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Chapter 2

Author: Paris Belle
last update Last Updated: 2025-05-15 21:33:48

Her eyes, wide and wild locked onto the screen.

“What….. what did they just say?”

Her mouth moved, but no sound came. Only the booming voice of the news reporter filled the silence

“In related new, insider report that the takeover was finalized hours ago under emergency acquisition laws, making Nanode private co the new controlling power but the CEO is still anonymous to everyone.”

**********”*

Iris didn't remember leaping off the bed. She only remembered the TV screen burning into her memory and the sense of cold panic clawing at her chest.

“He's not here,” she shouted, already running out of her room.

Dina chased after her. “Wait — what are you talking about?”

“My father he's not in his room.”

Iris burst into her father's room, flicked the light switch. Empty, the bed was untouched. His phone was on the dresser, screen still lit with missed call from a contact simply labeled “Law.”

“No,” she gasped, voice breaking, “no,no, no.”

She turned on her heel and grabbed her coat.

“We're going to the law firm.”

“Like this?” Dina asked, gesturing at their rumpled clothes and smeared makeup.

“I don't care.”

*********************************

The air outside bit against her skin, and the city lights blurred with the remnant of alcohol in her system, but Iris was no longer drunk just terrified.

When they reached the white marble steps of Renford Law Associates, the receptionist eyes widened at the sight of the two young women , one of them, iris, half sobbing in a wrinkled dress and heels that didn't match.

“We're here to see Joseph Hargrove,” iris demanded, barely keeping her voice level.

“I'm sorry, visitation isn't allowed without a lawyer and —--”

Iris interrupted the receptionist “tell him his daughter Is here. Now!” Iris shouted.

The receptionist hesitated but picked the phone and made the call five minutes later, they were ushered into a cold glass, paneled room. The sight on the other side of the divider nearly broke her.

There he was—-- Joseph Hargrove, seated behind a table, hands clasped tightly a defeated shadow of the proud man he used to be. His eyes lit up when he saw her, Iris, ….. them dimmed when they took in her disheveled appearance.

“Iris…..” he breathed, as if her name alone brought him pain.

“What's going on?” She asked,

Tear forming in Iris eyes “the news, ….the charges…….is it true?”

Joseph didn't answer immediately. His eyes fell to the table top.

“ They came for me, saying they had evidence — account I never touched, transfer I never authorized. It was a set up, someone wanted this company gone, someone want us gone and ruined.”

“Then we need to fight back,” Iris said through clenched teeth. “Tell them the truth!”

He looked up, anguish plain in his faces.

“They won't believe me. Not without leverage. Not without help.”

“Help, from who?”

His silence was her answer.

“Marx?” She whispered.

He nodded slowly. “He's the only one powerful enough to clean this quietly. If you marry him, he'll make this go away. He gave me his word.”

“You think I can trust him?”

“ I don't trust anyone anymore but I believe in survival, and right now Iris marrying Marx Danver is our only way out.”

She turned away from the glass, trembling.

“So I become his wife to buy your freedom, our freedom? Is that what it comes to now.”

“I wish there was another way,” he murmured. “But whosoever do this want us ruined, they want to see us destroyed and Marx is the only one who can save us.”

“Then maybe the devil is better than the unknown,” Iris whispered bitterly.

As she left the law firm with Dina at her side, the street felt darker than before. She stopped under a dim street lamp, clutching her coat tight.

“Are you going to do it?” Diayasked softly.

Iris didn't respond right away, her lips parted but no word came instead her eyes glistened with the tear she had fought so hard to hide.

“I guess I have no choice,” iris replied

“What does that make me?” Iris whispered, “ a sacrifice to Marx for my father freedom and our losses.”

“You're saving your father,” Dina embrace her, “that's more than most would do.”

Iris let out a shaky breath, her chest heaving with silent sob she refused to release in full. But inside…she broke. She wept within, where no one could see the cracks. The kind of cry that made a home in the soul

“I'll do it,” she whispered to the night. “I'll marry him

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  • Consummating my billionaire CEO contracted marriage    Chapter 14

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  • Consummating my billionaire CEO contracted marriage    Chapter 13

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  • Consummating my billionaire CEO contracted marriage    Chapter 12

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  • Consummating my billionaire CEO contracted marriage    Chapter 10

    The ceremony was held on the penthouse floor of one of the city's most exclusive hotels—a cloud-touching skyscraper of a structure where only the crème de crème even entertained the idea of wedding and the rest of humanity looked on from the periphery. The sun at the horizon of late afternoon cast a burnished gold gloom upon the cityscape, and the glass spires were incandescent with glory, as if the city itself were afire with energy and affectation. From this distance, the world below had seemed so distant—like it couldn't get to her. Iris wasn't experiencing anything from the pressure on her chest, though.The snowy gauze drapes that had poured over the marble altar shimmered softly in the breeze, as if skeletal fingers raised them. It was all perfect—down to the mechanical sheen of the aisle that glittered under the declining sun. But perfection, she realized now, had never quite seemed so stifling.Below the surface, below the silks' velvets of posed smiles and rehearsed grins, th

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    The wedding dress lay over her bed like an unspoken warning, too beautiful, too still, too wrong.Iris sat at the end of the bed, her fingertips still numb from the chill of the letter Rosa had brought. The words whirred through her head like a scratchy record:"If you get this, don't marry him. He's hiding something from you. Please, Iris. Reach me before it's too late."The silence of the penthouse threatened to close in on her like a noose. She ran her fingers over the old phone once more, reading the message thread, searching for something—anything—that would explain to her what Rosa was attempting to convey. But the rest of the thread was empty. The timestamp? 3:11 AM, three days previously.Why would Rosa text her in the middle of the night?Why disappear afterward?And why should Marx, of all people, scare her off from her own cousin?A sickly sensation crawled up in her belly. It wasn't control any longer, it was fear. Fear of something she didn't understand. Fear of something

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