Billionaire Romance14 min read
I Burned Once. Now I Purr in His Hands.
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"I can't be your wife," I said, and the room smelled of smoke.
They laughed. Janelle pushed the cup back across the table. "You don't get to choose, Kinsley. You never did."
Tomas stood, his shadow long on the dirt floor. "Tonight. After they leave, we'll finish the vows."
"I won't—" I lifted the bottle I had hidden under the blanket. The bottle was cheap liquor. My hands were steady. I tipped it over my head.
"No!" someone shouted. My voice sounded small even to my own ears.
They all shouted, and Janelle's hand flailed, and the candle in the corner made the alcohol catch faster than I thought. Pain came quick and white. I smiled because the plan had been that simple. The plan had been to end the two lives I had lived and stop the next one from hurting.
"You're stupid," Tomas said, but he backed away. He had always wanted clean hands.
I closed my eyes.
Then I woke to a hand that smelled of soap and iron and money. I opened my eyes and found whiskers. I opened my mouth and 'meow' came out.
"Valentin!" someone laughed. "Who left the cat in my room?"
I thought I would scream, but my throat only made a small sound. Panic rose, sharp and stupid. Then a tall shadow bent down. He had red hair like a flare, and eyes that skimmed me, curious and not cruel.
"Take her to the bed," he told a servant. "And tell my mother to stop bringing animals into my room."
I watched from the bed as strong hands arranged pillows. The hands smelled of soap and olive oil and a hint of spice. When one of those hands moved closer to my head, I braced to bite. Instead he cupped my face and his fingers were gentle. He traced the line under my chin. He did not ask where I came from. He only said, "Poor thing. You must be cold."
I had been burned. I had been sold. I had been a thing who had been given away. I had wanted death. Now I was a cat in a strange house in a city I did not know.
"What's your name?" he asked the cat.
"Kinsley," I wanted to say. My memory of another life had a name in it. The name fit like a bruise.
"Good," he said. He laughed at the sound I made. "Kinsley."
He put me on the couch. He had a soft voice that fit the white noise of rain on the roof. I loved that noise.
Days passed here as a cat and nights were warm. He fed me, fussed at me, made little beds and bought me things that were pink and ridiculous. He called me a pest when I stole a fry, then gave me three more. His mother—Mercedes—spoke in a way that was polite but watchful. His friends tried to be loud in the house and he let them laugh.
One night I woke and the warmth in my chest swelled like a tide. The cat body softened. Claws retracted. I felt bones stretch. I felt pain and then not pain. I lifted my head. A girl looked back at me—white skin, a handful of freckles, hair that tumbled like dark wool. I did not recognize the reflection, but my memories came with it: a burned hut, hands that shoved, a price scrawled on a paper.
Valentin was at the doorway, no shirt, and he froze. His throat moved. "You—"
"I don't know why," I whispered, and my voice was human and small. "I woke up. I was a cat."
He crouched fast. His eyes were very near mine. "Do you remember anything?"
"Enough." I swallowed. "They—my family—sold me. They burned me."
His face went hollow. He swore under his breath. "Stay. I will call someone."
He did not call the police. He sat on the floor and wrapped a towel around my shoulders like a cloak.
"What's your real name?" he asked.
"Kinsley," I said. "I was told I was nineteen."
"You're safe," he said. "I will keep you safe."
I watched him close his eyes for a long time. The house was full of things I had not had in the other life: books, a soft bed, a shower that did not leak, clothes that smelled like a store. I learned the house quickly. I learned the feel of his lap and the angle of his shoulder and the jokes he made with his friends late at night. I learned where the kitchen cat treats were kept and that he liked his coffee black.
"Valentin," I said once, the first week, as I pressed my forehead against his palm. "Why do you keep me?"
He blinked as if surprised. "Because you are here. You are stubborn and soft and when you looked at me last night, it was like something clicked. I didn't feel... sorry or bored. I felt responsible."
"Responsible for a cat," I said.
