All Chapters of Contractually Yours: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

160 Chapters

Contractually Yours

Author's POV Mara did not rush.That was the thing about her that most people never understood. She was not impulsive. She did not act out of anger or emotion or desperation, even when all three of those things were sitting inside her chest at the same time.She acted out of calculation.And she had been calculating this for a very long time.***The folder on her desk was thin.It did not look like much. A few printed pages. Some handwritten notes in the margins. Dates, times, names written in her neat, careful handwriting.But every single detail in it had cost her something to collect.Dante's travel schedule for the next three weeks — pulled from careful observation and a source inside the logistics team she had cultivated quietly over months.His security rotation patterns — she had watched long enough to know which hours had the thinnest coverage, which guards rotated at what time, which gaps existed in the pattern that Dante himself probably never thought to question.The timi

Contractually Yours

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

Contractually Yours

Author's POV Shark did not come to Dante with rumors.He was not that kind of man. He dealt in verified information, confirmed movements, names he could trace. So when he knocked on the study door that morning and closed it behind him without being asked, Dante knew immediately that whatever he was carrying was worth paying attention to.Shark placed a single printed page on the desk."This came from one of my contacts in the intelligence network," he said. "Last night."Dante picked it up.He read it without expression.The information was thin — whispers moving through certain criminal channels about activity near the Williams business routes. Nothing specific enough to call a confirmed threat. But specific enough in one detail that made everything else secondary.The date matched Thursday.Dante set the page down."How reliable is this contact?""Reliable enough that I'm standing here," Shark said.Dante was quiet for a moment. He leaned back slightly in his chair, his eyes moving

Contractually Yours

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

Contractually Yours

Author's POV It started with a phone.A maid's phone, buzzing on the kitchen counter, a notification lighting up the screen. She glanced at it without thinking. Then she looked again.Her face changed.She did not finish what she was doing. She left it. She moved fast through the hallway, her footsteps loud against the floor, her voice already breaking before she reached the sitting room."Dante Williams— " she said, breathless, the words tumbling out wrong, too fast. "I just saw it—they're saying he's— "She did not finish the sentence.She did not need to.Jem heard it from across the room and his entire body went cold.Not warm-cold. Not nervous-cold.Cold like something inside him had simply stopped working correctly."What did you say?" he asked. His voice did not sound like his own.The maid looked at him, realizing too late what room she had walked into, who she was standing in front of. "It's on the news," she said weakly. "A car accident. They're saying — ""No."The word ca

Contractually Yours

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

Contractually Yours

Author's POV By the time the sun set, Dante had already turned the entire estate into a command center.He sat at the head of the long table in the study, three phones in front of him, Shark standing at his side with a notepad full of instructions that kept growing by the minute. Dante's voice never rose. He did not raise his hands. He did not pace.He was simply, completely cold and precise."Pull every contact connected to her since the university years," he said. "Every name, every number, every account she's ever touched. I want her movement pattern in the last six months.""Already started," Shark said."Airports, train stations, private transport — flag anything connected to her name or any alias she might use.""On it.""And find out who she called." Dante's eyes were steady, dark, focused. "Whoever helped her plan this — they're the ones who matter more than she does right now."Shark nodded and left to make it happen.Across the room, Jem watched.He had seen Dante calm befo

Contractually Yours

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,

Contractually Yours

Author's POV Dante arrived back at the estate in the late afternoon, the light outside already softening into gold.Jem was waiting near the entrance, the way he always seemed to be waiting now whenever Dante left for something heavy. He did not ask anything right away. He simply watched Dante walk through the door and read what the day had cost him in the set of his shoulders."I saw her," Dante said."I know.""I told her everything that needed to be said." Dante's voice was quiet, worn at the edges in a way Jem had rarely heard. "The inheritance is gone. She can't come back to the estate. I'm not pressing charges." A pause. "She cried. Really cried. Not the version she's used before."Jem listened.He did not ask for more detail than that. He did not push for the exact words, the exact moments, the parts that clearly still sat heavy in Dante's chest. He understood, somehow, that some things did not need to be fully spoken to be carried together.Instead, he simply stepped closer.

Contractually Yours

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

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