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Chapter 122
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24.06.2026 13:56:15
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The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 122
ISABELLA’S POV The call came just after ten.I was reviewing production schedules for ISMARA's autumn collection when my phone lit up.Kane Rourke.I stared at the screen before answering."Good morning, Kane.""Isabella."His voice was calm and confident."Do you have a minute?""I can make one.""I have an idea."That immediately made me cautious."What kind?""The kind that benefits both of us."I leaned back in my chair."I'm listening.""The partnership announcement performed better than expected."That much was true.The collaboration between ISMARA and Rourke Industries had generated strong interest from investors, retailers, and the fashion press."I think we should capitalize on that momentum," he continued."How?""A joint press appearance."There it was.I stayed silent."A sit-down interview," Kane said. "Business focused. We discuss the partnership, expansion plans, and the future of both brands."The benefits were obvious.A public appearance would strengthen ISMARA's p
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 121
ETHAN'S POV I woke up before her, and for a moment I didn't move. I lay still and watched her breathing steadily beside me. Sometime in the last hours she'd come back to the bed. I had not expected this.I'd gone to sleep last night with words I couldn't take back, and I had genuinely not known what the morning would look like. Whether she'd already be awake and dressed by the time I opened my eyes. Whether the careful arrangement would already be back in place, repaired overnight, as if nothing had changed.She was still here.I got up carefully, showered, dressed, and went to the kitchen.I made coffee. Two cups, the way it had become automatic. I didn't think too much of it. It was simply what happened in this kitchen in the mornings now.I didn't plan what I'd say when she came out. I considered several options and discarded all of them. Anything that referenced last night directly felt like exactly the kind of pressure I'd told myself I wouldn't apply. In the end I decid
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 120
ISABELLA’S POV I heard him. Every word, delivered to the ceiling in that quiet and careful voice. This stopped being a contract a long time ago. For me.I lay still and I heard it and I did not answer.My breath caught before I could stop it. Just barely, just for a moment, but I felt him notice. I didn't answer because I had too many responses and none of them were ready. Because the ones that were honest were also reckless, and the ones that were safe were also lies, and I had made a decision years ago not to say things I didn't mean in rooms that mattered. This room mattered. What he'd said mattered. Which left me with nothing I was prepared to give him yet.So I said nothing.And then he said, you don't have to say anything, in that quiet voice, and I understood that he meant it, that he wasn't performing patience or waiting for me to feel guilty enough to fill the silence. He genuinely meant it. I lay there after his breathing eventually evened toward sleep. I thought about
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 119
ETHAN’S POV She reached for me first. We didn't talk. Not at first. Not for a long time after.I understood what that cost her. I was not going to waste it by saying too much too soon. I'd learned, at significant cost, that the correct response to something fragile was not to immediately close your hand around it.Later, in the dark, I looked at the ceiling and listened to her breathe beside me and felt the specific weight of the silence in the room. Not empty. Not comfortable exactly. Something in between, the kind of silence that has too much in it to be nothing.I thought about not saying it.I was good at not saying things. I'd built an entire architecture around knowing what not to say and when not to say it. Caleb had once told me my greatest professional skill was the ability to hold information without showing the pressure of holding it.I said it anyway."This stopped being a contract a long time ago." My voice was quiet. "For me."I said it to the ceiling. Not quite to he
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 118
ISABELLA’S POVI stood up to pour the tea. I poured water into both mugs because they were there. It was something to do. A practical motion that gave me somewhere to put my hands and a reason to move and a few seconds of not looking directly at him while I found the steadiness I needed.I poured his cup first. Carried it around the island toward him because he was still leaning against the counter and the island was between us and it was easier to bring the cup to him than to slide it across and watch it stop halfway.That was the reason I told myself.I set the cup on the counter beside him and started to step back and his hand was there, not grabbing, not pulling, just resting against my wrist. The lightest possible contact. A question more than a statement.I looked down at his hand on my wrist, then I looked up at his face.He was very still. Waiting, the way he'd been waiting all evening, all week, possibly longer than that. Not pushing. Not asking. Just present, with that ope
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 117
ISABELLA’S POV Ethan remained quiet like he was through dinner. Through Brahms's bath. Through the bedtime negotiation. He'd been present and functional and entirely contained and I'd felt it all evening. I closed my laptop when I heard him fill the kettle.I could have stayed in the living room. There was no reason to move to the kitchen. I went anyway, because waiting for something that was already in motion was worse than meeting it.He was standing at the counter. He'd made tea, or started to. The kettle was on and he was looking at it with the focus of someone thinking about something that had nothing to do with tea.I sat at the island.We stayed like that for a moment. The kettle began its low sound."You don't have to work up to it," I said.He looked at me. Then he turned and leaned against the counter, arms crossed, and I recognized the posture. It was the one he used when he'd decided to be honest about something and was making sure he was steady enough to do it without l
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 108
ISABELLA’S POVIt started at breakfast.Brahms pushed his oatmeal around his bowl with the focused dissatisfaction of a five-year-old who had already decided the morning was not going his way. He looked up at me, then at Ethan, then back at me."I want… Je veux aller au parc," he said.*I want to g
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 107
ETHAN’S POV I started noticing on a Wednesday, though I suspected it had been happening for longer than that.Brahms reached for my hand automatically when we walked down the hallway to his room. Not asking, not looking up first. Just his small fingers finding mine the way children reach for thing
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 102
ETHAN’S POV I found out through Caleb.He did not say it directly at first. He eased into it like it was normal conversation.“Isabella’s under pressure,” Caleb said during a late call.I set the phone down for a second and looked out the window. “What kind of pressure?” I asked.Caleb did not an
The CEO’s Contract Bride Chapter 101
ISABELLA’S POV The leaks did not stop after the board meeting.They multiplied.One after another. Precisely timed. Strategically devastating.All of it traced back to my computer. My files. My office.All of it impossible to explain except as carelessness. Distraction. Compromised security.Each
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