Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss
“We’re friends,” I said, voice barely steady.
Aaron’s lips curled, slow and cruel. “No, we’re not.”
“Friendship’s too pure for this.”
His hand slid to my waist, hot and claiming as he yanked me flush against him.
“Do friends kiss like this?”
He kissed me. Hard. Possessive.
“Or grab each other like this?”
A squeeze to my ass. A gasp.
“Or think filthy little thoughts?”
His breath burned against my ear. “Touch themselves to it?”
My cheeks flamed. My body betrayed me.
“Stop lying, Venus.”
His voice was a growl.
“I feel it. Every time I’m near you.”
I whispered, “But you don’t even like me.”
His smile was pure sin.
“I don’t have to like you to fuck you.”
Then the offer:
“Let’s get it out of our system. No lies. No strings. Just truth.”
He grabbed my chin, eyes lit with hunger.
“Say the word, princess.”
A whisper against my lips—
“I’ll ruin you.”
And God help me…
I wanted him to.
---------
Aaron Sinclair needs a bride to claim his inheritance. Venus Carter needs a miracle to save her dying mother. What begins as a cold contract marriage spirals into a dangerous game of buried trauma, stolen identities, and forbidden attachment. He’s ruthless, closed off, and refuses to love. She’s resilient, lost, and refuses to stay unloved.
But when secrets unravel revealing a stolen childhood, a tragic past, and a vengeful stepmother, their fake marriage is the only thing standing between them and destruction.
In a world ruled by power and silence, will love dare to speak first or break them both instead?
Baca
Chapter: Chapter 39VENUSThe drive home was quiet.Not the sharp, suffocating quiet that follows an argument. Not the kind that dares you to speak first. This silence didn’t ask for anything at all. It simply existed, settled between us like something already agreed upon.The tires whispered against asphalt. The city blurred past the tinted windows, distant and irrelevant. George sat beside me, small hands folded in his lap, eyes trained on the passing shapes outside. He wasn’t asleep, just withdrawn, like he’d tucked himself somewhere safe inside his own head.Aaron sat in the front passenger seat.Not beside me.But not far, either.He hadn’t looked back since we left the clinic.That was the first thing I noticed.Not anger. Not withdrawal. Just… distance. “Let’s tighten the formation once we hit the bridge,” Aaron said calmly. “I don’t want any lane drift.”The driver acknowledged.Aaron’s voice was steady. Controlled. The same tone he used in boardrooms and crisis rooms—measured, deliberate, caref
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-01-03
Chapter: Chapter 38AARONI didn’t follow her.That was the first fracture.I stood there in the hallway, long after Venus disappeared into the therapy room, long after the sound of George’s laughter softened into the therapist’s calm cadence. Long after the door clicked shut and sealed me out of my own family.I stood there because moving felt like choosing the wrong future.My chest was tight in that way I recognized too well—the pressure that came when instinct and restraint collided. When every part of me wanted to act, to intervene, to fix, but I’d learned the hard way that force only made certain kinds of wounds fester.“You don’t know what you’re doing anymore.”I’d said it quietly. Carefully. She’d smiled.That was the moment something in me went cold.Not because of the words that followed. Those were sharp, yes—barbed and precise—but words were weapons Venus had always known how to wield. No, it was the smile that did it. The controlled one. The deliberate one. The smile she used when she’d al
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-01-03
Chapter: Chapter 37VENUS“Where were you?”I stopped a step short of him and let the pause stretch. Not too long, just enough to make it deliberate. Let him feel it.“Bathroom,” I said.Flat. Boring. A closed door.Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “That took longer than five minutes.”“Did you time me?” I asked mildly. The kind of tone that dares someone to make a mistake.Inside the room, George was already seated at the low table with the therapist, crayons scattered across the surface like spilled candy. The door remained open, a thin barrier between safety and fracture.Aaron shifted, angling his body so he blocked my line of sight to the hallway. His voice dropped.“You don’t disappear in places like this,” he said. “You know that.”I shrugged and made to step past him toward the doorway.He caught my arm.Not rough. Not aggressive. Just firm enough to stop me.“That’s not optional,” he added.Something sharp twisted in my chest. I looked down at his hand, then slowly back up at his face.“Let go,” I said.H
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-21
