All Chapters of The Rich Man's Proxy Marriage: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

The fallout was immediate.By morning, the market had shifted—not violently, but decisively.Analysts spoke in careful language. Journalists avoided speculation but sharpened their questions. Investors watched the board’s silence like predators circling wounded prey.And at the center of it all stood Elena Lu.Alone.The first call came before sunrise.Elena answered without looking at the screen.“Yes,” she said calmly.The voice on the other end hesitated. “Mrs. Lu… we’re seeing unusual movements.”“I know.”“You should be aware—Johann Lu has begun reallocating private influence channels.”“I expected that.”A pause.“You’re not alarmed?”Elena smiled faintly. “Alarm is for people who didn’t choose this.”She ended the call and sat at the edge of the bed, the city stretching endlessly beyond the glass.This was the price.Holden hadn’t slept.He stood in his office, jacket discarded, tie loosened, staring at the security feeds on the wall.Every angle. Every exit. Every possible

The basement parking structure was never meant to feel alive.Concrete breathed cold. Shadows stretched too long. Sound echoed where it didn’t belong. Elena had always disliked places like this—not out of fear, but because they reminded her how easily the world could swallow someone whole without noticing.Tonight, the feeling clung to her skin.She tightened her grip on her phone as she walked toward her car, heels clicking softly against the concrete floor. The meeting upstairs had run longer than expected. The board members had smiled too politely. Johann had been absent—never a good sign.Her phone buzzed.Holden: Where are you?Elena typed back as she unlocked her car.Basement. Leaving now.She didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late.The sound was wrong—too deliberate to be an echo.She turned.The first strike came fast.A hand slammed into her shoulder, driving her back against the car door. Pain exploded up her spine. Her phone flew from her hand and skidded across t

The room changed after that night.Not physically—nothing about the hospital room was different. The same pale walls. The same sterile scent. The same soft mechanical rhythm of machines that measured Elena’s existence in quiet beeps.But the air between them had shifted.It was heavier now. Thicker. As if one wrong word could crack it open and spill something neither of them was ready to face.Holden had not left.Not once.When Elena slept, he sat in the chair beside her bed, eyes open, unmoving. When she woke, he was always there—standing by the window, leaning against the wall, or positioned so that the door was never out of his sight.Like a sentry.Like a man guarding the last thing he owned in a world that had suddenly turned hostile.Elena noticed everything.She noticed how security doubled overnight.How nurses no longer entered without clearance.How every visitor request was screened, delayed, or denied entirely.And most of all—She noticed how Holden never asked her what

The hospital did not react to confessions.It reacted to schedules.To beeping monitors and hushed footsteps, to paperwork and visiting hours and the steady rhythm of survival continuing whether anyone was ready for it or not.After Holden spoke—after the words slipped free and shattered the silence—life resumed its indifferent motion.That was the cruelest part.Elena stood where she was long after the hallway noise returned, long after people pretended they hadn’t heard a future heir unravel in public.Holden hadn’t moved.He looked like a man who had stepped too close to the edge and realized, too late, how deep the fall was.Neither of them spoke.Because there were moments where language no longer added clarity.Only weight.Finally, a nurse cleared her throat politely from the doorway. “Mr. Lu… we’ll need a moment with the patient.”Holden blinked, as if remembering where he was.“Yes,” he said, voice hoarse. “Of course.”He didn’t look at Elena as he stepped aside.Didn’t trust

The room smelled like antiseptic and quiet fear.Elena woke up slowly, as if her body no longer trusted consciousness. Every sound arrived too sharply—the soft hum of machines, the muted footsteps in the hallway, the faint rustle of fabric beside her bed.She did not open her eyes immediately.She counted her breaths instead.One.Two.Three.Still alive.The realization did not bring relief.It brought weight.When she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Holden.He was sitting beside her bed, head lowered, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles had gone white. He looked like a man holding something together by force alone—his posture rigid, his stillness unnatural.He hadn’t slept.She could see it in the shadows beneath his eyes, in the tension locked into his shoulders, in the way he seemed afraid to move.As if movement might break something irrevocably.“Elena,” he said the instant her gaze focused.He stood too quickly, chair