THE BILLIONAIRE’S EXCHANGED BRIDE

Ariana ~

The minutes ticked by like hours as I paced the length of the master suite, the sound of my bare footsteps muffled by the thick Persian rug. Ten minutes had passed since Ethan walked into his study. Then twenty. The silence of the sprawling mansion felt heavy, suffocating, vibrating with a tense energy that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I couldn't just sit there and wait for the axe to drop.

Stepping out into the hallway, I crept down the grand staircase as quietly as possible, keeping to the shadows of the high-vaulted ceiling. Downstairs, the corridor leading to Ethan's private study was dark, save for a thin, sharp sliver of golden light spilling out from beneath the heavy oak door.

As I drew closer, the muffled sound of a low, dangerous voice drifted out into the hallway. Ethan was on the phone.

"...track the courier down," Ethan was saying, his voice stripped of any warmth, carrying that lethal, controlled fury that always signaled a storm. "I want to know every single stop that delivery truck made before it reached my gates. And check the security logs from the east perimeter. Someone dropped that envelope off directly, which means they bypassed the mail sorting center entirely."

My breath hitched in my throat. *An envelope.*

Whatever was inside that package, it wasn't corporate paperwork. It was personal. It was private. And judging by the ice in Ethan's voice, it posed a direct threat to everything we had built.

Before I could turn around and slip back upstairs, the heavy oak door clicked and swung inward.

Ethan froze, stepping out into the hallway with the phone still pressed to his ear. His dark obsidian eyes locked onto mine instantly, widening with a flash of raw shock before his expression shuttered into an impenetrable mask.

"I'll call you back," Ethan said curtly into the receiver, cutting the connection with a sharp tap of his thumb before dropping the phone into his trouser pocket.

He didn't yell. He didn't demand to know what I was doing lurking in the hallway. Instead, he just stood there in the dim light, staring at me with a heavy, unreadable intensity that felt a thousand times worse.

"How much did you hear, Aria?" he asked quietly, stepping closer with slow, measured strides until he towered over me.

"I... I just came down to check on you," I stammered, my heart hammering violently against my ribs as I tried to keep my voice steady. "You were gone a long time. What package, Ethan? What's going on?"

Ethan didn't answer right away. He reached out, his long fingers gently catching my chin and forcing my face upward so I had no choice but to look straight into his dark, searching eyes.

"It was just a misplaced file from the office," he lied smoothly, though the tension in his jaw gave him away completely. But as his thumb brushed across my cheek, his touch was heavy with an underlying desperation. "Nothing for you to worry about, Aria. I'll handle it."

He wanted to protect me. Or, more accurately, he wanted to trap me inside his illusion just a little bit longer. But as I stared up at him, the cold realization settled deep in my bones: whatever was inside that study, the truth was catching up to us, and the countdown had officially run out of time.