Semua Bab Betrayed by Blood, Saved by a Billionaire: Bab 31 - Bab 40

Alexander’s words from the night he returned from Zurich – “You are rapidly becoming… something more, Skye. Something I hadn’t factored into my calculations at all.” – echoed in my head for days. That, and the memory of his fingers tracing my jaw, the unexpected tenderness in his eyes. It was like a switch had been flipped. The air between us, already charged with the weirdness of our fake engagement, was now crackling with a whole new kind of electricity. An unspoken, undeniable attraction that was both terrifying and ridiculously thrilling.Suddenly, the vast penthouse felt a lot smaller.Every accidental brush of our hands as we reached for the same coffee pot in the morning sent a jolt through me. Every time our eyes met across the dinner table – even during those stiff, "for the staff" meals – there was a new intensity, a silent conversation happening that had nothing to do with the weather or his latest business deal. He wasn’t just my fake billionaire fiancé anymore. He was… Al

The almost-moment in the kitchen with Alexander and the slightly-burnt grilled cheese replayed in my head for days. That look in his eyes, the way his hand had hovered so close to mine, the raw, unspoken something that had crackled between us before his phone shattered it all… It was like a song stuck on repeat, a melody of "what ifs" and "almosts."He’d been even more immersed in his work since that night, the battle with Marcus Thorne clearly escalating. He was a whirlwind of tense meetings, late-night calls, and that same weary, burdened look I’d seen before. We barely saw each other, and when we did, it was usually just a fleeting glimpse as he strode through the penthouse, his mind clearly a million miles away, wrestling with corporate dragons.The unspoken attraction, though, hadn’t faded. If anything, the distance, the near-misses, only seemed to amplify it. It was like a magnetic pull, a constant awareness of his presence (or absence) that hummed beneath the surface of my care

The drive back from the Sterling ancestral estate was mostly silent, but it was a different kind of silence than usual. Not awkward, not charged with unspoken attraction, but heavy. Heavy with the fallout from Genevieve’s weekend-long campaign of social assassination. I kept replaying moments in my head – Cassandra’s condescending smiles, Genevieve’s pitying pronouncements, my own fumbling attempts to look like I belonged. It was exhausting just thinking about it.Alexander stared out the window, his jaw tight, that muscle working overtime again. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he regretting this whole insane arrangement? Was he finally seeing what his mother and Cassandra so clearly wanted him to see – that I was a liability, a mistake?When we finally got back to the blessedly modern, blessedly Genevieve-free zone of the penthouse, I was ready to just crawl into bed and hide under the covers for a week. But Alexander followed me into the living room.“Skye,” he said, his voice

The anonymous online attacks, those nasty little gossip blog posts calling me a "gold-digging art student" and "Sterling's charity case fiancée," were like a swarm of invisible mosquitoes. Annoying, itchy, and impossible to completely ignore, no matter how much Alexander insisted they were "meaningless drivel." They got under my skin, feeding the tiny, insecure voice in my head that whispered Hailey and Genevieve and Cassandra were right – I didn’t belong here. I was a fraud.Alexander, to his credit, was a rock. He had his PR team working overtime to squash the worst of the rumors, and he made a point of being more… publicly attentive to me. Small gestures – his hand lingering on mine a moment longer than necessary during a photo op, a quiet, reassuring word when he sensed I was overwhelmed at some stuffy corporate dinner he’d insisted I attend with him. They were probably all part of his "united front" strategy, but they still felt… nice. Like he was genuinely trying to shield me.B

The kiss. It replayed in my head on a continuous loop, a vivid, technicolor movie complete with a soundtrack of my own thundering heartbeat. Alexander’s lips on mine, the surprising softness, the underlying power, the way the world had just… disappeared. It hadn’t been a PR stunt. He’d said so himself. “Not entirely for the cameras.” Which meant… what? That some part of it, maybe even a big part of it, had been real? For him too?My brain felt like a shaken snow globe, all my carefully constructed defenses, all my attempts to keep this "business arrangement" strictly business, now swirling in a chaotic, glittery mess of emotions I didn’t know what to do with.The ride back to the penthouse after the summit had been thick with an unspoken, almost unbearable tension. We hadn’t talked much. What was there to say? But every time our eyes met, it was like a jolt of electricity, a silent acknowledgment that something fundamental had shifted between us. The "rules of engagement" felt like a