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All Chapters of No Escape from the Billionaire’s Contract: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

146 Chapters

Read the Report

Then, carefully, so as not to wake her, he slid it free. It was a note. Handwritten, the ink faded with age, folded in quarters like it had been carried in someone's pocket for a long time before it was ever filed away. One sentence. If anything happens to me, don't trust Harrison Mercer. Kaelen's breath stopped. He read it again, certain he'd misunderstood, certain the light in the office was playing some trick on the handwriting. It wasn't. He knew this handwriting. He'd known it his entire life, had seen it on birthday cards and contracts and the margins of a hundred books in his father's study, on the inside cover of the watch he still wore every single day without ever once explaining to anyone why. It wasn't Evelyn's, It was his father's. Kaelen didn't sleep. He sat in the chair across from his own desk for the rest of the night, the note still open in his hand, reading the same six words over and over until they stopped looking like his father's handwriting and started

Remove the Queen

"We're not denying this," Zariel said, twenty minutes later, standing at a podium she'd never expected to occupy, camera flashes catching against the glass wall behind her. "Sterling Global's healthcare technology subsidiary experienced a security breach eleven hours ago. That is true, and I won't pretend otherwise." A ripple moved through the assembled press. She'd expected that and she'd planned for it. "What I will also tell you," she continued, her voice steady despite the roar of her own pulse in her ears, "is that no customer data, no patient records, no billing information, no personal information of any kind was compromised in this incident. The affected system was an internal testing environment, isolated from our live infrastructure specifically for situations like this one." "How can you be certain of that?" a reporter called out. "Your own subsidiary's initial statement said otherwise." "Because I read the incident report myself, in full, this morning, before making an

The Blackwood Crest

"This was Evelyn's," Kaelen said quietly. "The pen she used to sign every major agreement she ever negotiated for this company. I locked it away after she died. I couldn't look at it, and I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it either, so it just sat in a vault for eleven years, waiting for something I didn't have a name for." Zariel looked up at him, something tightening hard in her throat. "I was waiting," he said, "for someone worthy of it." It was, she understood immediately, the highest compliment he had ever given anyone in his life. She didn't trust her voice enough to answer him. She lifted the pen instead, turning it slowly in the lamplight, admiring the small, precise engraving along its cap, the elegant weight of it settling into her palm like it had been waiting for her hand specifically. That was when she saw it. Tiny letters, almost invisible, engraved into the metal beneath the clip, the kind of detail no one would ever notice unless they were holding the pen at

Rules of Society

"Kaelen." "I'm serious. There's no version of this where you owe Elodia Blackwood an evening of being picked apart in front of half the city." "If I hide," she said slowly, "they win. Every whisper Elodia's already planning to make about me at that gala gets to exist unanswered, because I wasn't in the room to answer it. Every story she tells becomes the only version anyone remembers, because I was too afraid to give them a different one." "Zariel…." "I'm not asking you to protect me from this." She met his eyes, steady, certain, setting the invitation down on the table between them like she was closing a negotiation of her own. "I'm telling you I'm not interested in surviving it. I want to conquer it." Kaelen studied her for a moment, something shifting behind his expression, surprise slowly giving way to something that looked almost like admiration. Then he nodded. "Then we'll make sure they regret inviting you." *** He didn't take her shopping. She'd half expected it, some

The Pearl Bracelet

The package arrived just past midnight. No courier logo. No return address. Just a plain brown box, small enough to fit in one hand, sitting on the entry table when Zariel came downstairs for water, as though it had simply materialized there while the house slept around it. She stared at it for a moment before touching it, some instinct she didn't have a name for prickling along the back of her neck. The house had a security team. Cameras on every entrance. There was no version of tonight where a stranger simply walked up and left a box on the table without triggering an alarm somewhere. Which meant whoever had left it wanted her to know that too. She should have called security immediately but she opened it instead. Inside, nestled in tissue paper gone soft and yellow with age, sat a bracelet. Vintage pearls, strung along a delicate gold chain, the kind of piece that belonged in a museum case rather than a cardboard box on an entry table at midnight. No note and no card, Just th

