Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 27572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 110(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
My heart thumps once, painfully, and my head begins to spin. Oh god, I have to get off this call, but how? I grimace, my fingers white-knuckling the phone.
“I see,” I mumble again. “Well, thank you for the information. If it’s okay, I’ll take some time to mull your offer over. I have to say it’s quite a surprise to hear from you because Liam has never mentioned you before.”
“I understand,” Mr. Warren says smoothly. “And I realize that the offer comes as a surprise, but please remember that Mr. Carrington is trying to be fair, equitable, and at the same time generous with his family. Again, you’ll want for nothing.”
“I realize that,” I say in a tight voice. “Still, to be the recipient of this kind of offer is strange, if not mind-blowing.”
Mr. Warren doesn’t miss a beat.
“It was mind-blowing for Belinda and Magda as well, but I’m sure once you think it over, you’ll see how much sense the family compound makes. Again, thank you for your time and please feel free to reach out to me at any time, Miss Leigh. I’m at your service.”
Then, the attorney clicks off and I’m left staring at my phone in shock. What was that? Did Liam just try to buy me? Did he just try to pay me fifteen million dollars for having his child? Oh my god, am I basically one woman in a group of breeders, and he’s going to knock us up over and over again until he has an entire village of sons and daughters?
My stomach roils, acid rising in my throat. My guess is that Liam’s got a dozen or so houses at this compound, and they’re just waiting to be filled with young, biddable women who agree to have his babies. The realization makes me choke, and this time, the nausea is so bad that I rush to the bathroom before vomiting with a horrific belching sound into the toilet. Green and brown chunks splatter the porcelain bowl, and before I know it, another heave makes me puke wretchedly, the vomit getting into my hair this time.
Oh my god, how did this happen? I was falling in love with the billionaire, and I thought he was falling in love with me too. I thought I was the only woman in Liam’s life, but it turns out his exes have been present all along. Belinda and Magda were merely waiting for me at this horrific family compound that reminds me of a sci-fi breeding facility. Except that we’re not cows, sheep, chickens or goats. We’re human woman, and yet we’re being used for our wombs.
Another wave of nausea passes over me, and after puking once more into the porcelain throne, I sink to the cold bathroom floor and begin to cry. Everything I hoped for has disappeared into thin air, and I feel so stupid, hopeless, and dumb. I feel like I was the idiotic young girl who started believing in fairy tales … only to land hard on her ass, pregnant and pathetic, in the end.
9
Avalon
“Hey girl,” my friend Marnie chirps into the phone. “How are you?”
I lean back on my couch and then grimace because the sofa is so old that the cushions are lumpy and uncomfortable, providing no support for my pregnant weight. My belly is only a minuscule bump right now, but it feels significant, and it’s hard to get comfortable in any position.
Still, I’m glad to be back in my own apartment because after I had the talk with Jimmy Warren, I decided to vacate Liam’s mansion. There was no need for me to stay there when he obviously expected me to become a breeder for him. There’s no other word to describe it, either. Some girls call themselves “babymamas,” but I’d say that “babymama” is too familiar and cozy for what I am. Instead, Liam literally has a property in the burbs where he parks his breeders. Sure, we’ll have our own houses, our own yards, and probably a slew of cooks, nannies, and chauffeurs to help us with our children, but it doesn’t matter. The luxury doesn’t hide the fact that I’d be a part of a breeding project, my womb dedicated to the greater purpose.
The concept alone makes me shudder because this isn’t what I wanted at all. I never signed up to be part of some hive project where Liam’s the King Bee, mating with workers to keep the population going. Plus, I’m definitely not living with the other “wives,” pretending that everything’s hunky-dory when it’s not. Again, that’s a sci-fi horror story that I want no part of.
But the worst realization was knowing that actually, I mean nothing to Liam and I never did. Somehow, I got it in my head that we were falling in love, one on one, with the kind of relationship that leads to happily ever after and even a ring on my finger. But of course, it turns out that the opposite is true. I was being groomed for a role out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and it’s totally unacceptable, not to mention scary.