Chapter 3
Three days had passed since Leo’s breakdown, and I could feel the weight of it crushing us both.
I sat at my desk staring at the numbers I’d scribbled on a napkin.
My savings: $5,000. Leo’s contribution from tips and his small emergency fund: $2,000. Total: $7,000.
We were still thirty-eight thousand dollars short.
Lunchtime at work used to mean scrolling through Instagram and pretending my desk salad was actually satisfying.
Today, it meant diving headfirst into the seventh circle of internet hell, hunting for ways to make forty-five grand appear out of thin air.
I’d already burned through the obvious shit—side jobs that would take three years to pay off Leo’s debt, gig economy apps that required cars I didn’t own, and freelance opportunities that demanded skills I’d never developed because I’d been too busy raising my brother to learn how to code or become a social media influencer.
Selling everything I owned might get me another few thousand, but it wouldn’t even make a dent.
“Come on,” I muttered, scrolling through job boards. “There has to be something.”
Every search led to the same dead ends: scams promising easy money, pyramid schemes disguised as “business opportunities,” and offers that were either too good to be true or required me to sell my soul to some multi-level marketing cult.
Conclusion: there was no legitimate way to make that kind of money in a week.
My browser history was becoming a monument to desperation. Quick cash jobs. Emergency loans no credit check. Ways to make money fast without skills.
Each search is more pathetic than the last. That’s when I stumbled across something that made my stomach drop straight through the office floor.
A forum thread titled “Selling virginity for millions: real or myth?”
My cursor hovered over the link for a full thirty seconds. Part of me wanted to close the laptop and pretend I’d never seen it. The rational part of my brain was screaming to scroll past, find a normal solution, be a normal person with normal problems.
But forty-five thousand dollars wasn’t a normal problem.
I clicked.
The thread was surprisingly detailed, with links to news articles about women who’d made headlines for auctioning their virginity. A model who’d supposedly received over a million dollars, a college student who’d paid off her entire education.
The amounts were staggering. One comment caught my attention: “It’s not just a myth. There are legitimate sites for this. High-end, discrete, safe. Virtue Exchange is the most reputable.”
My hands shook as I typed the name into a new browser window. The website that loaded was nothing like what I’d expected. Sleek, professional, and disturbingly legitimate.
Like someone had taken the concept of human trafficking and given it a Silicon Valley makeover. Women auctioning their virginity for jaw-dropping sums, all under the guise of “empowerment” and “luxury experiences.”
My hands were shaking as I scrolled through profiles of women who looked nothing like me—polished, confident, the kind of people who probably had trust funds and backup plans. But the numbers… fuck, the numbers were real.
Starting bids in the tens of thousands. Completed auctions reaching six figures.
“This is insane,” I whispered to myself, but I kept scrolling.
It was terrifying. Degrading. Absolutely fucking insane and dangerously tempting.
Because here’s the thing nobody tells you about desperation: it makes the impossible seem reasonable. It takes your moral boundaries and relocates them to more convenient zip codes.
All my life, I’d been too busy playing mom to Leo to have relationships. Too focused on survival to waste time on boyfriends or one-night stands. I’d always thought my virginity and inexperience was just another thing that made me different, another way I’d missed out on normal teenage experiences.
Turns out, some rich assholes were willing to pay a premium for that exact thing.
The irony was so twisted it almost made me laugh. My “purity”, which was really just years of having zero time for romance, apparently had market value. Who knew?
As I read through the site, calculating figures in my head, a knot formed in my stomach.
Nothing I’d found so far offered this kind of solution. Nothing else could solve Leo’s problem this quickly, this completely.
And that fact alone made it impossible to look away.
I was so deep in the rabbit hole, so lost in conflicted thoughts about whether I could actually go through with something like this, that I didn’t sense someone behind me until I felt it—a soft breath on my neck, a warm, low voice brushing my ear.
“Having fun at the workplace, Harlow?”
I nearly launched myself into orbit, slamming the laptop shut so hard I probably cracked the screen, spinning around to find Finn Blackwood standing right behind me.
Way too close.
That trademark smirk playing across his lips and a dangerously amused gleam in his eyes. My heart was doing some kind of arrhythmic death dance.
Had he seen what was on my screen? How long had he been standing there?
“Jesus Christ,” I gasped, pressing a hand to my chest. “Do you have some kind of ninja training, or do you just enjoy giving people heart attacks?”
The words were out before my brain caught up with my mouth. Shit. I just swore at my boss. My extremely powerful, could-fire-me-with-a-snap-of-his-fingers boss.
“I mean— Sorry, Mr. Blackwood. You startled me. That was unprofessional from my side.”
“Relax,” Finn said with amusement in his eyes. “I just came to ask if you had those numbers for the Drake account.”
Right. Work. Normal, professional work things that didn’t involve researching how to auction off my virginity to pay my brother’s debt to loan sharks.
“The Drake numbers,” I repeated, trying to get my brain to function. “Right. Yes. I have those.”
But Finn wasn’t moving. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying my flustered state way too much.
“You seem… distracted today,” he said, his voice taking on that playful tone that made my pulse stutter. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I said too quickly. “Everything’s totally fine. Just, you know, working. Doing work things. Very professional work things.”
His smirk widened. “Uh-huh.”
I turned back to my computer, pulling up the Drake files with hands that were definitely not shaking. Definitely not.
I could feel him behind me, still standing too close, his presence like a live wire against my back.
“Here,” I said, printing out the reports and handing them over without looking at him. “Everything you need should be in there.”
Finn accepted the papers with a lazy smile, but his eyes lingered on my face. “You know, Harlow, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been a bad girl, getting distracted at work.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Heat shot straight down my spine, and my thoughts spiraled into parts of my body they absolutely shouldn’t go.
Especially not here. Especially not with my astronomically hot boss.
My cheeks flushed crimson, but I forced my voice to stay steady. “Just focused on getting you what you need.”
“Mm-hmm.” His gaze swept over me once more, that sly smirk lingering as he stepped back. “Thanks for these. Try not to work too hard.”
And then he was gone, leaving me alone with my racing pulse and the lingering scent of his cologne.
For a breathless second—okay, maybe more than a second—I considered it. Considered doing something reckless, something career-ending, just to see what it would feel like to have that man against me, on the desk, near the wall. On me, in me.
But the moment passed. Reality crashed back like ice water.
This was Finn Blackwood. Heir to a music empire, probably had a different supermodel in his bed every night, definitely out of my league in every conceivable way.
What would someone like him want with someone like me anyway? Totally inexperienced, totally ordinary, totally drowning in problems he couldn’t even imagine.
And besides, I had actual problems to solve. Dangerous ones. The kind that involved broken legs and concrete shoes if I didn’t figure out a solution fast.
Leo’s crisis was still looming and the loan sharks’ deadline was still ticking down. Lusting after my boss was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I reopened my laptop, staring at the Virtue Exchange website still glowing on my screen.
Forty-five thousand dollars. Eleven days.
Sometimes the impossible was the only option left.
