Sweet Romance11 min read
A One-Night Mistake, a Billionaire's Promise — My Jade Bracelet
ButterPicks12 views
I remember the heat that summer night like a bruise.
"Bethany, hurry," my stepmother barked from the kitchen doorway, and Khloe laughed at something on her phone. "If you're not packing, you'll miss the taxi."
"I said I'm almost done," I answered, clutching a small tote of folded clothes. I heard my father's boots on the stairs and hoped this chore would end tonight — hoped it wasn't another debt he couldn't face.
"Three million," I overheard my stepmother say into the phone, voice sharp as broken glass. "You threatened what? No police? Then come tonight, room 3233 at the Taihe. Bring a daughter or bring death."
My stomach sank into the floorboards. "Three million," I whispered aloud, and Khloe scoffed behind me. "Big sisters don't deal with loans," she said.
"You're the one who has to go," Kori said before I could answer. "We raised you. It's your duty."
"Me?" I asked, voice barely a thread. "Why me?"
"Because," Kori spat, "you're not one of us. You're expendable."
I left the house with a plastic bag and my head full of fury and shame. I didn't want pity. I wanted the money, and I hated that for a single breath.
At the Taihe I walked into a shadowed lobby where men with sharp looks and sharp breath led me to a private room. A man offered me wine. "One glass," he said, "to make you comfortable." Black hands guided me forward, and the liquid in my cup was warm and heavy. I drank because I had to be brave for my father.
"Miss, relax." A voice like coal promised me safety and then pulled the curtain. I woke wrapped in sheets I didn't own, my hair smelling like a stranger's cologne.
"Who are you?" I said, and the man beside me peered like the moon through blackout.
"I'm Drake," he said, cool as a blade and softer than I expected. "Drake Silva. This is my room."
I touched my mouth with my hand, dazed. "I came here to see Nine—"
"I don't know any Nine," Drake interrupted, amused. "Also, your cheeks are flushed like you've lost something."
"Lost?" My voice cracked. "I lost—my head, maybe."
"You look like someone who needs help," Drake said, and I found myself answering him honestly. "My father... he needs three million. I was supposed to meet someone—"
"Three million?" Drake raised an eyebrow. "You expect me to believe you're here for a ransom and not for a spot of mercenary melodrama?"
"You don't believe me? Then why are you here?" I slammed the accusation like I had a spine left.
He smiled, half-mock, half-curious. "Because last night you were in my bed."
I could see it then: the night had been a collision of two mistakes. Someone had drugged the wine. The men had meant to push me into the hands of Ismael Dennis, the man they called Nine. They'd gotten the room wrong.
"Did we—" I asked, ashamed. "Was I—"
"We were," he said plainly. "And you were beautiful and bewildered."
I wanted the shame to bury me. So I said the only thing I could think of: "Three million. Can you give it? My father—"
He laughed, and for a terrible second I thought I had failed him. "Three million? For a night?"
"Please," I whispered. "If you can't, I'll find another way."
Drake slid a leather folder across the bedside table. "I can do more. Six million, right now."
"I don't want so much," I said, angry at myself for the bargaining that even love or desperation had parsed into numbers.
"Take it." He was detached and then suddenly earnest. "Take what you need. Keep the rest, return if you must, or don't. I don't do favors for strangers often, but I do things when someone surprises me." He winked, ridiculous and sincere.
I left that night with a check that screamed of someone else's life. I felt like a thief and a queen at once. I banked what I could for my father and told myself I'd return the rest.
Later, in the elevator, his assistant sent a message: Find everything on Bethany Zhao.
"You're going to look me up?" I asked the sky between buildings.
He smirked. "Curiosity. Maybe concern."
We met again, and over coffee he asked questions in a way that made me feel both unpinned and protected. "Do you work?" he asked.
"I work at a bakery," I said. "I like pastry."
He was surprised. "You like pastry. Of course you do."
"You don't like pastry?" I pressed.
"I used to hate it," he admitted, smiling. "Until I met the person who can laugh at a burnt sugar and say it tastes like hope."
