All Chapters of The Rich Man's Proxy Marriage: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The safehouse was too quiet.Not the comforting kind of quiet—this was the sort that felt like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to snap. Holden stood by the window, back rigid, gaze fixed on the treeline outside. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t even pretended to. His entire body was one long, coiled wire.Tonight would decide everything.He’d set the trap hours ago.Motion-sensor cameras hidden along the ridge. Heat detectors buried near the old well. A silent alarm beneath the loose plank of the porch. And the biggest bait of all—Elena herself.Not that she knew.She’d think he was being protective. Overbearing. Paranoid.But Silas Byrne was getting close—too close—and Holden needed to draw him out before he made another attempt on her life. The last attack had been too calculated, too familiar. As if Silas knew exactly which fractures inside Elena would break her fastest.Holden had sworn he wouldn’t let her shatter.“Holden.” Her voice drifted from the hallway. S

The night they escaped the ruined safehouse, Holden didn’t slow the car until the city lights appeared like a distant constellation on the horizon. Elena remained silent beside him, gripping her knees, trying to steady the fragments of memory still flickering behind her eyes.Silas’s face. Her father’s voice. A door slamming. Hands dragging her away.The pieces didn’t fit yet—but the fear did. It was familiar, almost welcoming in its cruelty.“Holden,” she whispered once, voice raw. “Will he follow us?”Holden didn’t look her way. His jaw flexed, gravel-hard. “He will try.”“And if he does?”“I’ll end it.”The calm certainty in his voice sent a strange tremor through her—fear, yes, but something else beneath it. Something warm. Dangerous.THE LU FAMILY ESTATE — MORNINGThe moment Holden stepped inside the Lu household, he knew trouble awaited.The room fell silent.His grandmother, Madame Lu, statuesque and stern, sat at the head of the long table. His father leaned back with feig

The boardroom was far too quiet.Elena could feel every pair of eyes on her—skeptical, calculating, waiting for her to slip. The Lu Corporation’s Investment Committee wasn’t known for mercy, especially not to outsiders… and even less to someone they believed Holden only kept around out of obligation.But today, Elena wasn’t here as someone’s shadow.Today, she was here with numbers, projections, and a proposal sharp enough to carve her place into the room.“—and with this restructuring,” Elena concluded, tapping the screen with the final slide, “the subsidiary can stabilize cash flow within two quarters and reach profitability by quarter five. The acquisition isn’t the problem. The management model is.”A ripple of murmurs moved across the table.Old Mr. Liang narrowed his eyes. “And who told you that Lu Corporation wants another turnaround project? Your model assumes an aggressive restructuring—”“It assumes competence,” Elena replied smoothly. “If the leadership can’t keep up, that’

The next day began deceptively quiet.Too quiet.Elena walked into the Lu Corporation lobby expecting the usual hum of rumors, the not-so-hidden stares, the sharp mix of curiosity and resentment.Instead, the building felt muted. Not empty—just tense.Like everyone had heard something she hadn’t.Holden wasn’t with her this morning. He had left before dawn after receiving a call so urgent and so chilling that even Elena, half-asleep, had felt the shift in the air.She had asked him, “Is it Silas?”Holden had kissed her forehead—an answer disguised as reassurance.“Stay inside today. And don’t talk to anyone you don’t need to.”That alone told her everything.But she didn’t expect the atmosphere at work to feel like a storm gathering above her head.The wrong attentionBy mid-morning, Elena had been summoned twice by the Public Relations Division and once by the Strategic Development Department—again, uninvited.“Miss Vale,” a senior PR officer said with a too-bright smile, “given you

Holden waited until the last door in the penthouse clicked shut.Elena had just returned from the Lu Corporation, her shoulders rigid, her eyes distant in that way that told him she was keeping something from him again. He had promised himself—after the warehouse, after the button, after Silas’s shadow brushing closer each day—that he wouldn’t let anything slip past him anymore.Not when it came to her.“Elena,” he said quietly.She froze halfway through removing her jacket. “What?”Holden didn’t look away. “There’s something we need to talk about.”She exhaled, weary. “Is this about the board meeting? Or the reports? Or the fact that—”“It’s about Silas Byrne.”Everything inside her stilled.Holden watched the reaction carefully—the slight tremor in her fingers, the way her breath caught before evening out. He had seen Elena scared. He had seen her furious. But this—this was different.This was visceral.“What about him?” she asked, but her voice came out thin.Holden stepped toward