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CHAPTER 9 :PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
publish date:
2026-04-21 17:36:41
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Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 9 :PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
The gala was the most beautiful lie Alina had ever walked into. She understood that on the steps, before they were even inside — the photographers, the lights, the cars arriving in perfect sequence, everyone dressed like they had never in their lives worried about rent. She had pressed her good dress and worn the earrings she'd had since university and told herself she looked fine, until she saw the women getting out of the car ahead of them and she realized that she might look like someone who belongs in a different postcode. She must have gone still, because Adrian said, without looking at her: "Stop." "I haven't done anything." "You were about to decide something. I could see it." He glanced down at her. They were standing at the bottom of the steps, waiting for the car in front to clear. "Whatever it is — don't." "You can't see what I'm thinking." "I can see what your face is doing." He looked ahead again. "You look exactly as you should. Stop comparing." She stared at the
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 8 :THE EMPIRE
Walking into Voss Industries with her hand on Adrian's arm felt like being led into the heart of something that had been waiting to consume her. That was dramatic, she told herself. She was being dramatic. It was a corporate headquarters. There were people at desks. It was one of the collegues birthday and they had brought in a cake ,the smell of sugar was drifting down the sixth-floor corridor. But the way people looked at Adrian when he walked in — that part was not dramatic. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Posture changed. A man in accounting literally put down his coffee and sat up straight, which Alina would have found funny if the collective response hadn't been so complete. It was the way a room responds to weather. Instinctive. Involuntary. She kept her expression neutral and her hand exactly where it was — lightly on his arm, close enough to be visible, not so close that it read as anything other than performed — and she thought: I need to understand this building befo
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 7 :FIRST RULES
Adrian laid out his expectations over breakfast the next morning as though he were reciting the terms of a military operation — calm, sequential, without pausing to check whether she was following or not. Luckily she was following. She was also trying to eat toast without betraying the fact that her stomach had been knotted since she woke up. "Public appearances will typically occur two or three times per week," he said. He hadn't touched his coffee. "You'll be informed forty-eight hours in advance for the appearances. Dress appropriately and accordingly for the event type — the folder covers the categories." He looked at her briefly. "You've read the folder?" "Abit of it." She put down her toast. "I read to page three." Something crossed his face — not irritation exactly, but something similar to it. "Read the rest today." "I had questions about page two, actually." A pause. "Then ask them." "The section on public conversation topics." She kept her voice even. "It lists seve
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 6:The Penthouse
The penthouse didn't feel like a home. It felt like a chess board, and Alina was already standing on the wrong square. The car had brought her here in silence — her suitcase in the boot, the newspaper clipping still folded in her coat pocket, forty-eight floors rising above her before she could decide how she felt about any of it. The building's lobby had marble floors so clean she could see her reflection in them. There was a man at the desk who looked at her with the specific blankness of staff who had been trained not to register surprise at anything. She registered enough surprise for both of them. The elevator rose without a sound. The doors opened directly into the apartment — no corridor, no hallway, just the apartment itself, waiting like something that had been holding its breath. A woman was waiting there. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties, dark blazer, and a tablet in her hand. She smiled with the practiced warmth of someone whose job required it. "Miss Carte
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 5:Everything She Is Leaving Behind
As Alina was packing one suitcase for six months she realised how her life was now out of her control.She sat on the bedroom floor at midnight on Saturday and looked at the small piles she'd made — work clothes, casual clothes, the dress she'd bought for her cousin's wedding and worn once .She sat there as she couldn't decide which version of herself she was packing for. The person who lived here knew what she needed. She knew which drawer was stuck and needed lifting, knew that the hot water in the shower took ninety seconds to arrive, and knew which floorboard creaked outside her mother's old room.She did not know the person who was about to live in a penthouse forty-eight floors above the city.She was still sitting there at seven in the morning when Ethan knocked. She hadn't slept, she had been up all night.He came in, looked at the half-packed suitcase and the piles on the floor and then looked at her sitting in the middle of them.Ethan sat down beside her without being aske
Bought by the Ruthless Billionaire CHAPTER 4:The Terms
The contract was twelve pages long. Alina read every single word twice and still couldn't find the answer to the most important question: why her, when a man like Adrian Voss could have arranged this with anyone.She spread it across the kitchen table at midnight, still in her coat, because since she came home from the meeting and she did not quite make it past the kitchen. The eviction notice was still on the counter. The hospital bills were in a folder beside the fridge, where she put things she needed to see every day so she didn't let herself forget how urgent they were.She made tea. That she ended up not drinking.Past midnight she called Ethan. He picked up on the second ring, which meant he'd been awake."Tell me everything," he said."He admitted the photograph was from an investigation. He admitted I affected his business. He accepted all four conditions before I even finished reading them out."A long pause. "That's not reassuring.""No.""Men who accept everything yo
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