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หน้าหลัก / Romance / The Billionaire's Debt-Bride / บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

บททั้งหมดของ The Billionaire's Debt-Bride: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

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Chapter 1

The rain in the city didn’t wash things clean, it just turned the dirt into a slick, suffocating mud. Aara stood outside the towering glass monolith of Thorne Enterprises, her cheap floral dress soaked through to her skin. Her hands trembled, not just from the biting chill of the wind, but from the weight of the legal folder tucked under her arm. Inside those pages was the death warrant of her family’s legacy a foreclosure notice signed by a man who had never even met her. Damian Thorne. The name alone felt like a bruise. He was the "Vulture of Wall Street," a man who bought struggling companies just to tear them apart for scrap. And today, he had finally reached her father’s small printing press. I’m sorry, Miss, but Mr. Thorne doesn't see anyone without an appointment, the security guard said for the third time. He looked at her with a mix of pity and boredom. Please, Aara’s voice cracked. My father is in the hospital. If he loses the press, he loses his will to live. I just nee
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Chapter 2

The hospital smelled like ozone and slow-fading hope.Aara walked down the corridor of the ICU, her wet shoes squeaking against the linoleum. Every step felt like she was dragging a lead weight. Through the glass window of Room 402, she saw her father. He looked so small beneath the white sheets, his chest rising and falling only because of the rhythmic wheeze of the ventilator.Miss Vance?Aara turned. Dr. Aris was standing there, looking at a tablet with a frown that made her stomach drop.I’ve been trying to reach you, he said softly. The billing department just flagged your account. The insurance provider... they’ve denied the claim for the next round of treatments. They’re saying the policy was terminated this morning.Aara felt the air leave her lungs. The policy was tied to the company. Thorne Enterprises bought the company this morning. They... they canceled everything.The doctor sighed, a sound of genuine pity. Without the specialized treatment, his lungs won't hold. We can
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Chapter 3

The elevator ride to the penthouse was silent, save for the hum of machinery that felt like it was vibrating in Aara’s very bones. When the doors slid open, she didn't step into a hallway; she stepped directly into Damian Thorne’s world.The space was vast, lit by recessed LEDs that cast a soft, clinical glow over everything. The air was perfectly tempered, smelling faintly of expensive air purifiers and the ghost of Damian’s sandalwood cologne."Your room is through the gallery," Damian said, walking past her without looking back. He draped his coat over the back of a chair that probably cost more than her father’s car. "The housekeeper has already been informed. You will find everything you need inside."Aara followed him, her wet shoes leaving small, pathetic puddles on the pristine marble floor. She felt like an ink blot on a clean sheet of paper messy, unwanted, and glaringly obvious.She found the third door on the left and pushed it open. Her breath hitched.The room was larger
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Chapter 4

The vanity mirror in the penthouse suite was framed by soft, golden lights that made Aara look like a stranger to herself. The girl who had been scrubbing ink off her fingers in a cramped printing press forty-eight hours ago was gone. In her place was a woman draped in silver silk, her hair pinned up in a sophisticated chignon that exposed the elegant line of her neck.On that neck sat a diamond necklace that cost more than her father’s life saving surgery. It felt like a cold, heavy shackle.Stop fidgeting, Damian’s voice came from the doorway.He was dressed in a midnight-blue tuxedo that made him look like a dark god. He walked toward her, his reflection looming over hers in the glass. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of matching diamond earrings. Without asking, he leaned down, his fingers brushing against her earlobe as he fastened them.His touch sent a traitorous spark through her. Aara hated how her body reacted to him how her pulse quickened whenever he steppe
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Chapter 5

The penthouse was silent when Aara returned, the sprawling city lights outside the glass walls feeling more like a distant galaxy than a neighborhood. She stripped off the silver silk dress, her skin cold where Damian’s hands had lingered earlier that evening.Sleep was impossible. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the dark, hungry look in Damian’s eyes on the balcony.Thirsty and restless, she slipped on the cream silk robe and padded softly toward the kitchen. As she passed the heavy oak doors of Damian’s private study, she noticed a sliver of light spilling onto the marble floor. The door was slightly ajar.She should have kept walking. Rule number four echoed in her head: The husband retains the right to request the wife’s presence at any time. But curiosity, a trait that had always gotten her into trouble, pulled her toward the light.She peered inside. The room was a mess of leather-bound books and glowing computer monitors. Damian wasn't at his desk. He was sitting on the
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Chapter 6

