All Chapters of The Outlaw Bride’s Billionaire Trap: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

AaronThe board meeting lasted ninety minutes.For the first sixty, I did the talking. Vale's debt. Vance's donors. Margins. Exposure. Twelve men and three women in good suits listened to me with the faces of people trying to decide whether I had lost my mind.Then Charles Sterling asked the question all of them were thinking."With respect, Aaron. What does the girl actually bring us?"Raven had been sitting beside me for an hour in the emerald suit Elena had found her, saying nothing. She uncrossed her legs."Thirty percent of Vance Maritime," she said.The room went still."Non-voting shares," she went on, as if she were reading a grocery list. "My grandfather left them to me in a trust my father can't touch. Neither can I." She looked straight at Sterling. "Until I marry."Sterling's mouth opened. Nothing came out of it.I didn't let my face move. Inside, I was doing the same arithmetic as everyone else at that table, about four seconds faster.Thirty percent. Locked until she mar

AaronFrom the top floor of Empire Group, the streets looked like a circuit board. Light and money, moving in lines.I owned most of the board.And as of this morning, I had shut down the one man trying hardest to flip it over.Marcus Vance was bleeding out in the polls. His donors were scattering like roaches under a light. I was halfway through the first draft of the Vance Maritime terms when my phone buzzed on the desk.HAYES.I didn't look away from the screen. I tapped the speaker. "Go.""Sir." Hayes's voice was tight. Hayes's voice was never tight. "We have a situation at the penthouse."I stopped scrolling."Let me guess," I said. "The service stairs."A pause."Yes, sir. She took the hinge pins off the maintenance door. The footage has her getting into a cab in the back alley twenty minutes ago. Paid cash."The hinge pins.Something dark and amused uncoiled in my chest."Did you think a doorman and a badge would hold her, Hayes?""I take full responsibility, sir. I'm sending a

RavenThe sound of Aaron's hand closing on my father's wrist cut right through the rain.My father gasped. His arm hung in the air, trapped, Aaron's fingers locked around it like a vise.Aaron's eyes had gone black."Marcus." Quiet. Dead calm. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. "Touch her again, and you don't leave this courtyard with that hand."My father went white.He tried to pull free. He couldn't. I heard something grind under Aaron's grip, and his knees dipped."Let go of me, Wylder," he hissed through his teeth. "You don't know what you're doing. She's playing you! A week ago she was in love with that mechanic. He's the only reason she's marrying you. The second she gets him back, she'll bleed you dry…"Aaron turned his wrist one inch.My father's words broke off in a sharp cry."Bold of you," Aaron said, "to think I give a fuck."He shoved him.My father stumbled backward, his shoes skating on the wet stone, and nearly went down. He clutched his wrist to his chest, bre

RavenThe top floor of L'Éternité, the most exclusive bridal boutique in the city, had been cleared for us.No other brides. No other customers. Just a nervous army of women in matching black wrap dresses, trays of champagne nobody touched, and Aaron.He sat on a velvet sofa in the middle of the viewing room like a dark king who had been forced to attend a tea party. Long legs crossed. An espresso in one hand, his tablet in the other. He had said maybe two words since we walked in.Makeup covered most of the bruise. Not all of it. Every woman in the building had looked at my cheek once and then very carefully never looked at it again.I stood in the dressing room and looked at myself in the mirror.The dress was beautiful. A classic A-line with lace sleeves and a long, sweeping train. I looked elegant. I looked like the perfect, respectable senator's daughter.I took a breath, pushed through the curtain and stepped up onto the round pedestal."What about this one?"He didn't look up.

RavenThe whiskey glowed like melted gold in the crystal.Aaron handed me the glass without letting his fingers touch mine. Whatever had been in his eyes by the bookshelves was gone. They were dark and closed again.He didn't pour one for himself. He went back behind his desk and picked up a black ceramic mug that sat beside his keyboard. Coffee, at midnight. Of course.I took a sip. It burned all the way down, slow and expensive.I curled into the corner of the big leather sofa, tucked my bare legs under the hem of his shirt, and took another sip. Then another.He didn't look at me. He read. Columns of numbers scrolled across his screen, and his eyes ate them.So I watched him.You don't grow up with Marcus Vance without learning to read people. You learn to find the cracks. The little tells. The cufflink.Aaron Wylder didn't have many.But I started finding them anyway.He didn't slouch. Not an inch, not even at midnight in his own library. And he didn't hold the mug by its hand