“My daughter needs a husband,” he said.
For a second, you thought you had misheard him.
“Sir?”
He did not blink. “You heard me.”
You had seen her once, maybe twice. Vivian Whitmore. Forty-five years old. Big enough that people pretended not to stare while staring anyway. The tabloids in grocery store lines loved women like her, rich women whose bodies made them easy targets for public cruelty. The men on site called her things when they thought nobody important could hear. The unmarried daughter. The recluse. The embarrassment. The heiress nobody wanted. You were ashamed now to remember that sometimes you had kept walking instead of telling them to shut up.
Arthur continued in the same calm voice.
“If you marry her, I will put you in charge of managing twelve apartment buildings in Logan Square and Avondale. You’ll get a salary. A small house. A company truck. Legal help for residency. Enough income to bring your parents here if you choose.”
The room went still around you.
That kind of offer does not feel real when you have spent your life counting bus fare.
It feels like a trap shaped like mercy.
