All Chapters of Bullied Wife In A Contract Marriage : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

~ Amara ~I did not leave the apartment right away. I stood in the small kitchen and watched Gideon. He stayed at the sink, rubbing his palms together under a stream of cold water. He used a thick layer of soap, but he did not seem to notice the bubbles. He looked like he was trying to wash away a stain that went deeper than the skin. The apartment usually smelled like the bakery on the corner, full of yeast and sugar. Today, that smell was gone. It was replaced by something heavy and floral. It was the scent of white lilies. It was Chloe Vance’s perfume. It hung in the air like a physical weight, pressing against my lungs. I walked to the chair near the pine table and picked up Gideon’s dark wool sweater. I held the sleeve to my nose. The scent was stronger there. It was sweet and sharp. It was the smell of a world I thought we had left behind."The water is cold, Gideon," I said. My voice was a flat line. It did not shake.He stopped scrubbing but did not turn around. "I know.""Why

~ Amara ~I walked through the small side door of the warehouse. The air inside was cool. It smelled like diesel and old dust. I did not turn on the main lights. The dim emergency bulbs cast long shadows over the blue trucks. My heels clicked on the concrete. The sound was loud in the empty bay. I went to the middle of the loading dock and stopped. I looked at the floor. I felt the weight of the black velvet dress on my shoulders. It was a beautiful dress. Now it felt like a heavy shroud. I remembered the ballroom. I remembered the cloying smell of white lilies. I remembered the way Chloe's hand rested on Gideon's arm. Most of all, I remembered his face. He had looked at his glass while she told the room he was her lover. He had stayed quiet. That silence followed me all the way to Linden Row. It felt like a physical thing. It sat in the back of my car. Now it sat here with me in the dark.I heard a car pull up outside. The engine was smooth and expensive. It was the sedan Gideon had

~ Chloe ~ The taste of bile was the first thing I felt this morning. It was a jagged, bitter reminder that my body was no longer entirely my own. I leaned over the white marble sink in my hotel suite, gasping for air as the room tilted. The Grand Hotel provided the best of everything, but they could not provide a cure for this specific biological reality. I wiped my lips with a cool, damp cloth and stared at my reflection. I looked tired. There were faint shadows under my eyes that even the best concealer could not fully hide. But beneath the fatigue, there was a hum of electric triumph. I was not just sick. I was pregnant with the future of the Moore empire. Six weeks. The math was perfect. It led straight back to that night in the Grand Hotel suite. It was the night Gideon Moore reminded me why he belonged to the tower and not the bakery. "You look pale, Ms. Vance," my assistant noted as she handed me a glass of iced water. "I am fine, Elena. It is just the price of victory," I r

~ Amara ~ “The math is quite simple, Amara, if you bother to count the weeks,” Chloe said, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of my studio. I didn’t move. My fingers were still hovering over the digital ultrasound she had placed on my drafting table. The paper felt cold. The image was a grainy blur of gray and black. I saw the small, flickering pulse Chloe had pointed to with her manicured finger. It was a life. It was a Moore heir. It was the one thing a contract could never truly capture, yet here it was, being used as a closing argument. My lungs felt tight, as if the air in the room had suddenly turned to liquid. I stared at the date printed in the corner of the scan. It matched the night Gideon didn't come home. It was the night he spent at the Grand Hotel while I sat by the window in Linden Row, waiting for the sound of his engine. “Six weeks,” I whispered. “Exactly,” Chloe replied. She leaned against the edge of my drafting table with a casual grace. She didn’t car

~ Noah Kline ~I climbed the stairs to Amara’s studio two at a time. My heavy boots felt like iron weights on the old, warped wood of the landing. I had been calling her phone for a full hour, but she wasn't picking up. The air in the narrow hallway felt incredibly still. It was far too quiet for a Tuesday afternoon in Linden Row. I reached her door and found it unlocked. That was the first red flag. Amara always locked the door now. She had learned the hard way that the world didn't respect boundaries. I pushed the door open and stopped dead in my tracks.The studio looked like a violent war zone. I didn't see Amara at first. My eyes went straight to the center of the room. The large painting she had been working on for weeks was in shattered pieces. The heavy wood frame was snapped in half. Jagged shards of glass covered the floor like spilled, sharp diamonds. The canvas was ripped right through the middle of the honey-colored sun. It lay there on the dark hardwood, looking like a d