Chapter: Chapter 36VENUSThe clinic rose before us like a block of clean intentions—glass, steel, pale stone—all polished to reassure. Sunlight bounced off the façade and into my eyes as the convoy slowed. Security fanned out, earpieces buzzing faintly, the world rearranging itself around us.George squeezed my hand as we stepped inside.“I don’t like the smell,” he whispered.“I know,” I said, smiling down at him. “Hospitals and clinics always smell like… rules.”He let out a small, nervous laugh, tension easing just a fraction. Aaron walked on George’s other side, shoulder brushing mine in the narrow entryway. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t need to. I could feel the rigid heat of him there—alert, wound tight, ready to pounce.The lobby hummed with quiet activity: soft voices, rubber soles against tile, a wall-mounted screen looping a video about coping skills. The words slid past me. I didn’t need them.Check-in complete. Names confirmed, appointments verified. Security spread out again: two men drifted
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-18
Chapter: Chapter 35VENUSThe hallway released me into the dining area like a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.Morning light poured in through the tall windows, pale and deceptively gentle, illuminating a scene that belonged to a life I barely recognized anymore. The long table gleamed, perfectly set. Plates arranged with careful symmetry. Silverware aligned just so. A version of normal so meticulously maintained it almost passed for real.Almost.Rosemary sat at the head of the table, angled toward Sabine, who was strapped into her high chair, a bib already smudged from a half-finished attempt at breakfast. Rosemary held a spoon midair, her expression patient but strained as she tried to coax another bite past Sabine’s stubborn lips.“Just one more, sweetheart,” she murmured. “For me.”Sabine turned her head sharply, lips pressed tight—unmistakably Sinclair. Her dark eyes flicked to me the moment I entered the room, lighting up.“Mama.”George sat farther down the table, his plate untouched. A pi
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-17
Chapter: CMWMBB 34VENUSMy phone vibrated on the countertop.The sound was small. Ordinary.I froze, water still pouring over my shoulders, breath snagging halfway through an inhale. For one irrational second, I considered leaving it there, letting it buzz until the battery died, pretending ignorance could still protect me.But Andrea didn’t do maybes.I shut the water off and reached for the towel, wrapping it tight as I stepped out of the shower. Cold tile bit into my feet, grounding me just enough to move. In the mirror, a woman stared back. She was calm, composed and in control.She was a liar.I picked up the phone.One message lit the screen.>Can’t lie—you put on a good show. Didn’t think you had it in you.My stomach hollowed out.Not fear.Confirmation.Clarity settled in with sickening precision. Andrea hadn’t guessed. She hadn’t assumed. She knew exactly how last night had gone.Which meant one thing.I wasn’t alone.Either the house was bugged—listening devices tucked into vents, cameras hi
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-15
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-eight: The Sea That Remembered Her Name Damien didn’t move for a long moment after she spoke.I want to leave Italy.The words hung between them like a blade suspended by a single hair.Amara’s breathing had steadied, but only barely. Her chest still rose too fast. Her fingers still twitched from aftershocks. The kitchen still smelled faintly of cold marble, sea wind, and her fear.She hated that he’d seen her like this again. Hated that Italy had dragged her back into a nightmare she’d buried with grit and therapy and oceans of distance.But more than that—She hated how gently he still held her, as if some part of him remembered exactly how to keep her from breaking.Damien finally spoke, voice low.“Not tonight.”It wasn’t a refusal.It wasn’t acceptance.It was a delay.Amara stiffened in his arms.“Let me go,” she murmured.He did. Instantly. As if her skin had burned him.She pushed herself to sit upright, back against the cabinet. Damien stayed crouched in front of her, but now there was distance. Space for dignity.
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-11
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-seven: THE NIGHT ITALY OPENED OLD WOUNDSItaly didn’t sleep.Not really.And neither did Amara.She sat on the edge of the guest bed hours after storming out of Damien’s study, staring at the open balcony doors where the moonlight washed the marble floor in cold silver. The same room she once healed in. The same room she once broke in.The same room where she learned to breathe again after almost drowning.It should’ve felt safe.Instead it felt like a ribcage tightening around her.Tomorrow she would leave.She didn’t decide it—she knew it, like knowing the tide would return.Amara would go back to the Amalfi hills, to the mansion where Ethan had kissed her, lied to her, and shoved her off a cliff like she was disposable weight.She would search the place herself.Maybe she wouldn’t find proof of her attempted murder—not after a year.Maybe she wouldn’t find anything tying Sienna to Milo’s death.Maybe everything had already been cleaned, erased, scrubbed with bleach and Cade money.Fine.Then she’d look for something else.
