Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Ellie's POV"I did not come here to gloat, and I did not come here to apologize either, because I am still deciding how much of what I did was actually my own choice," Vanessa said, standing in the hallway outside the boardroom after everyone else had scattered, her arms crossed tight against her chest like armor she had forgotten to take off.I had not expected her to follow me out here. After everything, the cold warnings at the engagement party, the calculated visits Gerald had used to plant doubt, I had assumed Vanessa would disappear back into whatever loyalty she owed her own family's board seat. Instead she stood there, uncertain in a way I had never seen from her, and something in her posture made me stop walking instead of brushing past her the way I might have a week ago."You spoke up for us in there," I said. "Twice. I did not expect that.""Neither did I," Vanessa admitted. "Gerald has been feeding me information for months, telling me exactly what to say to Nathan, exact

Ellie's POV"If either of you takes one more step toward this house, I promise you will regret it, because I have spent thirty years being underestimated by this family and I am done being patient with all of it," Gerald's voice called out from the porch, a shotgun broken open and resting casually across his arm, more warning than threat, though it did not feel that way standing in the dark at the edge of his headlights.Nathan had wanted to bring the police, and part of me had agreed with him right up until Marcus reminded us that a panicked man with something to lose might make a decision none of us could undo before backup ever arrived. Instead we came alone, headlights off for the last mile, the gravel driveway crunching too loudly under our feet in the silence of the woods surrounding the old lake house."Where is my sister, Gerald," Nathan called out, his voice carrying a calm I knew he did not feel, because his hand was shaking where it gripped mine."Safe," Gerald said. "Watch

Ellie's POV"Claire Whitfield transferred forty thousand dollars into an account linked to Gerald three weeks ago, and before you ask, yes, that is the same Claire Whitfield who sold your company's secrets to a rival five years ago, the woman you told me broke something in you that never fully healed," Marcus said over speakerphone, his voice tinny and urgent in the quiet of the car as we drove back from the lake house, Lily finally asleep between us.I watched Nathan's face change in the dashboard light, color draining from it the way it had in Marcus's office two days earlier, and felt my own stomach drop before he had even said a single word in response. Claire Whitfield. The name he had told me about their first week of marriage, sitting at the kitchen table with a rare, unguarded honesty, the woman who had taught him not to trust easily, the wound he carried underneath every careful, controlled version of himself I had come to know."That is not possible," Nathan said slowly. "I

Ellie’s POV“You do not have to decide tonight whether your marriage is over, Ellie, you just have to decide whether you can breathe in that apartment right now, and clearly you cannot,” Sophie said, setting a mug of tea in front of me on her small kitchen table.I wrapped both hands around the mug without drinking it, watching the steam curl up into the dark of Sophie’s apartment, and tried to remember the last time I had felt this tired. Not sleepy tired. Bone tired, the kind that settles into a person after months of bracing for the next attack, the next threat, the next secret waiting under the one that had just been uncovered.“I keep asking myself if I am being unfair,” I said. “He did not lie to me tonight. He told me the truth the second I asked.”“He told you the truth after Marcus forced it into the open,” Sophie said gently. “There is a difference between honesty and getting caught.”I flinched, because she was right, and because some stubborn part of me still wanted to def

Ellie’s POV“There is a part of this story I never told you, Ellie, because I promised your grandfather I would only tell it when you were ready to hear it, and I think that day is today,” Rose said, setting down her rolling pin and wiping her hands on her apron.I sat on the same stool I had perched on as a child, watching my grandmother move through the bakery kitchen that smelled like cinnamon and old flour, the one place in the entire city that still felt untouched by everything happening in the Cross family. I had come here straight from Sophie’s apartment, needing the one person who had never once asked me to be anyone other than exactly who I was.“Is this about the letter,” I asked. “About the debt between the families.”“It is about what came before the letter,” Rose said, sitting down across from me with a cup of tea she did not drink. “Your grandfather did not save Nathan’s grandfather’s company because he was a generous man doing a favor for a stranger. He did it because t