"For you. For both." He smiled small. "I think you are mine."
He said it like a claim and like a vow, and the words wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
There was something odd. When he did small things—small kindnesses to others, a quiet donation here, a patient phone call to fix a problem—my human form stayed longer. When he did nothing, my time as a human shrank. I learned it like a rule. He called the priest who gave the cat to his mother a "charm" for him. The priest said, "Some things change when the heart is honest." Valentin believed it. I suspected I had a second chance because of him. Or perhaps the world had decided a girl who had not wanted to live deserved a merciful trick.
"Stay close," he said one evening. "Hold my hand when we walk. Do not show yourself naked to others. Do not trust anyone too quick."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you were not safe before," he said. "I will not let that happen again."
So I learned to be careful. I learned to like shoes that were not rubber flip-flops and the way his jacket smelled like cedar. I learned how to eat with him and how to keep secrets under his chin.
"Are you my boyfriend now?" I asked him once, under the dining room light, when the city hummed like a sleeping animal.
He put his fork down like a knight put down a sword. "I think so," he said. "If you will let me."
"I will," I said.
Valentin was not only warm hands and gentle roughness. He had a name. He had money that felt like a current. He had power beyond my burn-scarred world. He also had a past full of holes. At night he told me stories about a dog that had died, about the mother he could not save, about a boy who had been brave and then wounded. I held him and promised a future we would make together.
I paid attention to his charities. He sent money without fanfare. He signed as if it was nothing. When he watched a forum and saw a child's urgent message, he gave without asking. The world shifted: boxes were delivered to shelters; a hospital scheduled a surgery the same night he had signed; a family cried on their phone and called him "angel" in private. And when the good rolled out, my human time stretched.
"Do more," I teased him once. "If you ever stop, I will go back to being a cat."
"I will not stop," he promised. The words tasted of iron—sure, and certain.
He worked. He rebuilt a business that had been in trouble. He got his hands dirty in construction to learn the grooves of the labor. He slept few hours. He took calls with old men who smelled of cigar and oil and cold logic. When his face went flat after a phone call, I would press my forehead to his and say, "Don't let them take you away."
"Who's 'them'?" He'd always answer, "The wolves." He never named them, but sometimes he promised me small revenge for insults. I liked the sound of that promise as much as I liked the gifts he bought.
The present forced me to grow. I wanted to stop being a shadow that found warmth at his feet. I wanted to be able to stand next to him and know the taste of victory and not only the taste of his cooking.
"Teach me," I begged him one night. "Teach me to run your meetings. Teach me to talk. Teach me how to make plans."
He looked at me for a long time. "I will teach you to fight and to take care of me back."
So we made a plan. I practiced reading a stock report. I learned the basics of contracts. I cleaned a construction plan with him in the dust. Sometimes I answered his calls. I learned to say no when a vendor offered a bad deal. I learned how to speak with men who tried to test me with a smile.
Most nights, he still bent to kiss my forehead. Most mornings, he still arranged my breakfast like a ritual. People around us whispered, "He's so changed." His friends mocked and then admired, and the girls who circled us either left with a laugh or stayed and learned to respect the warm anchor I had become.
But memories of that first life never left. I wanted them punished. I wanted Janelle and Tomas and the men who watched while a girl burned to be made small and public. It was not enough for me to be safe. The hurt that had made me choose fire deserved an answer that was more than private.
When I learned authorities in the village still collected bribes and still lied for the rich, I wanted more than money or phone calls. I wanted a scene where the truth could be seen like a bright lamp.
"I will help you," Valentin said when I told him.
"You don't have to," I said. "I can be small. I can forgive."
He shook his head. "No. They hurt you. You were not allowed justice in the place you came from. I will not let it happen again."
Weeks later, we traveled. I watched the miles go by and felt heat under my skin. I wore plain clothes. He wore none of his suits. He told the driver, "Take the back road. We don't want notice."
