The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Elena Moore’s phone rang like it hated her. Not the gentle buzz that meant a delivery was outside, or her brother was sending a stupid meme. This was the hard, sustained vibration that crawled across the cheap laminate counter of her tiny kitchen—loud enough to rattle the mug beside it. She stared at the screen.

Unknown Number.

At 2:11 a.m. Her chest tightened in that familiar, exhausted way, like her body had already learned to expect bad news and was simply saving itself the surprise.

She swiped to answer. “Hello?”

For a second there was only breathing. Then a woman’s voice—professional, clipped, practiced calm.

“Is this Elena Moore?”

“Yes.”

“This is St. Catherine’s Emergency Department. You’re listed as the primary contact for Daniel Moore.”

Everything inside Elena went cold.

“Daniel?” Her voice broke on his name. “What happened?”

“Your brother was brought in by ambulance about forty minutes ago. We need you to come in immediately.”

Elena’s mind tried to skip ahead—tried to protect her by jumping to the end of the story without reading the pages.

“Is he—” She couldn’t finish. Her throat closed.

“He’s alive,” the nurse said quickly, like she’d delivered that sentence a thousand times to people with shaking hands. “But he’s in critical condition. We need you here now.”

Elena stood so fast the chair scraped the floor. Her bare feet hit the linoleum, numb. “I’m coming. I’m coming right now.”

“Bring identification. And… Ms. Moore? Your brother doesn’t have active insurance on file.”

That shouldn’t have mattered. Not right now. But it did, because the world was cruel enough to attach price tags to blood.

“I—” Elena swallowed. “Okay. Okay, I’ll be there.”

The call ended. Silence rushed in behind it. The kind of silence that makes you realize how alone you are. Elena didn’t cry. Not yet. Tears were for later, when there was time to fall apart. Right now she moved like a machine.

She grabbed her jeans from the back of the couch, shoved her arms into a hoodie, yanked her hair into a knot. Keys. Wallet. Phone charger. Her hands shook so badly she dropped her wallet once, then twice, the cards spilling like tiny white bones across the floor.

“Come on,” she whispered to herself, voice sharp with panic. “Come on.”

She scooped everything up, ran out the door, and nearly collided with the neighbor’s garbage bin in the narrow hallway. The building smelled like old frying oil and someone’s laundry detergent. Ordinary. Unfairly ordinary.

Outside, the city was dark and damp, the streetlights smearing gold across wet asphalt. Elena’s car—an old Toyota she kept alive through pure stubbornness—waited at the curb, silent and unprepared for the night she was about to force into it.

The engine protested when she turned the key.

“Please,” she breathed. “Please.”

It started. She drove too fast, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, checking her mirrors as if danger might come from behind. Every red light felt like a personal insult. Every minute was stolen from Daniel.

Her brother. Twenty-two. Smart. Reckless in that way boys are when they think there’s time. Last time she’d seen him, he’d been laughing with a mouth full of cheap pizza, insisting he was fine, promising he’d call her tomorrow. Tomorrow never belonged to anyone.

St. Catherine’s appeared like a bright, sterile ship in the darkness. Elena parked crookedly, didn’t care, and ran. Inside, the emergency room smelled like antiseptic and coffee that had been sitting too long. The fluorescent lights made everyone look pale, like they’d already been drained of whatever made them human.

At the desk, a nurse looked up. “Name?”

“Elena Moore. My brother Daniel—”

The nurse’s expression softened just slightly. “Yes. Come with me.”

Elena followed, heart hammering, down a hallway where the walls were too white and the doors were too closed. Behind one of them someone moaned. Behind another, a man shouted at a doctor in a language Elena didn’t recognize. Somewhere an alarm beeped steady and indifferent.

They stopped at a curtain-draped bay. Daniel lay on the bed. For a second Elena couldn’t breathe.

His face was swollen on one side. There was dried blood at his hairline. His lips were cracked. A tube ran under his nose. His chest rose and fell in shallow, assisted breaths, as if his body was trying to remember how to do the simplest thing.

“Elena?” he rasped, eyes fluttering.

She rushed to him and took his hand carefully, as if touching him too hard might make him vanish. “I’m here.”

His fingers moved weakly against hers, then stilled. A doctor appeared at her shoulder. Male. Mid-forties. Tired eyes. “Ms. Moore?”

“Yes.” Elena didn’t let go of Daniel’s hand. “What happened?”

“He was in a collision—he was on a motorcycle.” The doctor paused when Elena flinched. “He has internal bleeding and a head injury. We stabilized him, but he needs surgery. Now.”

Elena nodded too quickly. “Do it. Please.”

“There’s something you need to understand.” The doctor’s voice remained calm, but his words had weight. “Surgery, ICU care, imaging, medications… this is expensive. We don’t have an insurance provider on file.”

Elena stared at him. “He works. He—”

“He hasn’t been enrolled,” the doctor said gently. “Or his coverage lapsed.”

