Billionaire Romance13 min read
"Don't Open the Door" — I Knocked Until My Fist Hurt
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"I told you to open the door!"
I slammed my palm into the heavy gate again and felt the steel bite into my skin.
"Please," I gasped, and the snow filled my voice. "Please, Jordan. I'm dying out here."
The gate cracked open and a poised woman appeared. She wore furs and an expression like a closed vault.
"You shouldn't be here at one in the morning," Katrina Gibson said, and her voice cut colder than the wind. "What are you doing making a scene?"
"I need to see Jordan," I said. "I'm pregnant. I'm about to—" I leaned against the iron rail, every breath a sharp knife. "Please. Let me see him."
Her face pulled like she smelled something sour.
"A baby? What does that have to do with my son?" Katrina said. "Amelia, you were warned. You are not fit for the Andrews family. Go home and hide."
"You can't do this," I said. "Our engagement was real. You promised Jordan and me—"
"Promised?" Katrina's laugh sounded like ice cracking. "Jordan was in the office that night. He wasn't at my party. You were at a party. Countless men were at that party. If you can't tell who the father is, then why drag my son’s name into it?"
"Because he took me to the room." My voice snapped. "He brought me there."
Katrina's smile folded up into something cruel. "Then prove it. Or leave. If I were you, I'd just die quietly and spare us the spectacle."
She barked orders and the servants shoved me back, the iron door slammed in my face, and I felt my stomach strike the metal. Fear and pain burst like a hidden lake.
"My baby!" I screamed into the white night and I staggered away until I found darkness and someone — a stranger with a car — who took me to a hospital. That night carved me open and stitched me into someone else.
Five years later, I hold two small people to my chest and wear exhaustion like a second skin.
"Mom, don't worry. I'm right here," Jayce says. He folds his small hand into mine with the careful gravity of a child who learned early to keep grownups steady.
"Hold Jewel tightly," I tell him. Jewel rests her head against my shoulder and hums like a quiet toy.
We arrive in a city that eats old names and prints new ones on the living. I carry a bag, two children, and an old design sketchbook with pencil smudges that smell like hope.
"We'll be okay," I tell them. "We can do this."
Jayce looks at me with a seriousness that makes my heart shrink and swell at once. "We know, Mom. You always say so."
Later that day, I stand in a crowded waiting area and sort pamphlets with trembling fingers. My nerves steady when someone bumps into me and a file falls.
"Sir!" Jayce says, politely returning a folder. He hands it up like a tiny courier.
The man looks down, surprised for the briefest second, then straightens. He is the kind of man people stop for — tall, sharp, with the sort of face that hurts to look at too long.
"Thank you," he says, in a voice that lands like a command.
An assistant at his side says, "He looks like you, sir."
"Where?" Jayce mutters, annoyed.
"Not at all," the man says and turns to leave.
Those words go into my head and stick there. Who would he be? I don't meet many people with that face.
The next morning, I walk into an interview I didn't expect.
"My name is Amelia," I say, because it is true. "I came for the assistant role."
"You're hired," the man says. "Start tomorrow."
"Really?" I can't keep the surprise out of my voice.
"Yes." He cools like glass, then adds, "Your skills fit a different need. Come to the design team."
I look down and meet the eyes of Donovan Kristensen for the first time. He is every rumor made solid. He moves like an empire.
"I didn't expect this," I say.
"I didn't expect you," he replies. "But I saw your pages."
I sign the contract that afternoon and take my seat at a desk that smells like glossy magazines and new fabric. My children will need doctors and therapy, and this salary will buy both. I think about Jayce's school, about Jewel's small, complicated needs. The doctor said early care matters. I can finally afford that care.
"You're safe here," Flynn Arnold, Donovan's assistant, says with a kindness that feels real. "If you need anything, ask."
A week in, and I almost forget the cold nights. My designs begin to feel like breathing again.
Then jealousy blooms around me like a pestilence.
"How did she get here?" a woman whispers behind her hand. Her name is Liesel Engel and she smiles like it costs nothing. "The assistant from nowhere, picked by a recommendation."
"She has a good sketchbook," another says, Jaida Durand, sharp like a knife. "But the boss handpicked her. Always the same few get promoted."
I nod, choosing not to fight whispers. I keep my head down and my pencil moving.
One afternoon, a glass hits a table inside us all.
"Two months left," Donovan says in a meeting. "Company competition is final."
"We'll be ready," Mico — Veronika Yang — says. "The winner gets a promotion, a feature. This is our season."
I enter the contest on impulse and out of need. A single winning prize could change our life.
"You're entering?" Liesel asks one night in the office. Her tone is friendly enough to sting.
"Yes," I tell her. "Just to see."
