All Chapters of The Kane Contract: Vows of Venom: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

I’m still in the same black leggings and cream cashmere, hair a rat’s nest from yesterday, eyes puffy from the bathroom-floor breakdown, when I open the old laptop I rescued from the duffel.The external drive clicks into place like a magazine sliding into a gun.I’ve been sitting cross-legged on the east-wing couch for forty-three minutes, cursor hovering over the folder labelled WHITFORD_BURN.Inside: eight years of emails, Slack threads, recorded calls, cap tables, everything Theo ever tried to hide behind “bro culture” and charm.I start with the juiciest.2021-09–14 From: theo@whitfordtech.com To: board@whitfordtech.com Subject: Equity for Livia HarperShe’s asking for founder-level shares. I love her, but she’s just the girlfriend. We keep her hungry, she keeps building. Vote no.I attach the full thread (twelve board members agreeing, one coward abstaining).I open @LiviaActually.Caption:He told the board I was “just the girlfriend.” Here’s the receipt.Post.I don’t wait to

Day ten in the Kane fortress.I wake up knowing today is the day I stop hiding.The east wing mirror shows a woman I barely recognise: cheekbones sharpened by stress and unrelenting morning sickness, eyes colder than the black diamonds locked around my throat, mouth set in a line that could slice steel. I look like a queen forged in fire. But inside I’m still the girl who cried on the bathroom floor six nights ago, counting heartbeats in the dark because they were the only thing that felt real.How did I get here? One moment I was building an empire with the man I loved, the next I’m pregnant, betrayed, and married to a stranger who looks at me like I’m both his weapon and his weakness. What if the mask slips today? What if they see the cracks? What if he sees them?I dress like I’m going to war.White coat, cinched so tight at the waist it almost hurts, falling to mid-calf like a wedding dress made of vengeance. Beneath it: a black silk sheath that clings to every new curve the pregn

The morning after the almost-kiss.I wake gasping, the phantom heat of Alexander’s breath still ghosting across my lips like a brand I can’t scrub off. My skin is on fire, every nerve ending screaming from a kiss that never happened. I’m on my back, one hand pressed to my stomach where the baby is already kicking like it felt the storm too, the other clenched in the black silk sheets that smell like him (cedar and something darker I refuse to name).One inch. One fucking inch and I would have let him ruin me. No. I would have ruined him. I wanted to. God help me, I wanted to taste the violence in his mouth, wanted his hands on my throat, wanted to punish him for every white rose, every locked door he walked through like he owned my dreams. I wanted to punish myself for wanting it.I sit up too fast, head spinning, room tilting like the storm never left. The bedroom is flooded with gray pre-dawn light, the city below still asleep, oblivious to the fact that I just almost betrayed every

I wake up at 6:47 a.m.The east wing is quiet except for the low hum of the city sixty-five floors below. I lie on my back staring at the ceiling, one hand on the bump that’s finally big enough to make sleeping on my stomach impossible, the other clenched in the sheets that still smell faintly of Alexander’s cologne even though I changed them two days ago.I hate that I notice.I hate that I keep noticing.I hate that I woke up wet and aching and angry because my body apparently decided to side with the enemy while my brain was asleep.Stop. He’s the contract. The man who owns the building, the codes, the air. The man who stood one inch from kissing you and walked away like it cost him nothing. He’s not your lover. He’s your jailer wearing a better suit.I roll out of bed and pad to the bathroom. The mirror shows a stranger: eyes still puffy from yesterday’s crying jag, lips bitten raw, hair a wild halo that makes me look half-feral. I splash cold water on my face until the shock of

Day twenty in the Kane fortress.It’s been five days since the almost-kiss in the hallway, five days of pretending it never happened, five days of locked doors and white roses appearing in places they shouldn’t (inside my coffee mug, tucked into the pages of the notebook I keep under my pillow, on the ultrasound printout like a cruel joke).Five days of him watching me from across the breakfast island with eyes that say too much and nothing at all.I hate him.I hate that I wake up wet and aching, fingers clenched in the black silk sheets, body remembering the way his breath felt one inch from my lips, the way his hand hovered at my waist like a promise he never made.I hate that I touch myself in the shower thinking about what would have happened if the lightning hadn’t flashed, if the power hadn’t surged back on, if we hadn’t jerked apart like we’d been burned.I hate that I come whispering his name like a curse.I get out of bed, legs shaky, and dress like armor.I leave the east w