Marry Me for 6 Months, Then Leave, the Billionaire Told the Single Dad — Then Everything Changed
Part 1:
She was worth $4 billion. He drove a moving truck for a living. She handed him a contract that would change everything. He almost threw it back in her face. “Marry me for 6 months,” the billionaire said, standing in her dead father’s mansion, surrounded by boxes he was paid to pack. “I’ll give you enough money that your daughter never struggles again.
” Ethan Walker stared at the woman who could buy his entire neighborhood and never feel it. He should have said no. He didn’t. The morning Ethan Walker’s life changed forever. He was 45 minutes behind schedule. His left tail light was out, and his daughter had cried herself back to sleep at 5:00 a.m.
because she’d had the dream again, the one about her mother. He stood in the kitchen of their rental house in Milbrook, New Jersey, drinking coffee that had gone cold before he’d remembered to drink it, staring at the crayon drawing Lily had taped to the refrigerator two weeks ago. A woman with yellow hair, a man in a blue shirt, a little girl between them, arms stretched wide, touching both of them at once.
Lily had written family underneath it in her careful, uneven handwriting. She was 6 years old and still working out where the letters went. Ethan looked at the drawing for a long time. Then he poured the cold coffee down the sink, picked up his keys, and went to work. Walker and son’s moving company was neither much of a company nor did it have multiple sons.
It was Ethan and two guys. Marcus, who was 24 and strong as a draft horse, and Pete, who was 51 and moved slower than he used to, but knew how to pack a piano better than anyone Ethan had ever met. The Anne’s sons, part of the name, had been his father’s optimism back when Ethan was 16 and helping load furniture on weekends back when his father believed this little operation was going to be something.
His father had been dead for 8 years. The company was still small, and Ethan had stopped correcting people when they asked if he had brothers in the business. “Big job today,” Marcus said when Ethan pulled up to the yard. He was leaning against the truck, eating a breakfast sandwich with the wrapper barely off. The Sterling estate. I know.
Ethan had read the intake form three times. Sterling, as in Richard Sterling, who had died six weeks ago, and whose obituary had run in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and probably every business publication in the country, as in the man who had built Sterling Capital from a regional firm into a global investment corporation worth, depending on which article you read, somewhere between 6 and 9 billion.
“You nervous?” Marcus asked, “About packing boxes?” about packing rich people’s boxes. Rich people’s stuff breaks the same way, Ethan said. Let’s go. The Sterling Estate sat on 11 acres in Westfield. Ethan had driven past the gates before. Most people in the county knew the property, the way you know certain landmarks without ever expecting to go through them.
Iron Gates, a driveway that curved out of sight. Trees so old and thick they made the whole place feel like it belonged to a different century. A lawyer named Gerald Hol met them at the front door. He was thin, precise, and had the careful energy of a man who build by the hour and resented every minute of small talk.
“The family has requested that all items be cataloged before packing,” he said, handing Ethan a clipboard with a 12-page itemization list. “Nothing leaves the property without being checked against this list. Some items are being transferred to storage. Others are being donated to specific institutions. The labels will indicate which is which. Got it.
Ethan said. Miss Sterling may be on the premises. She’s requested that you proceed with the work regardless of her presence. She won’t be in your way. Okay. Holt looked at him for a moment as if expecting something else, then nodded once and walked away. Marcus leaned over and looked at the itemization list. There are antiques on here with insurance values and six figures.
Don’t drop anything, Ethan said. Bro, don’t say that. Um, they started in the library. It was a real library, not a room with a bookshelf, but a full two-story room with a rolling ladder on a track, floor to ceiling shelves, and a reading chair positioned near the window that still held the shape of the man who’d spent years sitting in it.
There were thousands of books, first editions behind glass, framed letters, a desk that probably cost more than Ethan’s truck. Pete whistled softly when they walked in. “Take your time,” Ethan said. “Careful with everything.” He started at the far end of the room, checking titles against the list, beginning to wrap the more fragile items in tissue.
“The work was methodical and quiet, which he liked. Moving work at its best was like that, a puzzle of space and weight and care, the satisfaction of protecting something valuable enough to matter to someone. He was halfway up the rolling ladder, reaching for a framed document on the upper shelf when he heard footsteps behind him.
That’s his Princeton diploma. He turned too fast. The ladder swayed. He grabbed the shelf with one hand and managed not to fall, but the diploma tilted and he caught it with his other hand in a motion that was more luck than skill. When he looked down, a woman was standing at the base of the ladder, watching him with an expression that was difficult to read, dark hair pulled back, no makeup or very little.
She was wearing a plain black sweater and dark jeans, and for a moment, just a moment, she looked so ordinary that he forgot who she was. Then he remembered the name on the contract. Victoria Sterling. Sorry, he said. You startled me. You almost dropped it. But I didn’t. Something shifted in her expression. Not quite a smile. No, you didn’t.
She paused. Can you hand it down? He climbed down carefully, holding the diploma, and passed it to her. She took it with both hands and looked at it for a moment, not reading it, just holding it. Her father’s name in the elaborate script of an old institution, Richard James Sterling. He was proud of this.
She said more than anything else he ever achieved. I think he grew up without much. The first person in his family to finish college, she said it matterof factly, without sentiment. The way people talk about things they’ve carried long enough that the weight has become normal. Where should I put it? Ethan asked. Storage box 12.
She said it carefully on the table and looked up at him. You’re the owner, Walker. Yes. Gerald said you came recommended that you handled the Harrington estate last spring. We did. They had a Steinway. We got it out without a scratch. She studied him for a moment in the direct unhurrieded way of someone who was used to evaluating people quickly and accurately.
It didn’t make him uncomfortable exactly, just aware. Good, she said, and walked out of the library. They worked through the morning. Victoria Sterling moved through the house at unpredictable intervals. Sometimes sitting in a room while they worked around her, sometimes disappearing for an hour, sometimes standing in a doorway, watching them pack her father’s things with that same unreadable look.
At noon, a woman came in with sandwiches and left them in the kitchen without a word. Ethan, Marcus, and Pete ate standing up. “She’s watching us,” Marcus said quietly. “She’s watching her father’s stuff,” Ethan said. “Same difference.” Pete unwrapped his sandwich. “Woman like that loses her father. She’s also losing everything that reminds her of him.
We’re packing away her whole past. Of course, she’s watching.” They were quiet for a minute. “That’s surprisingly perceptive,” Marcus said. “I’m 51,” Pete said. I’ve moved a lot of grieving families. Oh. The afternoon brought them to the study on the second floor. It was smaller than the library, more personal.
A room that felt like it had actually been used rather than displayed. The desk here was scratched at one corner. There were sticky notes still on the monitor, handwritten. A coffee ring on the desk pad that hadn’t been cleaned up, probably because no one had the heart to erase it. Ethan was cataloging the contents of the desk when Victoria came in again.
The top drawer is locked, she said. I have the key. She set a small brass key on the desk. There’s a letter in there in a sealed envelope. It has my name on it. I’d appreciate it if you could set it aside rather than packing it. Of course. He unlocked the drawer. Inside, along with some pens and a small notebook, was an envelope. Victoria, written in the cramped, deliberate handwriting of an old man who’d spent his life writing things by hand.
He set it on the corner of the desk and relocked the drawer. Victoria picked up the envelope, didn’t open it, just held it, standing by the window, and Ethan could see in her profile the kind of stillness that happens when someone is working very hard not to feel something in front of a stranger. He went back to cataloging.