A Poisoned Welcome

This wasn’t just a social event; it was a battle for her place, for her identity, and for the man who now stood beside her, his presence a fortress against the world. As they stepped onto the red carpet, a ripple went through the crowd. The flashes intensified, a dizzying strobe light against the velvet ropes. Zariel felt Kaelen’s subtle squeeze, a silent command to hold her head high. She straightened her shoulders, a confident smile gracing her lips. She was Zariel Thorne, and tonight, she was Mrs. Sterling. The transformation was complete, at least on the surface. Beneath the designer gown and the carefully constructed composure, her heart hammered a frantic rhythm, a drumbeat of both fear and fierce determination. Inside the grand ballroom, a symphony of crystal chandeliers and hushed chatter, Kaelen leaned close, his voice a low murmur against her ear. "This isn’t a party, Zariel. It’s a chessboard disguised as a celebration." He began to quietly point out the hidden politics,

The Sealed Archive

"I am hiding several things," he said, already steering her toward the side corridor, his palm firm against the small of her back, "and at the moment I would very much prefer to hide them somewhere with fewer photographers. "She let him move her. It was easier than arguing, and some old, useful instinct in her recognized that this wasn't a moment to negotiate. She'd seen Kaelen furious. She'd seen him cold, calculating, cruelly precise in a boardroom. She had never seen him look like this. Behind them, she caught one final glimpse of the room. Harrison Mercer stood near the champagne fountain, his cane planted, his expression carved from the same pale, unreadable stone as always, except his eyes weren't on the empty screens anymore. They were on Kaelen's retreating back. Watching and cataloguing. The way a man watches something he expected to happen.---The car was silent for the first four blocks. Zariel sat with her hands folded in her lap, the pearl bracelet still cold agai

The Broadcast

The power dynamic had shifted, subtly but undeniably. Zariel wasn’t just surviving; she was thriving, turning Elodia’s weaponized snobbery into an opportunity to showcase her own strengths.Harrison Mercer, ever the opportunist, seized the moment of Elodia’s discomfiture. He moved with the practiced ease of a predator, approaching a circle of influential investors who had been observing Zariel’s unexpected triumph.His voice was low and grave, carefully calibrated to sow seeds of doubt without direct accusation. "One must question, gentlemen," he began, his gaze sweeping over the group, "whether Sterling Global’s leadership has become… emotional, rather than practical, in recent times. A CEO’s personal choices, after all, can reflect on the stability of the entire enterprise." He didn’t directly attack Zariel, but his implication was clear: Kaelen’s choice of wife was a liability, a sentimental indulgence that threatened the company’s bottom line.Several investors exchanged uneasy

Two Names

"I already work in a building where a man tried to steal our marriage certificate off his own desk," she said. "I already have a stalker who was photographing me before I ever knew your name existed. I am not a woman who gets to opt into safety at this point, Kaelen. I opted out the day I hit send on the wrong email. " She squeezed his hand once, hard. "So stop trying to protect me from the truth. Start letting me help you survive it. "---The penthouse was dark when they arrived, save for a single lamp burning in the front hall, left on by habit rather than instruction. Martha met them at the door in her robe, her hair loose from its usual tight bun, clearly roused from sleep by the sound of the private elevator. Her eyes went first to Zariel's face, then to Kaelen's, cataloguing the wreckage of the evening with the quiet efficiency of a woman who'd been reading this family's moods for a decade. "Rough night," she said, not quite a question. "You could say that," Zariel said. "I

What Remained Unsaid

"I don't think I can sleep. " "I didn't say sleep. " He crossed the room, stopping close enough that she could feel the warmth of him at her back without either of them quite closing the last few inches. "I said come to bed. There's a difference, and I find I would very much like to not be alone in a dark room with my father's handwriting tonight. "She turned, and something in his face stripped bare, unguarded, further from the ice-eyed CEO who'd once fired an assistant for using the wrong font than she'd ever seen him made the last of her own composure crack quietly down the middle. "Okay," she said softly. "Not alone. "He didn't reach for her hand this time. He simply turned off the desk lamp, plunging the study into the same dark that waited outside every window in the city, and let her walk beside him instead of ahead of him, the two of them moving together down a hallway that had, somewhere over the last month, stopped feeling like a corridor between two separate lives and st

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