Contract marriage with the ruthless billionaire ceo boss

Molly's POV

"Your room is ready upstairs," she added, not smiling.

"What suite does my parents have?" More out of habit than ambition, I asked.

Her quiet spoke to me enough.

I passed the drawing room and stopped at the door to show my father his study. There was something dragging at me. One breath, a whisper, a flutter of remembrance. My hand stretched for the doorknob. Lock locked. naturally.

Still, the smell of leather and ancient paper permeated the opening under the door. My chest seized. His confessional, his war chamber, his haven had been that room. It was simply another place under ghost protection now.

I closed my eyes and pushed my palm up to the door. I could hear him again for a moment, his laughter, his voice calling me pumpkin, the sound of his glass clinking as he poured brandy at midnight. But the moment passed just as fast as it arrived.

I spun on a slight creak behind me. Not anything there. Alternatively I reasoned.

Underneath the sideboard, I caught glimmer. I stooped down and reached. My fingers swept something metallic, an ancient key. Bronze faded. perfect edges. Though it had no name, I knew.

I stood with a beating heartbeat. Let it slide into the lock.

That clicked.

The door sighed open.

The smell initially came to me Aging parchment and tobacco. My heart tore open.

Everything stayed unaltered. The office desk. The racks. The chessboard midway through the game. Still hanging on the hanger like he would have returned any second is my father's coat.

I then spotted it, the desk's bottom drawer. a strange latch. I grabbed it.

locks.

I stooped to look at it. a mark cut on the handle. The symbol of my father. There is no keyhole.

I straightened gradually, something invisible weighing on me.

Footsteps behind me.

Edith sat at the head of the table, face perfectly powdered like porcelain, stance stiff. Her dark hair was tied tightly into a bun that hurt. Pearls like a rope hung to her throat. She raised her wine glass and gave me a weak grin that never touched her eyes.

"Molly," she said, her voice synthetic honey. "You have completed."

I tightened and practiced while smiling. That is what college cuisine does.

She murmured, eyes glancing at me like I was a sculpture she disliked.

Jack arrived without formality smelling of pricey cologne and casual attitude. Designed suit suiting his towering body, hair slicked back precisely, smile sharp enough to cut glass. He moved like a man who believed the place belonged to him. Perhaps he thought it as well.

He murmured, gliding into the chair next to mine without asking, "Look who's back." His look stayed a second too long. Las Vegas missed its little princess.

I choked the heat rising up my neck. "Jack, I am not royalty."

He let out a quiet laugh. "That's what drives fun in it."

Dinner came on lobster, saffron rice, asparagus twisted into ribbons on silver dishes. I put none of it in taste. Under Edith's continuous comments, every bite became sand in my mouth.

"You should think about switching your major," she said, cutting her food like she was operating. "Business promises a better future than literature. Though your father may have granted your wishes, the real reality we live in now.

My fork stopped halfway between here. "My father approved of my decisions."

She laughed briefly in clipped tones. Indeed, and check how far that got him.

The remarks impacted more forcefully than they ought to have. Jack's hand slid over the table, fingers just brushing mine. Far too slow. Too deliberate.

I moved away.

He bent forward, his breath tickling my ear. "We ought to discuss later. Not just you and me.

I grabbed for my glass instead of the steak knife and mustered a kind grin.

Edith saw everything across the table, calm delight curling in the margins of her mouth.

Jack's hand came back to my wrist, hanging longer than required beneath the table. His grip was strong and possessive. My pulse started to revolt.

"We should talk," he murmured, soft this time then strong.

I turned not to look at him I stayed calm. Still, I understood then that this was not dinner. This was a rehearsal. A forerunner to something more sinister. He was not showing flirtation. He was assertively declaring.

And Edith was letting him too.

The air became dense. Just to keep my glass from shaking, my fingers wrapped around its stem.

I got down. "Excuse me."

At first, I strolled aimlessly, past tall oil paintings and ancient grandfather clocks ticking with hollow rhythm, trailed fingers along the wood-panelled walls. The house still looked the same. Not in its most basic form. Still, it wasn't the house I knew. Now it felt like a cage golden in history and custom, one I had not agreed to enter.

Something drew me down a corridor I hadn't walked since childhood. My father used to vanish with his ledgers and locked files along a passage covered in dark velvet drapes soiled with time. Nobody ever mentioned his activities in that area of the residence. I imagined secrets beyond those walls as a girl, then I knew better.