The village looked smaller when you were not hungry. I walked the roads with a steady heart. When we arrived at the square, flags drifted at half-mast and the smell of ink and fried food hung in the air. The town was in the middle of celebration because Tomas's younger brother—Marshall—was getting married that day. There were at least five hundred people in the square, all invited to the feast.
"Stay with me," Valentin whispered.
"Watch me," I said.
We entered the crowd and all eyes found us because he carried money like a shadow and because I walked with a kind of quiet he forced into me. I felt my old fear rise, but I flattened it with his fingers on my hand.
Tomas was the center of the square in the garland and white shirt. He smiled as if the world was his stage. Janelle looked proud, arms folded, as if I had been the one dirtying their name.
I could have walked away. I almost did. But the law here was pliant; the only justice that moved was public scandal. So I stepped to the front of the square where the ceremony table stood.
"Excuse me," I said, and the man beside Tomas—one of his friends—moved. People laughed; weddings were never quiet.
"Who is this woman?" someone called.
Valentin put a hand on my back. "She should have been on the menu at your table. Instead she is here to tell the truth."
Tomas frowned. "Who are you?"
I raised my chin. "I am Kinsley Calderon. I was sold to your family when I was five. I was to be your daughter's replacement. I was set alight. I died in your house."
A hush like the ocean fell. I saw mouths part. Someone spat. A child began to cry.
Tomas laughed at first, shallow and cruel. "She lies," he said. "Look at her. Who would believe—"
Then Valentin flicked a switch. Screens placed behind the wedding dais burst alive—phones, tablets, a rented LED. A video ran. It was the hut, smoke curling, a girl's hand slipping from a table. The screen showed a crude recording Valentin's team had obtained from a neighbor's camera: Janelle's hand pushing a pan, Tomas's shoulder turning away, the subtle business of men who had decided a girl was worthless.
People gasped. Janelle's laugh died. Her face went the color of old paper.
"Turn it off!" she cried, as if the moving images were a bad dream.
I let the camera show what happened that night: the voice that said she was useless, the bargain, the bottle in my hand, the candle, the shove. It was not pretty. It was true.
"Stop!" Tomas yelled. He pushed through the crowd, not toward me but toward the technician who had set the screen. "This is private. This is a lie."
"You wanted her," Valentin said. He spoke low and dangerous. "You sold her. You told her the price."
"No!" Janelle snapped, but her words caught like a bird in a net. A cousin of theirs, who had once been kind to me in the old life, began to shake. "You can't show this. People—"
"Shut up," I said.
Someone in the crowd lifted a phone. A dozen others followed. The screens multiplied. The footage was recorded in real time and sent online. The square smelled of diesel and fear and frying sugar. The crowd swelled as people who had not been invited leaned from windows and balconies. A dozen phones were up like a jury.
"You're lying," Tomas said again. "You are lying for money."
Valentin stepped forward. "Ask them," he said.
"Ask who?" Tomas spat.
"Everyone here. Did you ever see them grieving a child? Did you see them take in others? Did you see them mourn when a neighbor's daughter went missing?"
An old woman near the front raised a hand. "They never took in anyone. They took what they could sell."
Another man shouted. "They used to brag about what they could do with a dowry."
More cameras. More shouts. People who had once nodded at Janelle in the market began to look at her with naked interest now. Faces unreadable for months turned into faces ready to see truth.
Tomas's smile fell away. He jolted, then turned white. "This is not—"
"Shame," someone called. "Shame!" The crowd took it up. The sound multiplied into a beating.
Janelle's knees went first. She dropped to them in the dirt like a puppet with a cut string.
"Please," she said. Her voice was a thing that had been emptied of performance. "Please, Kinsley, I—"
I had rehearsed nothing. I had a body full of old pain and a throat that had learned to be careful. But I wanted them to fold the way a lie folds. I wanted them to be small and to feel the same slow burn of humiliation I had felt under their hands.
"Get up," I said. "Stand."
She did. Her face was lodged in the color of shame.