"You know it usually takes years," Jaida says. "Design, fabric, fit — two months is a sprint."
"Maybe I run fast," I say.
She laughs, small and mean, and the office becomes a quiet field of eyes.
Weeks grind into drafts. I cut fabric by night, stitch prototypes while child care someone else could have offered sleeps. Jayce studies and cooks, and Jewel learns to hum with the piano toy I bought secondhand and polished until it shone.
Then the contest day arrives and the floor fills with people who live by applause.
I stand backstage and breathe. Liesel goes first. Her piece is sharp, correct, staged.
"Go, Liesel!" I whisper.
She bows and the judges clap.
When my model steps forward, everyone freezes.
"Who made this?" a judge asks.
"It is Amelia Crowley," Mico says. "She will speak."
I speak about work clothes that don't ask women to hide. I talk about fabric that follows life. I tell a story about morning light on a kitchen counter through a child’s fingers.
From the crowd, Liesel trips.
"What is this?" she says, shocked. "This is my concept!"
"No," I say. "That is your dress. This is mine."
"We'll check," someone from the panel says.
"There's a serious overlap," Veronika announces. "We must investigate."
The room holds its breath like the moment before an eye blinks.
Liesel points at me. "She's a thief."
"That is false," I say.
Flynn says nothing, but his eyes watch Donovan.
"Show the footage," Flynn murmurs.
One of our colleagues shoves a phone forward and whispers, "There were cameras in the office; it caught everything."
Jaida goes pale.
"Stop it," Liesel says, voice shaking. "You can't do this!"
"Play it," the director says, and everyone leans in.
On the screen, a quiet loop shows Liesel riffling through my folder while I slept at my desk. She flips sketches into a bag and spills tea, then wipes it like nothing happened. Her hand shakes as she leaves.
"Took a cup and tried to pretend," Jaida says aloud. "I saw it."
Liesel sinks down and the room changes. Her smile is a torn thing now.
"Apologize," Veronika says cold as glass.
The camera ate her bravado and spit it back with evidence. I feel nothing and everything at once: vindication and a hollow rude as hunger.
The judge stands. "Amelia, please accept the win."
I do not remember breathing when Donovan lifts me down from the stage because a steel rack falls — Liesel flings it in desperation — and it hits my leg.
"Move!" someone shouts.
Before I can, Donovan is there. He lifts me, a human hand made of careful safety, and carries me out like a crate.
"You should not hide under your desk," he says, and hands and dental lights make the world feel small. He takes me to the hospital.
"You're hurt," he says at the emergency ward.
"I am fine," I try to move and he stops me.
"You are not," he says, solemn. "This leg needs rest."
"Please," I say. "I have kids."
"I will bring them over," he says. "Stay."
He will not take no. He writes my name in a way that feels like a contract that isn't on paper. He tells Flynn to make arrangements, and the hospital calls a nurse.
"One month," the doctor says. "Keep non-weight-bearing."
Donovan walks me to the car. He is all ivory coat and merciless stare.
"You won the cup," he says. "You also hurt yourself."
"You saved me," I say.
He does not smile; he only says, "My people are not to be kicked."
At his home, he signs papers. He announces, with a narrow face, that the prize will be more than money.
"You shouldn't turn down assistance," he tells me. "You deserve better than that basement."
A week later, I move my children into a new flat Donovan gives me — a clean, sun-flooded three-room apartment near parks and schools. The building smells of new paint and good intentions.
"Is this real?" Jayce asks, voice small and incredulous.
"Yes," I say. "This is real."
We move in and eat chili on paper plates. Jewel is thrilled by the cow-print rug. Jayce makes an old jacket his cape and teaches Jewel to whistle.
Meanwhile, Donovan quietly keeps appearing: the man who once suggested my sketchbook to editors, who pays for therapy appointments, who calls the clinic to extend sessions with Elliot Camp, the child psychologist.
"Elliot is careful," Donovan says once to me, standing at the far edge of my kitchen while I wash a pan. "He will not rush Jewel."
"Thank you," I say. "For helping."
He shrugs a shoulder like a soldier with an extra medal. "Because someone at our company was wronged."
Weeks pass. Jewel begins to hum more. Jayce relaxes. I sleep through the night for the first time in years.
But Donovan does not sleep well.
"You saw her," Elliot says to him one morning in Donovan's office. "You remembered? What did you remember?"
"Flashes," Donovan says. "A big hall. A party. A candle. A white dress. Then dark. I thought the memory belonged to another life."
Elliot studies his friend. "You were hypnotized before, remember? You locked away some memories."
"I need the truth," Donovan says. "Check the networks five years back. Find everyone who attended that party."
"Why?" Elliot asks.
"Because I think she's more important than I thought." Donovan's jaw tightens. "And because my instincts are annoying."
