All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Ellie's POV"There is one more thing I need to tell you before this baby arrives, and I need you to let me finish before you say anything at all," Rose said, sitting across from me at my own kitchen table, her tea going cold and untouched between her hands.Six weeks of bed rest had taught me patience I never knew I possessed, and I had grown used to Rose visiting daily, fussing over me in ways that made the confinement almost bearable. She had taken to bringing small things each visit, a new magazine, a slice of something from the bakery I was not supposed to want but always did, little offerings that made the long, slow days feel less like a sentence and more like being tended.But something about her voice this afternoon was different, careful in a way I had only heard once before, that night in the hospital."You said soon," I reminded her gently. "I have been waiting."Rose took a slow breath, her eyes drifting toward the window before finally settling back on me. "Before I marri

Nathan's POV"Sir, the number is already dead. Whoever sent that photograph made sure of that before you even opened it," my head of security said quietly, and something cold moved through my chest.I had not slept. I had spent the whole night in the chair beside Ellie's hospital bed, watching Rosie's small chest rise and fall in that impossibly fast newborn rhythm, and every few minutes my thumb had gone back to that photograph without my permission. Edward Cross and Walter Hartman, young and laughing outside a bakery that had not changed in forty years. Some promises outlive everyone who made them. Watch closely, Nathan."Trace it anyway," I said, keeping my voice low so it would not carry down the hallway. "Prepaid, burner, I do not care. Someone bought that phone somewhere, and somewhere means a camera, a receipt, a face on a screen.""I already tried," he said, and I could hear the frustration under his usual calm. "The number was purchased with cash three days ago and disconnect

Nathan's POV"There is no second letter," Rose said, too quickly, her hands going still around her coffee cup in a way that told me exactly the opposite of what she had just claimed.We had gathered in Ellie's kitchen the next morning, Rosie asleep upstairs with a monitor humming softly on the table between us, Marcus and Sophie seated across from Rose, all of us watching her face for the smallest crack in a story she had insisted, only days ago, was finally complete. Sunlight came in slanted through the window, catching the steam rising off untouched mugs of coffee that none of us had the appetite to drink."Rose," Ellie said gently, reaching for her grandmother's hand across the table. "The message specifically mentioned a second letter. Whoever is doing this knows something we do not, something you have not told even me."Rose's shoulders dropped, the fight visibly leaving her all at once, and for a moment she looked older than I had ever seen her, older than the day she told us ab

Nathan's POV"You have exactly one reason to be standing on my porch," the woman said, arms crossed tightly, eyes sharp with a wariness that looked painfully familiar, "and if it is money, you can turn around right now and save us both the conversation."I had not expected her to look so much like my father. The same steady gaze, the same way of going still before speaking, the same stubborn set to her jaw that Rose had once said belonged to Edward himself, decades before any of us were born into the mess he had left behind. Caroline Wren stood in the doorway of a modest house forty minutes from Ellie's bakery, and every instinct told me this conversation could end our fragile new peace or begin something none of us yet understood."It is not money," Ellie said gently, stepping slightly ahead of me, her voice carrying the same warmth she used with frightened strangers in the bakery, the ones who wandered in cold and uncertain and left with something warm in their hands. "My name is El

Nathan's POV"Drive faster," I said, gripping the door handle hard enough to hurt, "or tell me now and I will drive myself, Marcus, I mean it."Ellie sat rigid beside me in the back seat, her knuckles white against her knees, both of us watching the city blur past too slowly while Marcus pushed the car through every yellow light between Caroline's house and the one place in the world that mattered more to us right now than anything else on earth."Rose has security with her," Marcus said, eyes fixed on the road, hands steady on the wheel despite the speed. "I called the moment Caroline showed us that message. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing will happen, Nathan, I promise you that much.""You do not know that," Ellie said, her voice shaking, fear making it thin. "You do not know what a young man three weeks deep into anger is capable of doing when he finally stands in the exact place his family history quietly began without him."I reached for her hand, though my own was not entirely