"Tell them," Valentin said. He looked at Tomas. He looked at Janelle. "Tell the truth now."
Tomas's jaw worked. He stepped back as if struck. He had built a life on other people's acceptance. Now the market had turned. The shopkeepers who had sold him grain held up their hands. A woman I recognized—she had once bought the shirts Janelle made—leaned forward, tears seeping down.
"Tell them the price," I said.
He glared. "It wasn't a price," he said at first, but the sound cracked. A child in the crowd mimicked his voice, and people laughed—but not kindly.
"She was sold for fifty coins," Janelle whispered. "We thought—"
"We thought we could get grain. We thought—" Tomas added. Each syllable sounded thinner than the last.
The crowd grew louder: "How could you?" "Monsters." Phones recorded every tremor.
"Why didn't you save her?" a man shouted.
"We told her she had to do her duty," Janelle said. "We said it was the way." Her voice had gone brittle. "We didn't think—"
"You didn't think at all," Valentin said. "You watched a girl burn."
"No!" Tomas screamed, and then he covered his mouth. He slid down a pole like a man who had had his feet cut from under him.
People began to step forward. A young man shoved his face toward Janelle and spat. Another posted a video on a social feed. Within minutes the story had spread beyond the square: a wedding video playing, a woman forced, a girl who burned and then came back to name them.
Tomas's knees buckled. He dropped to the ground and cried like a child who had not been taught to own his shame. He curled like someone who had been struck. Janelle clawed at the dirt. The two of them begged.
"Please," they said, the same single prayer repeated in a hundred ways. "Please, Kinsley. Forgive us. We will do anything."
The crowd closed its circle. Phones shimmered. People were not kind. They threw words. They pushed. Someone recorded their pleas, someone else shouted for police. A woman took off her scarf and wrapped the two of them in it, and then pulled it away to reveal both faces to the camera.
"Beg," I told them.
Tomas crawled on all fours to my feet. "Please—" He fell onto his knees in the dirt and pressed his face into my boots like a dog. He was not elegant. He was small and he was broken and the square watched him.
"Forgive us," Janelle begged. She grabbed at my knees and scraped. Tears made tracks through grime. She repeated the words until the words itself had no weight.
People took pictures. Some recorded the kneeling and uploaded them with curses. Children pointed and laughed because adults had taught them to recoil from monsters.
"You will not have my forgiveness for free," I said. My voice did not shake. "You will stand in market square and tell every child who comes to listen what you did. You will work without wages rebuilding houses burned in this region. You will stop the trades you run that sell people. You will give me the names and the money you used to live on. You will give them to the families you hurt."
They stared. Tomas's shoulders shook. "We have nothing!" he cried.
"Then we will take your land," Valentin said. He was quiet and the quiet was a blade. "We will make sure whatever you use to survive is redirected to those you harmed. The city will oversee it. The world will watch."
Janelle pushed up, cross and raw. "You can't—"
"We already have," Valentin said.
There was a man from the city there then; his badge flashed. He had been following Valentin's team. He read the statement that would be placed on the village bulletin board, and on the city's news feed. He read the conditions of the restitution: wages for victims, land reassigned to care for orphaned children, a forced public registry of traffickers for the county. He spoke in slow legal words. The people in power in the square listened. Valentin's people had done their homework.
Tomas's shoulders folded. His voice broke into a ragged prayer of denial and then admission. "We were desperate," he said. "We thought—"
"You thought like every lie you told," I said. "And you burned me when I was five."
Now the crowd was not only angry. The tone had slid from curiosity to a desire for justice. The women who had quietly nodded at Janelle in the market now spat the words "monster." The mayor's assistant stepped forward, phone out.
"You will be charged," she said into the phone. "Interview at the office in twenty minutes."
They had no time left to make a show. They were not small men of substance anymore; they were men with videos and a record and angry neighbors. Tomas's face went pale. For the first time he was a public thing. He would be held where he could not flex his small power anymore.
