not willing to use my businesses for you to launder money through.”
Father dismissed that with a huff. “I have my own business for that. I want my daughter to have your name and all that comes with it.”
“Just so you are clear, I’m not willing to do anything illegal. If my son wants to marry her, that’s his choice,” Ted said.
“It’s important for you to be on board with this,” Father said. “As I mentioned, I would want certain introductions. That could happen, let’s say, at a wedding and I’m willing to pay you this.”
Father reached for a pad of paper sitting in the middle of the table and took a pen from a cup near it. He wrote down a number with several zeros. I had to blink at it thinking maybe I was seeing double. He spun the paper around so the elder King could see.
“I can’t accept that,” Liam’s father said.
Father wasn’t dismayed. “The amount or you’d rather I not send it to you?”
“As I mentioned, I’m not in the business of buying or selling human beings,” the elder King said.
“There is another interested party I could barter my daughter to.”
Liam snatched the pad from the table and wrote a number on it and tapped the paper while staring at my father.
“I see.”
“Can I marry your daughter?” Liam asked.
Father nodded in agreement. Liam stepped forward and didn’t stop until he stood in front of me. We drank each other. I opened my mouth, needing to confess my feelings when he dropped to one knee.
As I gasped, covering my mouth with one hand because I hadn’t expected this, he asked, “Will you marry me?”
Though we were here to negotiate this very thing, I thought I would be looking at a contract maybe, but not an actual proposal.
When I didn’t answer right away, he added, “I’m in love with you.”
I didn’t care what my father expected. I was on the verge of tears. Though I’d known how I felt about him. This was the first time I knew exactly where his feelings stood. The bigger lump in my throat was lodged there because Liam was giving me the choice my father wasn’t.
“Say something, girl,” my father snapped.
Instead of a simple answer, I let my feelings pour out of me in a rush. “I’m in love with you, too.”
His dimpled smile melted all the frozen places in my heart. “Is that a yes?”
I bobbed my head frantically. “Yes.”
He took my hand in his and brushed a kiss on my ring finger before slipping a ring with a large square center stone surrounded by smaller diamonds on it.