The sunlight hitting the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Thorne penthouse was aggressive. It didn't gently wake the city, it stripped away the soft, forgiving shadows of the night before, exposing every crack in the marble and every lie in Aara’s new life.Aara woke up entangled in charcoal silk sheets that felt like cool water against her skin. For a few seconds, she forgot where she was. She reached out for the familiar, lumpy mattress of her old apartment, expecting to smell the faint scent of printing ink and cheap coffee. Instead, she inhaled the sterile, expensive scent of jasmine and air filtration.Then, the memory of the night before hit her like a physical blow.Damian. The study. The photo of the old printing press.She remembered the way his guard had dropped, the way his eyes hadn't looked like ice, but like scorched earth. For a moment, she had seen the man behind the "Vulture." She had seen a boy who had been forced to grow claws to survive. She had felt a pull toward h
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Chapter 7

The service elevator smelled of industrial cleaner and damp cardboard a stark, grounding contrast to the jasmine-scented air of the penthouse. Aara pressed her back against the cold metal wall, her heart drumming a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She had slipped past the primary security detail by timing the shift change Damian’s head of security, Marcus, had mentioned during breakfast.She felt like a criminal in her own life. Every time the elevator chimed at a floor, she flinched, expecting Damian to step in, his eyes burning with the fury of a man whose "property" was escaping.But the doors opened to the rainy delivery bay, not the lobby. Aara pulled her trench coat tighter, the hood low over her eyes, and stepped out into the gray New York afternoon. The cold rain felt glorious. It was the first thing in three days that Damian Thorne didn't provide for her, and she drank in the damp air like it was oxygen after a long period of suffocation.The Willow Cafe was a hole-in-the-wal
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Chapter 8

The silence in the penthouse over the next twenty-four hours was heavy, like the air before a terminal lightning strike. Damian didn't speak to her. He didn't even look at her. He moved through the vast, marble halls like a ghost of the man she had seen in the study, his presence marked only by the sharp click of his Italian leather shoes and the low, urgent murmurs of his phone calls.Aara was a prisoner in every sense of the word. A guard stood outside her bedroom door, and another sat in the kitchen whenever she went for water. She felt the walls of the "gilded cage" shrinking, the luxury of the silk robes now feeling like a shroud.At 6:00 PM, a team of stylists arrived. They worked in silence, their faces masks of professional indifference as they painted Aara’s face and pinned her hair into a style that felt too tight, pulling at her scalp. They dressed her in a gown of deep, midnight velvet. It was backless, the fabric clinging to her curves like a second skin, held up by nothi
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Chapter 9

The glittering lights of the ballroom felt like shards of glass in Aara’s eyes. The music, once elegant, now sounded like a funeral dirge. She stood on the balcony, the cold night air lashing at her bare back, her hands shaking so violently she nearly dropped her phone. The image of the hooded figure in her father’s hospital room burned into her brain.She didn't think. She didn't calculate. She turned and ran back into the ballroom, weaving through the silk-clad bodies and the scent of expensive perfume until she found the dark pillar of a man she had spent the last week hating.Damian was mid-sentence with a high-ranking senator, his face a mask of polite boredom. When Aara grabbed his arm, her nails digging into the expensive wool of his tuxedo, his entire body stiffened."Damian," she gasped, her voice a broken whisper. "Now. Please."The Senator raised an eyebrow, but Damian didn't wait for an explanation. He saw the sheer terror in Aara’s eyes the kind of look that couldn't be f
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chapter 10

The flatline was a physical blow, a high-pitched scream of electronics that seemed to tear through the very fabric of the room. "Dad!" Aara’s voice was a ragged shriek. She lunged for the bed, her hands hovering over her father’s still chest as if she could physically push the life back into him. "No, no, no! Dad, breathe! Please, breathe!" The room was suddenly a chaotic swarm of blue scrubs and white coats. A "Code Blue" was called over the intercom, the mechanical voice sounding chillingly calm against the backdrop of Aara’s sobbing. Damian didn't freeze. While the doctors swarmed the bed with a crash cart, he grabbed Aara by the waist, his arms like bands of steel, and hauled her back to give the medical team space. "Let me go! He’s dying, Damian! Let me go!" she screamed, thrashing against him. "Aara, look at me!" Damian spun her around, his hands gripping her shoulders so hard his knuckles were white. He forced her to meet his eyes. His Ice King mask was gone, replaced by
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