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-12-10
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-six: The Man Behind The Quiet The Rhys estate swallowed sound the way the ocean swallowed secrets—completely.Once the doors shut behind them, the villa’s interior felt colder, darker, almost monastic. High ceilings. Stone walls. Shadows that moved as if they had their own breath.Damien walked ahead of her without asking if she would follow.Amara followed without asking why.A strange symmetry, for two people who shared nothing but a growing ledger of silent debts.He led her into a vast study lit by low amber lamps. Books lined the walls. Old maps. A fireplace with dying embers. A room built for power—and for hiding it.Damien turned to her slowly.“Ask,” he said. Not inviting. Not warning.Just… accepting inevitability.Amara stepped closer, chin high, grief buried under iron.“Who are you, Damien?”He didn’t answer.Not with words.Not with a shift of expression.Not even with a tell-tale flicker in his eyes.He simply watched her—like a man waiting to see how much of herself she was willing to spill to get a
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-11-21
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-five: Ashes Don't Lie ITALY Italy breathed differently.Not like California's sharp glass-and-steel lungs, nor Cade City’s greedy metallic rhythm.Italy breathed slowly. Deeply. Like a land that had seen too much and decided to carry its grief with elegance.The jet touched down at a private airfield outside Salerno. When Amara stepped out, dusk kissed her skin, warm and orange, carrying the faint scent of sea salt and old stone. But she didn’t stop to inhale. Didn’t lift her face to the sun.Grief did not allow indulgence.She walked past the waiting car without a word. The driver scrambled to open the back door, but Amara slid into the front seat instead, eyes fixed straight ahead, voice low and clipped—deadly in its composure.“To the cemetery.”Those three words turned the air inside the car grave-cold.The drive took thirty minutes. Amara didn’t speak once. Not when the coastline appeared in glittering strokes. Not when they passed lemon groves glowing gold. Not when they cut through the narrow ancie
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-11-19
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-four: The Wolves Start Running Ethan Cade did not drink coffee.He consumed it.Like ammunition.Shot after shot.Cup after cup.And tonight, his desk was littered with the husks—porcelain soldiers slain in battle—evidence of the war he had been fighting for hours without pause.The skyline outside his office windows bled gold into midnight, skyscrapers gleaming like polished blades. The Cade Enterprises tower stood tallest, proudest, its crown touching the sky like it owned the damn hemisphere.Tonight, though, ownership felt… negotiable.He’d been pacing for nearly three hours, one hand buried in his hair, the other holding the remnants of yet another cappuccino he didn’t remember finishing. His usually flawless shirt was wrinkled, sleeves shoved past his elbows, tie discarded entirely.His empire was bleeding.Barely.But bleeding all the same.And that was unacceptable.Completely. Absolutely. Violently unacceptable.Ethan halted mid-stride, eyes darting across the scattered reports on his desk—projections, los
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-11-17
Chapter: Chapter Thirty-three: coffee, secrets and ghosts II The silence between them thickened, humming like a struck wire. For the first time since she walked into the café, Amara—Elara—felt the ground tilt underneath her. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even shock. It was that old, sour taste of a life she had buried with her own hands trying to claw its way back up through the dirt. Daelan waited until her fingers stopped digging into her palms before he finally spoke. “I need a favor,” he said quietly. The word favor tasted wrong coming from him. From her little experience with him, she knew he wasn’t a man who asked for things. He extracted them. Strategized them. Bent circumstances until they surrendered. Hearing him ask… it set off alarms. Amara raised her chin, expression cold again. “You’re going to have to try harder than blackmail-by-name, Daelan.” “It’s about Damien.” Her brows twitched, just barely. She sat back, arms folding, irritation cutting clean through the lingering shock. “Oh please. I don’t know him. You said it yours
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-11-16
Chapter: Chapter 128EMILIOThe report comes in just after two a.m.—short, frantic, and laced with fear.She’s alive.Of course she is.I sip my coffee slowly, the bitter liquid grounding me in the stillness of my hotel room. The lights are off, except for the eerie blue flicker of monitors in front of me—security feeds, social media threads, encrypted messages looping in real time. All eyes on Morretti’s estate, and none of them mine. Not directly.The man I sent wasn't supposed to kill her. That was never the plan. Death is final. It ends things. And I'm not interested in endings. Not yet.He was meant to scare her. Shake her. Remind her that she isn’t untouchable, no matter how many armed guards Luca wraps her in. Just a ghost in the night, a whisper of threat she’d carry with her into the altar.But the idiot panicked. Let his hand slip. Collateral damage, they’d call it. A shallow stab wound that could’ve been deeper, blood spilled that wasn’t meant to be spilled. Unfortunate, y