He fell to the ground and began to thrum out apologies. He begged while people recorded. He whispered to Janelle and she whispered back that perhaps if they pleaded enough someone would take pity. But now pity had been traded for accountability. The crowd wanted to ensure no one else would taste the sort of savage commerce they had run.
I listened to their begging. I let them beg until their voices went hoarse. I let them be small and humbled. I let the village know what had been done.
When the police arrived to take statements, they cuffed Tomas and Janelle in front of the crowd. The handcuffs were cold and visible. They did not take them away to a hidden room. They read the charges aloud: trafficking, attempted murder, arson. Words that had been polite in the paper now sounded like the heat of iron. People took the moment in, recorded the sound, transmitted it.
"You will be charged," the officer said again, and this time no one shouted.
Tomas and Janelle fell to their knees in a new posture—one of pleading, now backed by law. They pressed their forehead into the dirt and said, "Please." The crowd chanted "shame" again, but it had changed. The shame now had teeth. Families who had once been ostracized got the first check in the mail from the county account Valentin had opened in the city's name. I watched one mother fold over and cry as she took the envelope. I watched the men who had watched me burn hang their face in the sunlight for the first time and flinch.
When the soldiers of the law strapped them into a van, there was no glamour to heroism. The crowd cheered and booed in equal measure. Someone threw a shoe. Someone applauded. Their faces were there on phones forever, small and ashamed.
Afterward, children in the square circled and asked me why I had stayed silent for so long.
"Because I was afraid," I said. "Now I'm not."
Valentin held my hand. "You're brave," he said.
"I was lucky," I said. "You made me brave."
We left the village with the sun low and the square behind us still full of voices. The city swallowed us and the car hummed.
"Did it help?" I asked.
He let out the breath I heard every night when he sighed and let the world slow. "It made them pay attention. That is sometimes the only language that will do."
"Will they curse me?" I asked.
"No," he said. "They will tell the story of what happened here. They will ask why we let it happen. People will be angry, and anger will make laws. It will not fix everything, but it will not be forgotten. That is the first step."
We went home. I lived in a world that had been softered by a man who spent his nights making money and his days giving it away. I became a woman who liked bookshops and the smell of wet pavement and the way he called me little pest when I stole fries. I learned how to read contracts and how to speak in meetings. I learned to dress for a boardroom and still to curl in his lap when he came home from a bad call.
We had small fights. We had deep laughs. He made me coffee at dawn and I poured sugar on his breakfast and he said, "You will keep me ordinary." I said, "You will keep me wild."
We married in a small way, not with a ring and a parade but with papers and a promise in the city hall. The press called it a match between a man with money and a girl with mystery, but we knew the truth: it was a pact.
Years later, when I walked past the market where I'd once been sold, I saw a woman in a stall selling cloth. She looked me in the eye and bowed. I remembered the square and the crowd and the ways the world could be brittle and then change.
That night I sat in the kitchen with Valentin. He was tired. He had donated to a charity in the morning, and the hospital had called with a good update. I leaned my head on his shoulder and felt the steady putt of his heartbeat.
"Do you ever want to go back?" he asked softly.
"Back where?" I turned to meet his eyes.
"To the girl who had nothing."
I smiled and kissed his fingers. "I live with her in my bones. She taught me to survive. I don't want to go back to what she had. I want to go forward into what we build."
Valentin brushed a lock of hair from my face and frowned at the small scar on my wrist. "You are mine," he said.
"I am yours," I replied.
We had both been burned in our ways, and we had both been rebuilt by small mercies. We were not perfect. We were not safe. The world was messy and cruel, but sometimes you had a man who would not let you be swallowed again, and sometimes you had the chance to make those who had hurt you small and public to stop them from hiding.
At night, when the house was quiet, sometimes my ears pricked and I felt the old cat urge to curl on his chest. He would laugh and say, "Stop, you cat." And I would purr in the only way I had left, human or not, and feel, at last, like I belonged.
The End
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