All Chapters of Priced By My Billionaire Nemesis: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The hallway was as warm as the guest room, even the floor warm to the touch, and yet for a moment a chill collected at the base of my spine like an unwelcome warning. The penthouse was still dark except for the soft amber light glowing in a corner of the living area, casting long shadows across the polished floor. I stepped carefully, the hem of his shirt brushing my thighs, my bare feet silent against the wood. The migraine had faded into a dull echo, but the tension crawling slowly up my neck made it hard to tell whether the ache belonged to my body or the situation. The air itself felt watchful, as though the space around me was holding its breath and waiting for something to break.I moved toward the faint sound of something—small, repetitive, almost gentle. It took several seconds for my mind to place the rhythm. A spoon tapping lightly against porcelain. The quiet hiss of water just off the boil. A soft clink of glass. I followed the sounds like a trail, half afraid of finding h

Adrian woke before dawn.Habit, not rest, pulled him out of sleep—years of conditioning forcing his mind to surface before his body was ready. His breath steadied first, slow and controlled. Then awareness spread through him in a cold, steady wave.Warmth pressed faintly against his side.Unfamiliar warmth.He turned his head—and froze.Lena lay inches from him.Her dark lashes fanned softly against her cheeks, her breath slow and even, lips parted slightly in the easy rhythm of deep sleep. A strand of hair had fallen across her mouth, and one hand rested near his pillow—curled loosely, fragile, trusting without meaning to.She must have drifted toward him in the night.The realization struck like a low, uninvited voltage down his spine.He should move.He should put distance between them.He should retreat to the rigid lines he redrew yesterday with every cold word and decisive action.But he didn’t move.He simply watched the rise and fall of her breathing—small, soft, unguarded. Sh

The penthouse was cold when I stepped inside, not in temperature but in atmosphere—quiet, stainless, untouched, as if I were entering a place that had never expected me to return. The lights glowed softly along the entryway molding, reflecting in the polished marble floors. I stood there for a moment without moving, as if crossing the threshold had somehow changed me. Maybe it had. Nothing about me felt the same as it had this morning.Adrian’s voice still echoed in my mind, clipped and dismissive, as if the tenderness in the atrium had been a shared hallucination. The lock clicked behind me, sealing me inside a world that wasn’t mine and never would be, no matter how many contracts I signed or rings I wore. I stripped off my coat slowly, placing it over the arm of a sleek chair, and wandered deeper inside. The penthouse smelled faintly of cedar and something colder—sterile like a hotel suite, but more deliberate, like everything here had been chosen, placed, curated.My phone buzzed

I didn’t move at first.The door had slammed, the frame still trembling, but the silence afterward was so absolute that it felt like a vacuum. My back slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, my knees pulled to my chest, breath trembling in and out of me like it was trying to escape too.I don’t know how long I stayed there.Long enough for the shock to dissolve into pain.Long enough for pain to slide into humiliation.Long enough for humiliation to swell into something sharp enough to breathe.When I finally stood, my legs threatened to give out. I pushed myself into the bathroom and locked the door behind me—not because I thought he’d come in, but because I needed one place in this penthouse where his voice couldn’t reach me.The mirror was merciless.Red nose.Blotchy cheeks.Eyes swollen, still shimmering with tears.I braced both hands on the counter, leaned forward, and let the sobs come—silent at first, then ragged, my chest folding in on itself. My reflection blur

The cold night air hit me first.Not harshly—just enough to remind me that the room we’d left behind was too warm, too full of polished surfaces and curated smiles. Adrian walked ahead to speak with the valet, his posture straight, composed, already in control of whatever came next.My mother drifted toward him, chatting softly, still flushed with excitement.My father lingered.He watched them for a long moment—Adrian’s expensive coat catching the light, my mother glowing under it—before he turned to me.“Walk with me for a second,” he murmured.I nodded.We stepped toward the edge of the courtyard where the restaurant’s lights bled into the snow-dusted pavement. The fountain behind us whispered, a low hush of water that made everything else seem farther away.My father didn’t speak at first.He rubbed his hands together, the way he always did when he was nervous, or cold, or thinking harder than he wanted anyone to notice. His coat was too thin for this weather. He hadn’t bought a n