บททั้งหมดของ Contractually Yours: บทที่ 151 - บทที่ 160

Author's POVJem did not know he was dreaming.That was the strange part. There was no moment of confusion, no blurry edges, no feeling of unreality. Everything was simply there — present and clear and vivid in a way that ordinary dreams never were.He was standing in an open space that had no name and no era.Not ancient. Not modern. Just vast and still, the way a place feels when time has decided not to apply to it. The ground beneath his feet was solid. The air carried a warmth that had no source. Above him, the sky was neither day nor night — just a deep, luminous quiet, like the moment between one breath and the next.And in the distance, there was a figure.Tall. Still. Dressed in robes that belonged to no specific century — heavy fabric, deep in color, moving slightly though there was no wind.Jem looked at the figure.And the figure turned.The face was not his own.But it carried something of him. Something in the line of the jaw. Something deep in the eyes — a particular ste

Author's POV The morning was still gray when Dante began getting ready.Jem sat on the edge of the bed and watched him move through the room with the same controlled efficiency he brought to everything. Jacket. Cufflinks. The quiet, practiced routine of a man who had been doing this alone for a very long time.Dante stood in front of the mirror and reached for his collar.Jem stood up.He did not think about it. He crossed the room and reached up and adjusted the collar himself—straightening it, smoothing it flat with two fingers. A small, automatic gesture. The kind that belonged to people who had been living beside each other long enough that the line between my space and yours had quietly dissolved.He did not realize what he had done until Dante went still.Completely still.Jem looked up.Dante was watching him in the mirror. Not with surprise exactly. With something quieter than that. Something that looked like a man who had just been handed something he did not know how to hol

Author's POV The car pulled through the gates an hour later.Jem was already standing at the entrance when it arrived. He had not been able to sit still since the call from Shark — he had paced, stood at the window, paced again, until finally he had simply planted himself at the front door and waited.The car stopped.The door opened.Dante stepped out.There was a cut above his temple, dried at the edges, a thin line of red against his skin. His wrist was wrapped in a bandage, his jacket sleeve pushed up slightly to make room for it. His suit was torn at the shoulder. But he was walking. Steady. Upright.And his expression already carried something hard and certain behind it — the look of a man who did not need confirmation to already know exactly who was responsible.Then he saw Jem.And something in him shifted.Because Jem was not standing there steady. Jem's face was pale, his eyes rimmed red, his whole body holding itself together through sheer will rather than calm. Dante had

Author's POV It took three days.Shark came into the study that morning with the kind of quiet that meant he had something to report."We found her," he said.Dante looked up from the documents in front of him."A small hotel in the city," Shark continued. "She's alone. No new movement on her phone records since she checked in. No contact with the people she was working with — nothing since the day of the accident." He paused. "She hasn't gone anywhere. She's just sitting there."Dante was quiet for a long moment."Send me the address," he said.Shark nodded, already expecting the next instruction — security detail, a plan for retrieval, something procedural.It did not come."I'm going alone," Dante said.Shark's expression shifted. "Boss—""Alone," Dante repeated. Final. Calm. "No security. No you." He stood, reaching for his jacket. "This isn't that kind of conversation."***Jem heard about it twenty minutes later, after Dante had already left.He stood in the hallway with Shark,

Author's POV The road leading to the shrine narrowed the further they drove, until the paved surface gave way to packed earth and the trees grew close enough on either side to brush against the windows.Dante parked at the edge of a clearing.They stepped out together.The place did not look like much from a distance — overgrown grass, old stone half-swallowed by moss, a quiet so complete that even the wind seemed to move carefully through it. But the moment Jem's feet touched the ground inside the clearing, something happened.He felt it instantly.A shift in the air. A pressure, gentle but unmistakable, settling around him like the place itself had turned to look at him.He stopped walking."You feel it," Dante said. It was not a question.Jem nodded slowly. "Yes."He walked further in, drawn forward without entirely meaning to be, until he reached the center of the shrine space — a wide, flat stone circle, weathered by centuries, surrounded by the remains of pillars that had long