To say you’d been dealt a shitty hand would be the understatement of the century. Your parents died in a car crash when you were fifteen, leaving you as the sole provider to your two much younger siblings. Needless to say, you did what had to be done to make sure they went to bed with full bellies. At great personal cost to yourself.

You’d stopped counting the years that you’d been in this line of work. Being a prostitute at a whore house was not something you were proud of, but it paid the bills… barely.

Simon was a retired army lieutenant. He had amassed a decent amount of money. When he retired, he invested and bought properties for passive income. He married a woman he’d been seeing on and off, deciding it was time to settle. He was frugal and never really indulged her expensive taste.

On a nightly walk through the shady part of town, he was drawn towards the sound of a commotion. There he sees you, scantily dressed and getting beaten within an inch of your life. Your pimp discovered you’d been hoarding a cut of your earnings, trying to save up for good winter coats for your siblings.

You don’t remember much from that night, but you woke up in a plush bed that wasn’t yours. Simon explained what happened, leaving out if your pimp was still breathing or not. He nursed you back to health for the next week. And that’s truly all it took for him to fall under your spell.

The two of you confided in each other, confessing traumas and hardships. He’s never felt so seen. And so he filed for divorce. He bought the house just next door for you and your siblings. He paid for you to go to college with the promise to provide the same to your siblings.

You close your laptop after class and look at the time. The governess is at your house, homeschooling your siblings. You think having a governess is outdated, but Simon insisted. His heavy footsteps come into his dining room. “All done with class, love?” he asks gently, hand resting on the back of your neck and kiss planted on the crown of your head.