All Chapters of Married to the billionaire by contract : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

“Ethan, stop using my color swatches as a spaceship,” Elena called from the tiny kitchen, her voice warm and amused even though sleep still hovered under her eyes. The apartment smelled like coffee and the faint lemon of detergent; sunlight stitched gold across the scratched laminate table where Ethan had spread out paper and pencils and a carefully wrecked shoebox that he claimed would become a model studio.“I’m not!” Ethan protested, but his grin gave him away. He had that messy brown hair and the same hazel eyes as Elena, bright with a mischief that had softened the nights in hospital waiting rooms. “This is conceptual,” he said, holding up a bent swatch like a proud flag. “See? It’s modern art.”Elena laughed and wiped her hands on a dish towel. She moved to the table and ruffled his hair the way she always had. “Then your modern art will be presented after cereal,” she said, and he groaned theatrically, sliding into the chair as if the world had betrayed him. He was thinner than

Elena stood in the doorway with the thin envelope pressed against her palm like a small, hot thing and felt the apartment shrink until the hallway felt as narrow as a throat.“Who is it?” Ethan’s voice came from the sofa, headphone cord looping like a lazy snake. He sounded more alert than his casual posture showed. He had moved from protective brother to curious adult in a way that made her proud without making her braver.“It’s someone from the registry,” Elena said, folding the letter open on the spot. Her fingers were steady but her stomach had a small, insistent tremor. “They brought a copy of a frame. They said—” She stopped because the words crowded the doorway like too many people at once.Ethan pushed himself up, switched off his music, and came to the door. “You okay?” His face was open and immediate and small—exactly what she needed to see.“I think so,” she lied a fraction, then let the truth step forward because lying felt expensive. “They said it could be the frame that

The beeping was a thin, relentless sound that threaded itself into Elena’s skull. It had been hours since nurses had poured into the room with urgent movements, since she had screamed and felt the world splinter into noise and antiseptic light. Hours of pleading and hands and machines and then—finally—distant, controlled voices telling her that they had gotten a pulse back, that he was breathing on a ventilator and that the doctor wanted family in the waiting room.Elena had followed the nurse like a sleepwalker, hands numb, feet moving through corridors she had only ever seen in stolen moments. A doctor with tired eyes had spoken to her in measured sentences: “He’s stable for now. We’ve managed to resuscitate him. He’s been through a lot—cardiac arrest after a period of extreme stress. We’ll monitor him in ICU. He’s sedated. We need rest and we need you to be careful.” The words had been necessary and thin.Now she sat in the small waiting room with Hannah on one side and Jackson on

Elena’s breath felt shallow in the sterile air of the ICU. The recorded voice had played and replayed in her head until it had a rhythm of its own. “Victoria.” The single name had fallen like a stone and sent ripples through everything she thought she knew. She sat with her hand still in Damian’s, feeling the press of his skin under the hospital tape, and tried to calibrate what to do next with a heart that felt like it had split into two languages—one of love, one of justice.Ethan hovered nearby, steady and quiet. He had the same hazel eyes as their mother—clear and earnest—and tonight they were shaded with an extra layer of resolve. “We need to move carefully,” he said, voice low. “If Victoria is implicated, there are legal things to do. But we also need to think about how this looks for him—if it becomes public before we can present evidence, it could hurt his chances of defending himself.”“I know,” Elena said. Her voice sounded small to her. “I know how this looks. I’m not askin

Elena closed the door behind Victoria with a little more force than she intended. The hospital consultation room smelled of lemon sanitizer and worn leather chairs; it felt small and private in a way that made the air between them heavy. For a moment they both stood there, two women who had worn very different armor until the night the tapes had unmasked them.Victoria Hale was impeccable even in the hospital light—her blonde hair smoothed into its perfect curve, her jacket buttoned so precisely it might have been pinned in place. But tonight something in her posture was off; the composure she always carried like armor had a faint crack at the corner of the mouth. She sat slowly, as if the movement cost her something.“Elena,” she began, that practiced cadence softening. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”Elena kept her face steady. “You came here after the audio was authenticated,” she said. “You knew Mara had the addendum. You knew it named you. So tell me—what is the truth,