All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Ellie's POV"Just answer it, Ellie. Please." Nathan's voice was steady, but his hand on my shoulder was not. "Whatever it is, we face it together. That has never changed."The phone had rung three more times since midnight. Every time I reached for it, my thumb hovered over the green circle and then pulled away, like touching it might make whatever was on the other end real. I told myself it was nothing. A wrong number. A telemarketer with no sense of time. But some part of me, the part that had learned to trust its own fear during two years of Gerald's schemes, knew better than to believe that so easily."It could be spam," I said, setting the phone face down on the counter as if that would make it quiet. "People call at strange hours all the time."Nathan did not argue, but he did not look convinced either. He crossed the kitchen and picked the phone up himself, studying the screen the way he used to study contracts before he signed them, searching for the clause hidden in fine prin

Ellie's POV"Tell me honestly," Claire said, her voice trembling in the doorway of the bakery's back room. "Would this family be safer if I had never answered that letter at all."I had not expected to find her there before opening, standing among the half finished renovation of the family table Rose had dreamed about for years, her coat still buttoned as though she had not fully decided whether to stay. Word of Gerald's claim had reached her overnight, the same way it had reached everyone, quietly and then all at once."Do not say that," I told her, crossing the room before she could take the question any further into herself. "None of this is because of you, Claire. It is because of a man who has spent his entire life looking for a door he could force open.""But I am the door," she said, and her voice broke on the last word. "My mother's whole existence is the loophole he is using. If I had stayed a stranger, none of this would have surfaced at all."I understood, suddenly and comp

Ellie's POV"I have kept that letter locked away for forty years," Rose said, her voice trembling in a way I had never once heard from her. "And you are asking me to hand it to strangers who will decide what it means without ever having lived a single day of it."We sat together in the back room of the bakery long after closing, the half finished family table between us covered in sawdust instead of supper for the first time in weeks. I had rehearsed a dozen gentle ways to ask her, and every single one of them evaporated the moment I saw the look on her face."You do not have to do this," I said quickly. "We will find another way, Grandma. We always do.""No," she said, shaking her head slowly. "You will not find another way, and we both know it. Marcus is right. I am the only one left who remembers what your grandfather's face looked like the day he wrote that letter, sitting right where you are sitting now, telling me the debt did not matter anymore, that friendship was the only thi

Nathan's POV"I did not come here to apologize," Vanessa said, standing stiffly in the hospital doorway. "I came here because I still owe your family a debt I never finished paying, and I am done letting Gerald decide when that debt gets settled."I stepped between her and Ellie's bed instinctively, old instincts dying harder than I wanted to admit even now. "This is not the time," I said sharply. "Whatever you came to say can wait until my wife is not lying in a hospital bed because of the stress your family's board seat has caused her.""It cannot wait," Vanessa said, and something in her voice, tired and stripped of all its old polish, made me pause. "Gerald's new lawyer is my father's oldest friend. That is not a coincidence, Nathan. My father is funding this claim personally, and he is doing it because he still believes if the marriage collapses, I get a second chance at the seat he always wanted me to have beside you."Ellie pushed herself up slightly against the pillows, her vo

Nathan's POV"You look surprised to see me standing here," Gerald said, straightening his jacket as we entered the courtroom. "I would have thought you learned by now, Nathan, that I never actually leave quietly."I did not answer him. Two years ago his voice alone could still unsettle me, a leftover echo of every family dinner where he had quietly undermined my father while smiling for the cameras. Now it simply sounded tired, a man performing confidence he no longer fully owned."You look tired yourself, Nathan," Gerald pressed, undeterred by my silence. "Fatherhood on the way, a company under legal review, a wife who nearly collapsed in a bakery kitchen. It is a great deal for one man to carry. I could have made this simple for you, once. You only ever had to let me help.""Your version of help cost my father his peace of mind for the last ten years of his life," I said quietly. "I will manage without it."Gerald's smile did not waver, but something behind his eyes flickered, a fla