"Aren't you going to ask about the men who drugged me?" I demanded.
"Later," he said. "First, let me fix the immediate."
Drake paid off the men who had my father in their palms, arranged documents, and then did something I still couldn't accept — he came to my father's flat, handed over the money, and refused my repayment when I tried to slip him bills with shaking hands.
"No," he said. "I want nothing back."
"Then what?" I asked.
"I want you to be safe," he said. "And I want you for my own."
"You can't buy that," I snapped. "And you can't heal what they've done."
He stepped closer. "I don't want to buy you. I want to be with you because last night changed me."
I laughed, a small broken thing. "You're the richest man in the city, and you say I'm the changed thing."
"Yes." He smiled, boyish and sudden. "Put your number in, Bethany. I'm not a man who forgets."
When Fielding Engel, his assistant, contacted my stepmother for paperwork, she took the check without blushing and chewed on the idea of my marriage like it was merchantable. Kori played the part of the grateful matron for a moment until the shine in her eyes turned greedy again.
"You brought home money," she said. "The rest is for me."
"No," I told her. "You will not make me feel like a price."
In every conversation Drake's voice calmed me: "You don't owe anyone the story of your worth."
"Do all your lovers come with guarantees?" I teased.
"Only the ones who try to take my heart by mistake," he said.
Our meetings accelerated as if time had been impatient for us. He learned the rhythm of my laugh, how I bite my lower lip when nervous, how I say 'sorry' like it's a prayer. And the more he knew, the deeper he wanted.
"Will you come home with me?" he asked one evening, hands warm on my waist.
"I don't know if I should," I said. "My life is messy."
"Everyone's is," he replied. "I just want you in my messy."
So I let him bring me into his house and into a life that smelled of clean linen and a thousand quiet good things. The housekeeper Millicent Robertson fussed like she had always been ready for a bride. Freya Gross, his grandmother, wore a softness I had not seen in other grandmothers. When Freya pressed an old jade bracelet into my palm, I felt my throat tighten.
"Keep this," she said. "It belongs to the women of our house."
"I can't accept that," I whispered, fingers trembling.
"Then it's already yours," she said. "We are family now."
We married quickly. Drake wanted no delay. "We will go to the registry and make it official," he declared one morning, like a child tearing open a present. "Now."
"Now?" I echoed, dizzy and laughing.
He kissed me like an exclamation mark. "Now."
At the registrar's office, I signed with a hand that shook and laughed and cried. "It's real," I said, and Drake caught my face like it was his greatest victory.
"It is," he answered. "You are mine."
Back at his house the honeymoon felt like learning to swim together. He showed me how to make coffee the way he liked it, and I taught him how to fold puff pastry the wrong way and then the right way. He would taste test everything: "Feed me," he'd order with mock severity. "I live on pastry and your smile."
I worked two days a week at the bakery. Ari Schmidt, the head baker, taught me the secrets of layers and heat. Emma Contreras, the shop owner, cheered me on like a second mother. "You've got something special," Emma told me one afternoon. "You always did."
Then came the shadow I didn't expect to see again.
Ismael Dennis had thought me easy prey; he had thought the wrong room that night was his gift. He thought my marriage would die in the press or in the silence of bought-for friends. He thought wrong.
Drake's face went cold the day he learned all of it. "We will not let him frighten you," he said, closing his fist so hard the knuckles whitened.
The first confrontation I wanted to handle quietly. But Drake dismantled secrecy like a man removing a rug.
"You will make a public apology," he told Fielding. "And gather the proof. We'll make it a spectacle."
When Drake told me to leave the staging of the trap to him, I left certain only that I needed distance. "I don't want blood," I said.
"You won't get blood. You'll get justice," he promised, with a steadiness that made me lean into his chest.
We lured Ismael to a charity banquet Drake arranged, a dinner to raise money for young bakers. I stood at Drake's side in a dress I had never imagined wearing — pink, quiet, with the jade bracelet warm against my wrist.
"Be calm," he whispered.