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-10
Chapter: Chapter 127ISADORA The estate’s marble floors gave way to dewy grass, soft beneath my bare feet but too cold, too damp—like even the earth wanted to warn me off. The night air hit sharp, slicing through the silk of my gown and skin like a blade dipped in memory.I needed to breathe. But all I could do was burn.My fingers shook. My chest felt too tight to hold air. So I went to the only place that had ever felt real here—the garden.Fairy lights still shimmered in the trees, soft and gold, like they hadn’t witnessed death wrapped in photo paper hours ago.Near the fountain, Laura and Rafael stood close—too close. Their heads bent toward each other like a secret was dangling between their lips.Laura saw me first. Her mouth parted, eyes wide. Rafael’s jaw tensed. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t give them the dignity of a nod, not even a glare. I walked past them like smoke—drifting, shapeless, done with being held.I collapsed into one of the garden chairs. Cold iron met my spi
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-10
Chapter: Chapter 126LUCAShe looked like vengeance dressed in silk. Wrath with a pulse. My bride, my ruin, standing there in the golden light of dawn like she'd been forged in it.And I’d done this.I’d let her find it.Not because I wanted her to hurt—God, never that—but because I underestimated the one thing I should’ve worshipped from the beginning: her will.“You weren’t supposed to see that photo,” I’d said like a damn fool.And she shot back, “Yeah? Well, I did. And now I want the truth.”Of course she did.Isadora never begged for peace.She took it.Or burned the world down trying.I stepped forward, but she held her ground like a queen on her battlefield. No flinch. No fear. Her eyes were wild, red-rimmed, furious—and alive.“You want the truth?” I asked quietly. “Fine. I’ll give it to you, Princess. But once I do, there’s no crawling back into the dark. There’s no pretending you can unsee any of it.”Her voice didn’t waver. “I’m not the one pretending anymore.”
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-10
Chapter: Chapter 125 ISADORA The rehearsal dinner was golden. Candlelight kissed the rims of wine glasses, soft music floated like silk through the garden, and laughter echoed in the air like the world had never broken me. For the first time in weeks, I let myself breathe. No suspicion. No shadow. Just tonight. Luca kissed my shoulder before the toast, leaned in and murmured, “You’re glowing, Princess.” And for once, I didn’t roll my eyes. I let him touch me. I let the warmth soak into my skin like I hadn’t been cold for days. Tomorrow, I’d be a bride. Tonight, I was free. I danced with my mother. Took tequila shots with Laura—yes, even she managed a smile that wasn’t forced. Rafael spun me once beneath the fairy lights and said, “You’re trouble,” with that crooked grin of his that made me laugh like I hadn’t buried pain under my ribs. For two hours, I let it be real. No questions. No weight. No doubt. But the moment I walked
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-10
Chapter: Chapter 124LAURAThe rooftop bar was closed at this hour, but Rafael didn’t need permission to occupy a space. He owned every room he entered, even one perched above a city still asleep.He was already there, leaning against the railing like it might collapse under the weight of what he was holding back. Hair tousled, black shirt rolled up at the sleeves, that brooding, unreadable look on his face that used to piss me off—and now made my mouth dry.“You’re late,” he said without looking at me.I didn’t rush to close the distance. I took my time, each step a silent declaration.“And you’re still a control freak,” I replied, coming to stand between his legs as he pulled me in, no hesitation. His hands slid to my waist like they belonged there. Because lately, they did.He kissed me—not softly. Like he needed to forget what we were doing. What we were risking. Like I was the only place he could breathe.When he finally pulled away, he kept his forehead against mine. “She s
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-06
Chapter: Chapter 123ISADORA Luca laughed at something Rafael said, the low rumble of it curling around the hallway walls and crawling under my skin. I paused at the archway, watching the two of them with narrowed eyes. The study was awash in golden light—books, whiskey glasses, the faint scent of cigars and secrets. Luca’s posture was relaxed, his hand sweeping casually as he poured a drink. Rafael leaned against the desk, arms crossed, smirking. Like nothing had ever shifted between them. But I remembered. I remembered Luca storming into that garden, face thundercloud-dark. I remembered Rafael's stare—tight-lipped, unreadable. Whatever truce they’d shaken hands on, it wasn’t clean. So why did they act like it was? The door creaked as I stepped back. I didn’t want them seeing me. Not yet. Not when my head buzzed with questions they both refused to answer. Later, when we were alone in the bedroom, I tried to press him gently. “You and Rafael seem... good ag
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-05-05
Masuk