Flynn briefs Donovan the next day. He taps a tablet and his thumbs fly.
"Jordan Andrade?" Flynn says. "He had business with the Gibson family then."
"Pull everything tied to them," Donovan says. "Every guest list. Every photo."
Flynn nods like a soldier.
In the background, Jordan and his wife — Melanie Kraemer — attempt to keep their lives perfect. They organize meetings and slip into five-star restaurants and smile like nothing ever happened.
But secrets have a way of being seen.
Donovan orders the security teams to comb the footage from the hotel five years ago. He pushes and pushes until a single, shaky clip surfaces, grainy and brief.
"Play," he tells Flynn, voice low.
On a windy frame, I am there: the dress, the party, the lights. A man speaks to me. The clip blinks — a hand. There is no clear face until the camera tilts. For the tiniest moment, the back of a man's head, his collar, his posture — it is Donovan.
The blood leaves my face.
"It can't be," I whisper to myself. "Not him."
But I had blurred nights. I had names thrown like stones. I had been young and trusting. I had never expected that the man whose face was on morning papers and in my hospital room could have been there. I had long ago made a choice to move forward, not backward.
When Donovan realizes, he does not explode. He becomes a still thing, like a knife waiting to cut.
"Bring me everything on Katrina Gibson and Jordan Andrade," he orders. "Every contact. Every bank record. And get me DNA consent forms for the children."
Donovan is methodical. He does not want a messy, dramatic reveal. He wants proof.
He gets a lab, and Jayce squeezes my hand as a nurse swabs his cheek. Jewel holds a stuffed rabbit and hums. Both returns come back the same day.
"Positive," Flynn says. "Donovan, it's positive."
"Both of them?" Donovan looks like a man who has seen a threat and a salvation at once.
"Yes."
My stomach drops like an elevator. I have the oddest sense of everything closing and opening at the same time.
"You are their father," Flynn says quietly. "You can say something."
Donovan rubs his thumb over his lips, a private gesture I've seen only twice: once when he was angry, once when he thought something bitter. He says, "I will handle this carefully."
He does not handle it by storm. He handles it by law and press and silence. He calls a meeting and sends documents to lawyers.
Katrina Gibson's position begins to wobble. The power of a family backed by money is less steady when the truth comes in paperwork.
"Leave my family alone," Katrina says to me once when she barges into my new dining room. "And stop claiming what isn't yours."
"Stop pretending you did no wrong that night," I reply. "You and Jordan couldn't even be honest then."
"Don't you dare accuse Jordan," she spits. "He would never—"
"Prove it," Donovan says, stepping into the room for the first time. He stands like a statue between us, and the air in the room changes. "Jordan, come forward."
Jordan Andrade stammers and cannot find footing. He is not used to being called to account.
In a press conference arranged with Donovan's lawyers, evidence is presented. The grainy tape, the hotel staff testimonies, bank transfers for hush money — a handful of things Katrina tried to hide. The assembled press watches as Jordan's name becomes not the shield he expected but a scar.
"Jordan," Donovan says plainly. "Were you there that night?"
Jordan falters. "I— I was in the same hotel."
"Did you sleep with Amelia Crowley?"
Silence curls heavy. Jordan's wife looks like she swallowed a stone.
"Yes," Jordan says finally, his voice thin. "But I thought—things were different back then."
"What part of 'different' justified denying the mother of your children?" Donovan asks. "What part justified hiding and lying?"
Katrina's face breaks down on camera. She had wanted to protect her son. Instead, she is exposed for the lies she wove.
The city watches. Social feeds run with the story. The headlines that once sought to shame me now point at a family that could not keep quiet.
Liesel and the others at the company offer me apologies, small and awkward. Liesel cannot look me in the eye. Veronika watches Donovan and tilts her head, amused and approving.
Donovan does something the papers never expected: he announces he will legally acknowledge Jayce and Jewel as his children and will provide custody terms that center on me as well.
"I want them in my life," he says in a statement. "I will do right by them."
I look at Jayce and his small, stubborn heart, at Jewel sleeping with a pressed rabbit. They are mine to keep. This man, who once held me as if I might shatter and who now offers a life with resources and protection, is also the father of my children.
"Why didn't you say anything?" I ask him one afternoon when the world slows and a piano plays downstairs as Jewel hums along.
"I couldn't," he says simply. "I was broken. I had my memory sealed. When I came back, I was empty. I wanted to understand without using others to dredge pain. I have tried to find the truth since."
"Why now?" I whisper.
"Because I saw Jayce," he says. "I saw him and I felt a thread pull. The memory tugged and then ripped open when I saw you. I couldn't leave it to rumor."
Jayce looks like him — the same stubborn chin, the same narrow eyes when he scowls. Jewel has my mouth and a softness Donovan is learning to treasure.