"I will," I lied.
Ismael came in swaggering, flanked by henchmen because he liked the look of numbers. He wore leather and casual menace. He sat where the lights could warm him and took the microphone with the insolence of someone used to people silencing themselves.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, voice oiled, "we're all friends here? Friends who help each other out against debts—"
"Ismael," Drake's voice cut like a new instrument, velvet and steel, "please stop talking."
Ismael grinned. "Ah, Mr. Silva. Come to bless the poor?"
Drake took the stage. "No. I've come to show you the person you ruined."
"Ruined?" Ismael mocked. "Who?"
He pointed to me. All eyes turned to me; the chandelier caught the jade bracelet and threw light into a dozen cameras.
Drake pressed play on a video. "This is you," he said. "This is what you did."
The feed showed Ismael's men making calls, voice recordings where a man ordered three million and demanded a daughter, captured in a legal sting. It showed the tally of threats, the receipts, the payments. It showed footage of a man in a lobby orchestrating the wrong room. It showed the private messages Ismael had sent, boasting of his power.
Ismael's face was initially a carved mask of pride. Then he smiled too widely, a counterfeit that barely held. "You have no proof," he scoffed.
"You're on record, Jaime," Drake corrected. "And on multiple devices." He turned a camera to the crowd that had gathered, including bankers, press, and influential neighbors. "We made copies."
Someone in the crowd gasped. A woman near the front clutched her handbag, whispers spreading like disrupted perfume. "Ismael," she murmured, "they have him."
Ismael's grin faltered. "Fake," he shouted. "Photoshopped! You set me up!"
I watched him go through his stages — smugness, irritation, denial — as if he were moving through weather. He insisted, "This is theater. An actor was bribed."
A young man in a suit stood. "I recorded him," the man announced, voice shaking only a little. He stepped forward with his phone, the screen blue with recorded messages. "He threatened my cousin."
Another hand went up. Another. People began to speak. "He demanded money." "I saw him take it." "He told me to stay quiet."
"Stop this," Ismael barked, voice brittle. He tried to turn to the staff. "Security!" he called.
"Security?" Drake laughed softly. "You're the one who called their names into the dark. How ironic."
Ismael's face went pale in one fast slide. He stepped back. "You can't prove—"
"You're a bully who trades fear," Drake said. "We have the logs. We have the messages. We have witnesses. This is public, Ismael, because you made cruelty public."
The crowd, now changed, began to shift like a tide. Phones lifted. A man shouted, "Record him! He tried to ruin a girl's life!" Someone else began to clap, small at first, then louder. "Shame!" cried a woman. Cameras clicked.
Ismael's eyes darted. He was shrinking before us, the swagger gone. "No, wait," he begged suddenly, the voice of a star turned to ash. "You don't understand! I didn't—"
"Understand what?" Drake asked, voice soft but dangerous. "That you gambled with a person's life because you thought you could? You used fear. You counted on silence."
"You're lying!" Ismael squealed, the final stage — collapse — hitting like a substance he could not absorb. He dropped to his knees in the bright hall, the marble cool beneath him. His suit crumpled.
"Please," he moaned, "please—"
The cameras found the phone in his coat pocket, and a woman in the front row leaned close enough to spit words. "Beg for her forgiveness, then," she said coldly, and the room's air smelled like salt and judgment.
Ismael begged. He begged for public forgiveness to a woman he had never respected, his voice cracking. He touched my shoe, shame like oil on his palms. "Forgive me," he croaked. "I didn't mean—"
No one obeyed him. People turned away. Some recorded him with pleasure; others watched with eyes that had seen the cost of fear. A few stepped forward to slap his hand away. Children nearby pointed.
"This is not theatrical," Drake said. "This is accountability."
Ismael's tears were real. He had been king of small crimes, and now he knelt exiled in the light of cameras. People whispered, took photos, recorded his fall. His men started to mutter and move, embarrassed to be seen.
"He'd be arrested if people wanted," someone said into a microphone. "But today, we publicly renounce him. We put his threats on record. We will not let fear be commerce."