Her mind flashed to Daniel’s last text: I’m between things. I’ll sort it soon.

Elena’s stomach dropped.

“How much?” she asked, already knowing the answer was going to be a number that didn’t fit in her life.

“We can’t give an exact figure tonight,” the doctor said. “But you’re looking at… significant costs. We’ll have financial services speak to you, but right now I need consent to operate.”

Elena’s mouth went dry. Consent. Signature. Responsibility. Guilt. She pressed her forehead to Daniel’s hand for half a second, then lifted her head. “Yes. You have my consent. Save him.”

“Okay.” The doctor nodded. “Sign here.”

He handed her a clipboard. The pen felt slippery in her fingers. She signed her name like it was a contract with fate. And then they wheeled Daniel away. Elena stood frozen as the bed disappeared down the hallway. She wanted to chase it, to cling to the sheets, to scream that she’d take his pain and carry it herself. Instead she stood alone, hands empty.

A chair waited in the corner like an insult. She sank into it and stared at her palms. They were shaking. She breathed in. Breathed out. Tried to count the seconds. Tried to keep herself from becoming the kind of person who sobbed in public.

The hours that followed blurred. A nurse offered water. Elena didn’t drink. A man with a clipboard asked questions about Daniel’s medical history. Elena answered through a fog. At one point she went to the bathroom and stared at her reflection. Her eyes looked too large, as if fear had pushed them open and forgotten how to close them.

At 4:38 a.m., a woman in a blazer approached. She had the kind of hair and makeup that suggested sleep was optional for people like her.

“Ms. Moore?” the woman asked.

Elena looked up. “Yes.”

“I’m Marissa Hall, patient financial services.” She said it like an introduction and a warning. “I’m sorry about your brother. I’m going to be direct.”

Elena’s throat tightened. “Okay.”

Marissa sat in the chair across from her and opened a folder. Numbers and forms. The real horror story.

“Your brother’s surgery has begun,” Marissa said. “He will require ICU care afterward. Without insurance, you’ll be responsible for the full cost.”

Elena heard her own voice, thin and distant. “How much?”

Marissa didn’t hesitate. “If there are no complications? A conservative estimate is two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”

Elena’s vision blurred at the edges. “That’s—” She laughed once, a small, broken sound. “That’s not… that’s not real.”

“It’s real,” Marissa said evenly. “There are payment plans. We have charity programs depending on eligibility. But I need to know what you can commit to now.”

Elena swallowed hard. Her stomach churned like she might vomit. Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars was not a bill. It was a sentence.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I— I can’t pay that.”

Marissa’s expression didn’t change, but something sharpened in her eyes. “Do you have assets? A co-signer? Family members?”

“It’s just me.” Elena’s voice was raw now. “It’s always been just me.”

Marissa nodded once, as if confirming a checkbox. “We’ll revisit later. For now… you should focus on your brother.”

When Marissa walked away, Elena felt something rupture quietly inside her. This was how it happened. Not in one dramatic moment, but in the slow realization that the world could break you without raising its voice. Elena dug her phone out of her pocket, hands trembling, and opened her banking app. The numbers were pathetic.

Rent due next week. Credit card balance already flirting with its limit. Savings: barely enough to keep the lights on for another month. And now: $280,000.

She closed the app. Her thumb hovered over the contacts list. There wasn’t anyone to call. No rich uncle. No old friend with connections. No miracle. Her eyes burned. Still she didn’t cry. Because if she started, she didn’t know if she’d stop. At 6:12 a.m., her phone lit up again. Elena blinked, slow, suspicious of any new sound.

An email notification. From an address she didn’t recognize.

BLACKWOOD GROUP — EXECUTIVE OFFICE

Her breath caught. She opened it. The text was simple. Cold. Like it had been written by someone who didn’t believe in unnecessary words.

Ms. Elena Moore,

Elena stared at the name like it might bite her. Blackwood. Everyone knew the name. In the city, it was spoken the way people spoke about storms—something powerful enough to ruin your life from a distance.

She reread the email twice, searching for a reason, a mistake, anything that made sense. Mandatory? Her phone vibrated again. A call. Unknown number. Elena’s pulse spiked. She answered.

“Ms. Moore,” a man’s voice said, crisp, controlled. “This is Mr. Blackwood’s office. We just sent you an email. You will be there at ten.”

Elena’s mouth went dry. “I— why? I’m at the hospital. My brother—”

“We’re aware.” The man’s tone didn’t soften. “You will be there.”

The line went dead. Elena stared at the phone, breath shallow, skin prickling with a new kind of fear. Not the fear of losing Daniel. The fear of a door opening in her life that she hadn’t asked for—and couldn’t close.

She looked down the hallway toward the surgical wing where her brother fought for his life. And then back at her phone.

Blackwood Group. Executive floor. 10:00 a.m.

Her stomach twisted. It didn’t feel like help. It felt like a trap.