ログインShe was supposed to be a business arrangement, nothing more. A wife on paper. A sacrifice to save a dying empire. But on her 25th birthday, Millicent Whitmore learns the truth: her husband never loved her… and neither did her family. Humiliated, betrayed, and replaced by the one person she trusted most, her own sister. Milly walks away from the life she was forced to survive. Only to collide with Declan Laurent, a dangerously powerful man with his own secrets… and an unexpected proposal. A contract marriage. A mutual revenge. No love involved. At least, not at first. But when power, obsession, and buried truths begin to surface, Milly realizes escape was never the real danger… It was choosing the wrong man to help her burn everything down.
もっと見るDECLANRichard’s statement never made it to air. Someone leaked it early, a draft copy circulating through three separate outlets before he’d even finished delivering it to the network he’d chosen to break the story, and by morning the entire narrative had shifted into something far messier than a single powerful man naming a single rival.Both of them were bleeding now. Cross and Richard, each one scrambling to shift blame before investigators finished building their own timeline, and Washington had turned into exactly the kind of chaos I’d expected once the dam finally broke completely.“Three more executives resigned overnight,” Adrian told me, sliding a list across my desk. “Two more are cooperating with federal subpoenas without waiting for our legal team to advise them first.”“Let them.”“Declan, this is going to gut the company.”“I know.”I meant it. I’d stopped caring about protecting Laurent Global’s reputation somewhere around the moment I’d watched that lake house explode
ADRIAN CROSSThe campaign had been dying for days, but tonight the coverage turned from speculation to certainty, my face on every screen beneath headlines that used words like “linked” and “connected” and, increasingly, “ordered.”I hadn’t ordered anything.I sat alone in my study, the television murmuring reports of the lakeside attack, my hands wrapped around a glass I hadn’t touched in an hour, and I said it out loud to the empty room, the way a man says something he needs to believe himself before anyone else will.“I didn’t order that.”Nobody was there to hear it, which was somehow worse than if someone had been, because I couldn’t tell anymore whether I actually believed my own denial or whether decades of careful self-deception had simply become instinct.My chief of staff found me there past midnight, his face tight with the particular exhaustion of a man managing a collapsing empire.“The dying man told Isaac Brooke your name,” he said, no preamble. “That’s what’s circulati
MILLYThe paramedics had Kara on a stretcher by the time I stopped shaking enough to walk over to her.“Her leg’s fractured,” one of them told Declan. “Smoke inhalation. She’s stable, but she needs to go now.”Kara’s eyes were open, unfocused, her voice rising and falling in a mutter that didn’t stop even as they lifted her.“Payments,” she was saying. “Every month, R.L., it’s all in the ledgers, Cross ordered it, Isaac said Cross ordered it…”“She needs sedation,” the paramedic said, reaching into his kit.“Wait.” I stepped closer. “Kara.”Her eyes found mine, clear for one second in the middle of all that static.“You believe me now,” she whispered. “About everything.”“I believe you.”The paramedic administered the sedative, and her eyes slid shut, her body finally going still against the stretcher.“You need to sit down,” Declan said, guiding me toward the car twenty minutes later, federal vehicles multiplying behind us, reporters already shouting questions from behind a hastily s
ISAACI had traced Kara’s phone to that lake house forty minutes earlier, chasing a hunch after Marcus mentioned the old Whitmore property in passing weeks ago, some place I’d never once visited during our engagement. I was still ninety seconds out when I saw the flames climbing above the tree line, orange light flickering against low clouds, gunfire cracking through the darkness ahead of me.I didn’t think so. I just ran.“Kara!” My voice tore through the chaos as I hit the tree line, branches snapping under my feet. “Milly!”Gunfire erupted somewhere to my left, and I dropped low instinctively, scanning the darkness until I caught sight of shapes moving through the trees, Declan’s security exchanging fire with men in tactical gear who clearly weren’t amateurs.I found Declan crouched behind a fallen tree, Milly pressed against his side, both of them alive, both of them terrified.“Isaac?” Declan’s voice was disbelieving even through the chaos.“Where’s Kara?”“Behind us, she froze.
MILLY.“What if you married me instead?”For a second, I genuinely thought I had heard him wrong.The music from inside the club still pulsed faintly through the walls behind us while cold night air wrapped around my bare skin. My chest rose sharply as I stared at the man standing in front of me l
DECLAN. “I said no.” My grandfather’s jaw tightened across the video call screen. “You’re twenty-nine years old, Declan.” “And?” “And acting like a damn teenager.” I leaned back against the leather chair inside my penthouse office, loosening the tie around my neck slowly. The city lights outs
MILLY.The music was loud enough to drown thoughts. The reason why I kept drinking. Flashing lights spilled across the crowded club, painting bodies in shades of blue and red while laughter echoed through the massive space. The air smelled like alcohol, expensive perfume, and bad decisions. Exact
MILLY.The bruise had already started forming. I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, fingers hovering just above the purple mark staining the side of my cheek. Even under layers of concealer, it still showed faintly.Like my marriage. No matter how hard I tried to cover it, the damage






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