Ismael's arms were pleading. "Please!"
"No," I said. "No more."
He absorbed my refusal like a physical ache. "Please," he said again, voice raw. He was the embodiment of the stages Drake had predicted: from arrogance to collapse to pleading. The crowd reacted in a chaotic blend: some clapped, some cried, many recorded. Cameras flashed; someone laughed; someone else took photos to send to officials.
Finally, Ismael was escorted away by men whose faces were not his allies. He stumbled, hands still joined as if praying. He kept saying my name like a supplication.
"You wanted spectacle," Drake said later, quietly, as the police presence — finally called by several mobile videos — took statements. "You have it. He wanted to humiliate you; now he's humiliated. And tomorrow he's going to answer for what he did."
"It felt like a nightmare," I admitted, hands trembling.
"You were braver than a thousand speeches," Drake said. "You didn't let him steal your life."
We walked out into a night bright with streetlamps and our own breathing. "Are you okay?" he asked.
"I am," I lied, and then I told the truth. "I'm terrified it will be worse."
"Then we'll face it together," he said.
We did. People approached me for statements, for interviews. Some wanted to paint me as brave, some as lucky, some as "how romance rewrites fate." But when Freya gave me that jade bracelet, the night held another meaning: I had been given a thing to anchor the present.
Back home, Drake and I sat beneath lamp light. "You did well," he said.
"I took money," I said. "I used my worst hour to stop my father's worst hour."
"You did it because you loved him," he said. "And because you refused to be less than who you are."
"Do you love me?" I asked suddenly, small and exposed.
He took my hand. "I do," he said, with the gravity of someone who had decided. "From an odd night's mistake to a lifetime's intention. I want to protect you, not because you're fragile, but because you're fierce."
"Will you always be like this?" I teased.
"I can't promise grand gestures every day," he said. "But I can promise that when it matters, I'll be the hand you reach for."
I slept that night with the jade bracelet against my wrist and his breath in my hair. The next morning I went back to the bakery, to my dough and trays and ovens, and lived both lives with clumsy joy.
"I made a hundred boxes of pastries today," I told Drake one afternoon.
"You always did have energy," he said, proud.
"Do you want to taste?" I offered.
He took one bite and smiled like a child with a secret. "The bakery bought my heart," he said.
The days after that were a thread: work at the bakery, late dinners at Drake's, little fights about how much butter counts as enough, moments when Khloe called and tried to triangulate greed into family, moments when Kori tried to show she cared by bringing gifts that stank of entitlement. I handled them with new armor: the jade bracelet, Drake's hand, the public record of Ismael's fall.
One evening, Freya surprised me again with a small dinner. "You did the bravest thing," she said. "And you kept your dignity."
"I didn't know what else to do," I said. "I was scared, and I was angry, and I was trying to make the pain smaller."
"Pain is not something you owe to others," Freya said. "You owe it to yourself to make it mean something."
I wore the bracelet every day after that. It was a small band of green that warmed and cooled with my skin, a private talisman that spoke of belonging and the past and future braided into one.
Months later, when the press stopped writing and the city stopped watching, Drake still tucked me into bed and asked with sleepy sincerity, "Do you feel safe?"
"I do," I answered, fingers on jade.
He kissed my knuckles. "Good. Because tomorrow I want to take you to the old house where I grew up. I want my grandmother to teach you how to make mooncakes."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a plan," he corrected, smiling.
I laughed. "Okay. I accept the plan."
When we drove to the old house, the Tang ancestral home of his memories — Drake's family called it a 'home' and Freya called it 'ours' — I felt like I had earned a new chapter. People in the village greeted us, and for the first time in my life I stood beside a man who loved me loud enough to bend the world.
"Bethany," Drake said softly as we sat on the old porch, "you turned a terrible night into an honest life. I love you."
"I love you," I returned, and the bracelet tapped like a tiny bell that belonged solely to me.
The jade stayed with me, a quiet witness to a life that had once been only survival but had become, finally, a choice.
The End
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