All Chapters of The Billionaire's Forbidden Fiancée: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The dinner invitation arrived the way Ivy was beginning to understand everything in this family arrived, not as a request, but as a fact already in motion."My mother wants to meet you," Damien said, not looking up from the report in front of him, though something in the set of his shoulders suggested the sentence had cost him more than its length implied. "Sunday. Her house. Formal enough that you should probably wear something with sleeves.""Is there a version of that sentence that doesn't sound like a warning?""No," he said. "There isn't."Ivy set down the folder she had been pretending to read since the mention of dinner had derailed her focus entirely, her mind still half occupied with two letters and a surname she had not yet found the courage to ask him about directly. It felt, suddenly, like an unfair kind of timing, being asked to sit across a table from the woman whose name might explain everything, before she had even decided what she planned to do with what she already k

The board member turned out to be a heavyset man named Foster, one of the shareholders Ivy had heard Priya mention in passing, someone whose vote on the takeover was still, as far as anyone could tell, genuinely undecided. Damien crossed the room to him without hesitation, already folding the version of himself that had just stood at the window with her back into the version the rest of this party required, controlled, gracious, entirely unreadable.Ivy watched from a polite distance as the two men spoke, Foster's arms crossed, Damien's expression giving away nothing at all. She caught only fragments over the noise of the quartet, the words board confidence, and once, briefly, a name she did not yet recognize but would come to know far better than she wanted to."Marcus is telling people you've lost your objectivity," Foster said, not quite quiet enough. "That the engagement's a distraction dressed up as good judgment.""Marcus has been telling people things about me since before I co

Her first night in the Cross residence passed quieter than she expected.She had unpacked what she could reach without waking the rest of the house, hung the one good blazer in a closet three times the size of her old bedroom, and left the voicemail from Meridian Financial Recovery unlistened to on a phone she finally set face down on the nightstand and left there, a small act of mercy toward herself after a day that had already asked enough of her. Somewhere below her, she had heard Damien's voice on a call long after midnight, low and even, the sound of a man who did not know how to stop working even in his own home. She had fallen asleep to it anyway, oddly comforted by the fact that someone else in the house was also still awake, still carrying something heavy into the night.She woke up in a room that was not hers, in a bed that was too soft, in a house that smelled like coffee she had not made.For a moment she forgot where she was. Then she remembered the blue ink, the exit cla

Damien was standing when she walked in this time, not sitting behind the desk like a man waiting to be impressed. He had traded the jacket from their first meeting for shirtsleeves, and something about that small shift unsettled her more than his usual armor would have. It was harder to distrust a man who looked like he had rolled up his sleeves for an actual conversation instead of a performance. "Priya said you had a list," he said. "I do." "I'm listening." Ivy set her bag down and did not sit either, which felt important, some instinct telling her this conversation needed to happen at eye level, not across a desk built to remind people who was in charge of the room. She had spent enough of her career watching men use furniture as leverage to recognize the trick when she saw it, and she was not walking into that particular room twice. "Yesterday I said yes because I was tired and scared and you offered me a way to stop being both of those things for a while," she said. "That's

The eviction notice was taped to the door at eye level, so Ivy would not miss it. As if she could miss it. As if the last four months had not already told her this was coming, one unanswered email at a time. She peeled it off carefully, like the paper itself might still change its mind, and let herself into the apartment she was no longer allowed to call hers past the end of the week. Boxes everywhere. Half her life folded into cardboard, the other half still hanging in the closet because some part of her had refused to believe it would actually come to this. Her phone rang while she was wrapping her mother's old plates in newspaper. Unknown number. Chicago area code. She almost let it go to voicemail. She answered because rent did not pay itself and neither did pride. "Is this Ivy Reyes?" "Speaking." "My name is Priya Malhotra. I'm calling from Cross Industries. I know this is unexpected, but I'm hoping you have a few minutes." Ivy set the plate down. "I don't work for Cros