All Chapters of The Rich Man's Proxy Marriage: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The safehouse felt smaller than usual that night.Not because of its size—Holden had chosen one of the Lu family’s most discreet mountain hideouts, hidden behind walls of dark pine trees and wrapped in silence—but because of the unbearable pressure between him and Elena. Every emotion they had been avoiding since the storm, every glance, every touch, every unanswered question… all of it sat in the air like a storm waiting to break.Holden locked the door behind them.The click echoed.Elena spun toward him, breath uneven. “You didn’t need to take me away like this.”“Yes,” Holden said, voice low, strained. “I did.”She stepped back—just one step, but it was enough to twist something sharp inside him.Holden dragged a hand through his hair. He looked exhausted, colder than she’d ever seen, but beneath that ice lived something far more dangerous: fear.Real fear.Not of Silas.Of losing her.“What were you thinking?” Holden asked. “Running off alone? Silas was there, Elena. He was waiti

The morning arrived too quietly.No storm.No danger.No crisis to distract them from what had happened.Sunlight slipped through the narrow window of the safehouse, pale and unforgiving. It painted sharp lines across the floor, illuminating every detail Holden wished he could undo—or forget.He was already awake.He hadn’t slept. Not really.His body remained on the couch where he had spent the night, stiff and unmoving, eyes fixed on the ceiling like it might provide answers it never had before.He had kissed Elena.Not in anger.Not in desperation.Not to provoke, to distract, to seize control.But because he wanted to.The realization sat in his chest like a live wire.Holden closed his eyes.This changes everything.A soft sound reached him from the hallway.Footsteps.He stiffened.Elena.She emerged slowly, cautious, as if the air itself might crack if she moved too fast. Her hair was loose, slightly disheveled from sleep. She wore one of his spare shirts—unintentionally intima

The rain began at dawn.Not loud, not violent—just steady, persistent, tapping against the glass windows of the safehouse like an unanswered question.Elena woke before the alarm.She lay still for several moments, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythm of rain and the distant hum of the city that never truly slept. Her body ached faintly, not with exhaustion, but with awareness.Awareness of him.She hated that the first thing she thought about was Holden Lu.Not hatred—not even annoyance.Something worse.Something quiet and stubborn.She sat up, brushing a hand through her hair, reminding herself to breathe.Get a grip.For years, emotions had been luxuries she could not afford. Vulnerability had always come with a price. And yet, over the past few days—over the past kiss—her carefully constructed distance had begun to erode.Not dramatically.Not recklessly.But undeniably.She dressed slowly and stepped into the hallway.The safehouse was strangely silent.Too silent.El

The silence Holden left behind did not dissolve when the door closed.It settled.Heavier than before.Elena remained seated long after his footsteps disappeared down the corridor, her gaze unfocused, fixed on the grain of the desk beneath her fingers. The room smelled faintly of wood polish and cold air—neutral, controlled, unmistakably his.She hated how comforting that was.Five minutes later, she stood.Ten minutes later, she paced.By the fifteenth minute, she had accepted a truth she had been quietly circling since the safehouse confrontation:Holden Lu was not the kind of man who panicked loudly.His panic looked like distance, orders, structure tightening around emotion until it suffocated.And right now, she was standing at the center of it.Elena left the study.The house was unusually active. Guards moved with clipped efficiency. Voices murmured into earpieces. Screens flickered with live feeds at the far end of the hall.She walked toward the command room without hesitatio

The worst part was not the kiss.It was the silence that followed.Holden left first—not abruptly, not coldly, but with the unmistakable precision of a man retreating before instinct overran reason. He said he needed to handle security updates. He said Silas wouldn’t wait. All true. All insufficient.Elena stood alone in the west wing long after the sound of his footsteps disappeared, one hand resting against the place where his warmth still lingered on her waist.Her body remembered before her mind allowed it.The kiss had been gentle. Careful. Unarmed.And that terrified her far more than the ones fueled by anger or provocation ever had.Those had been shields. This had been a door.She spent the rest of the evening pretending to function.She reviewed files. Answered messages. Listened to advisors speak without absorbing words. The system she had built—calm observation, tactical distance—still operated. But underneath it pulsed something unfamiliar and undeniably human.Want.Not p