บททั้งหมดของ Contractually Yours: บทที่ 131 - บทที่ 140

Author's POV Cruz didn’t fully back off fast enough, and as he tried to come closer again, Mara didn’t hesitate. Her hand snapped up in one sharp, controlled motion, and she slapped him across the face so hard the sound echoed through the room and hung in the air between them for a moment too long. The sound stunned him for a second. “Mara—” “Get out,” she cut him off immediately, her breathing uneven now, eyes burning with rage and something deeper she refused to name. “Get out of my room. Now.” Cruz stood there for a moment, his hand slowly moving to his jaw, staring at her like he couldn’t decide whether he was angry, hurt, or both at once. Then his expression tightened, and he gave a short nod like he had finally accepted something he didn’t want to. “Yeah,” he said quietly, voice rough. “I should’ve stopped coming here a long time ago.” He turned sharply, grabbed the door, and pulled it open before stepping out into the hallway. For a brief second he paused outside, his

Author's POV But the truth between them was older, sharper, and far more complicated than that. Years ago, before Dante had fully inherited the Williams empire and before Samson had solidified his name in the darker layers of the city’s underworld, their paths had crossed in a place neither of them ever spoke about openly. Dante had been younger then, still learning how to navigate the violent intersections between legacy and survival, while Samson was already moving quietly through the underground networks that connected politics, crime, and influence like invisible threads. They had not met as enemies, and they had not met as friends either. They had met as necessities to each other, two dangerous systems briefly intersecting when a shared enemy forced them into the same shadowed operation. It had been a weapons corridor case—one of the early cracks in what would later become known as the Hale network—where intelligence leaks were bleeding into both legal and illegal channels

Author's POV By the time evening settled over the Williams estate, the change in atmosphere was already there, not announced and not visible, but present in the way a room feels different once a stranger has truly been allowed inside it. Especially one whose presence is too composed, too deliberate, and too difficult to ignore in a place that was never built for uncertainty. Samson’s presence had not disrupted the structure of the house outright, but it had altered the way the air felt between its occupants, as though every conversation now had to pass through him before it could fully exist. Dinner that night was arranged in the main dining hall, a long polished table lit by warm overhead lighting that softened nothing about the tension seated around it. Dante sat at one end with his usual composed stillness, Jem beside him more quiet than usual, Madam Frost maintaining her gentle but observant demeanor, and Mara seated across with carefully controlled indifference that did not

Author's POV Morning came quietly at the estate, not with urgency but with a slow, heavy calm that seemed to settle over every corner of the grounds. Jem was already in the garden when the light began to spread, sitting on the edge of a stone bench as though he had not moved there consciously but had simply drifted into place sometime after dawn. Dante had left earlier for a meeting inside the mansion, his absence already forming that familiar quiet pressure in the space around Jem, the kind that made time feel longer than it actually was. Jem’s hands were loosely clasped together, resting between his knees, his gaze fixed on the grass ahead without truly seeing it, as though his thoughts were somewhere far beyond the estate itself. He had only just begun to settle into the silence when footsteps approached across the gravel path, slow and unhurried, breaking through the calm with deliberate ease. Samson appeared in Jem’s peripheral vision before Jem even fully turned his he

Author's POV The quietness inside the estate did not feel peaceful that afternoon. It felt watchful. Like the entire mansion had become too aware of itself after everything Samson had quietly left behind in the garden earlier that morning. Jem was still sitting outside when the distant sound of footsteps finally echoed from inside the mansion again, followed shortly by the soft opening of the back doors leading toward the garden terrace. He looked up instinctively. It was Dante. He had removed his suit jacket at some point during the meeting upstairs, the sleeves of his black shirt folded slightly past his wrists now, exposing the faint veins along his forearms. Yet despite the calmer appearance, exhaustion still clung to him in ways that had become increasingly difficult to hide lately. There was tension around his eyes again, the kind that never fully disappeared anymore no matter how controlled his expression remained. The second Dante stepped outside fully, his gaze found