The city watches us as a family built from rubble, but Donovan and I have little interest in an audience. We arrange therapy for Jewel with Elliot, we set up schedules, and we build a life that our children can touch.
I am still small and angry when I think of Jordan and Katrina. I go to the hearing, and I speak.
"You tried to erase me," I say in court. "You tried to make me less than a mother. You shut doors and smoothed lies. But my children are not lesser for being born. They are living proof of what you hid."
Katrina sits like someone forced to watch the sun fall.
The judge rules against the Andrews family in part. Jordan is ordered to provide financial support and his future business ties are scrutinized. Katrina's prestige frays. The city's whispers turn to a steady hum, and then to a memory.
Donovan does not have to fight courts alone. He uses the power of his office without cruelty. He ensures our privacy and our rights. He meets my parents' ghosts with quiet dignity. He holds Jayce when nightmares come.
"You're very angry sometimes," he says once at midnight, when the children finally sleep. He watches me as if my face is a map he wants to read.
"I won't let them hurt us again," I say.
"And you won't have to," he says. "Not without me."
Time threads forward. Jewel improves under Elliot and a small piano teacher. She hums simple scales and laughs at wrong notes. Jayce grows like a small tree — stubborn, steady, a man of twelve numbers and a head full of how-to lists.
At work, I become Donovan's assistant in a meaningful way. I design. I propose. I talk fabrics and trims and durability. I watch him in boardrooms and see the man who always looked like an empire soften where the kids bolt his fingers together.
One evening, after a meeting, he stops and looks at me in a way that is not just a question.
"Will you be my partner?" he asks, so simply my heart trips.
"In what way?" I ask, the old fear poking a finger into my chest.
"In every way," he says. "Not just at work. Not just for the kids. Will you let me be part of the life you hold so tight?"
Jayce pops around the door and grins. "Dad will be good at tying ties."
"Don't give him tips, Jayce," I say, and the room lightens.
I am careful. I say, "You hurt me once, Donovan. You were absent when I needed someone to stand and take blame."
"I know," he says. "And I will not take that back. I can't go back. But I can walk forward beside you."
The final chapter is not fireworks. It is small: a piano lesson where Jewel presses her first scale, Jayce helping with homework, Donovan teaching Jayce to knot a tie with the patience of a monk. It is Donovan standing up to the Andrews at a charity gala and insisting on truth. It is me, wearing an old coat, standing in the company garden while the children's laughter floats like music.
"Do you remember anything else?" I ask him once, finally, about the night that made our lives tangle.
He opens his mouth and then closes it. "Only pieces," he says. "And the biggest piece I remember is you."
I laugh, and it's a small thing like a spill of sunlight.
"Then that's enough," I say. "We don't need more to be together."
He bends and kisses my forehead, a gentle command.
"That's mine to protect," he murmurs, and the promise is both a vow and a shelter.
We do not fix everything overnight. There are court files, visits, days when the past knocks loud at the door. There are nights when I wake and count the hours like coins. But we build a nest of small protections: piano lessons, school plays, doctor's appointments, Donovan at the hospital holding my hand while Jewel receives therapy.
Once, when I peek at Donovan sleeping, a scar crosses his forearm where old decisions were made, and I see his face without the empire mask. He is simply a man with a name and a regret and hands that know how to hold two children steady.
We finish the year with a quiet scene that belonged to this story alone.
"Jayce," Donovan says in the living room where lights are low and snow blurs like white paint. "Teach me the game you made. I want to know how you think."
Jayce beams and takes a small paper airplane. He folds it slowly and shows Donovan the crease.
"First, fold along here," he instructs.
Donovan imitates, clumsy at first. Jewel giggles and Donovan gently corrects his fingers. He listens like he's learning a rare language.
I stand at the doorway, watching them, and something settles like a soft hand over my chest. The city will talk. The past will try to make us small. But here, in this apartment with a piano and two children and a man whose name is on bills and promises and a page in my life I never expected to open — here, we are building something that looks like a family.
"Don't ever let anyone mess with my people," Donovan says, looking at me in a way that isn't one for the cameras.
"They're mine too," I reply.
"And that's why," he says, "we're careful."
I tie my own small knot of courage and grin. "Then let's be careful together."
Jayce launches a paper plane. It sails into the television and flutters to the rug.
Jewel claps.
Donovan and I both laugh, and for the first time in a long while, my laugh is steady and warm.
We are a mess of history and promise. We are real. We are more than the sum of the nights that tried to define us.
And when Donovan folds the last plane and hands it to Jewel, whispering how to launch it into the sky, I know our story will never be a simple headline again.
It will be the small, stubborn kind that lasts.
The End
— Thank you for reading —