I stopped beyond the study door. Though I had not planned to visit here, my steps had guided me as though recollection still murmurs through these walls.

I slid the knob.

It granted.

Inside, the room had a quiet unlike that of the rest of the home, dense, respectful. From floor to ceiling, mahogany shelves piled volumes with age-worn cracked spines. Half full of brandy, a decanter rested unbroken on the side table. Tobacco still smelled, ghosting the room like a memory not letting go.

The desk took front stage in the space. Sleek. Significant. Not movable. The king that is my father. I went gently around it, eyes glancing over the papers left behind. Some were old account ledgers, not unusual. But I noticed something under the heap, a parchment peep-through corner.

I drew it free.

a record. Beautiful black writing on thick cream paper. Not recent, not ancient enough to let gather dust. Across the top, gold stamped "Private Addendum to Will."

I turned to look at it.

provision about inheritance.

My breath came to a stop.

As my mind whirled, the ink faded. The clause is the one they avoided direct discussion of. I examined the paper, my fingers shaking. Married by twenty-three or all assets would go to the next qualified male lineage. No deviations.

Under my ribs my heart thundered. This was leverage, not only a formality in cruelty. Control. Their waiting for was exactly this. This was the foundation of everything.

Behind me, footsteps.

Too gentle for Eliza's tastes. Too rapid to be an echo.

With pulse thrashing in my ears, I turned automatically and held the document to my chest.

Not at all.

Still, the sensation slid down my spine.

One had followed me.

The paper still in my fingers, I turned toward the desk. My fingers lightly brushed something metallic.

John's voice floated low, low, demanding, cruel down the hall.

"She is a youngster. ignorant. Give it a few months; she will sign anything we show her.

Jack's voice came next, sleek and seductive, slinkily poisoned. You are pushing just too softly. She was twenty-one already. We lose everything if she marries not at twenty-three.

There is a pause. My breath was held.

John said, " colder this time." "I have long enough waited time. Her father's haughtiness was the clause; he never considered she would survive without him. She is here, nonetheless, and vulnerable. The will ties all to her marriage. We run the estate; we choose her marriage partner.

Their leisurely walks across the hall brought them closer to the corner from where I crouched behind the wall.

Jack said, "You've made her comfortable," with irritation tumbling through his words. "We should be tightening the chain."

"I have set aside the engagement party for next month," John stated calmly. She will see it as a celebration of her comeback.

Jack shot back, "She's not stupid." She looks at me like she sees straight through.

"She doesn't have to like you," John said squarely. She only has to wed you.

quiet. Then laughing, harsh and deep, like a razor glancing glass.

And should she fail as well? Jack query.

There was silence in the corridor. Then John's voice once more, darker now. Then we present it as an accident. Automobile. a drop. Something sad yet plausible.

My throat tightened.

My hands trembled over the paper. Grounding myself, I pushed my palm to the wall, but everything around slanted. The air seemed to weigh more. Everything crushed downward, including the floor, the ceiling, the history.

I backed off carefully, trying not to create noise. Every stride away from the study door was like sludging through muck. Not wanting to move were my legs. My ears ringing.

an accident. My parents died in that manner.

Stuttering into the hall, I stayed in the shadows. Turning the corner and walked for the stairway, my heart throbbed under my skin.

Voices behind me kept on, fading now.

"You'll have your bride," John replied with certainty. Even if she walks down the aisle in chains.

My boyhood bedroom remained the same. The same flowered wallpaper faded all around the corners. I had wept myself to sleep in the same four-poster bed my parents passed through late at night. Even that familiarity seemed like a stranger now.

Pacing the room, fingers pulling through my hair, I threw the paper on the dresser. My breathing came irregular and shallow. Though it didn't help, I counted it out, inhaled, exhaled, repeated. The walls still gave the impression of receding.

I went back over their voices in my head. Every sound. Every threat.

a marriage under duress. an expected mishap.

I slid into the old velvet chair by the window. My gaze turned down the street. void. silence. I did not, however, feel alone.

Pulling my knees to my chest, I turned once more to study the paper. There was a real clause here. Not paranoid here was this This was not a hunched posture. Written, signed, and hidden until the right time to capture me.

I had straight stepped into it.

One pawn changed to look like a daughter.

The doorknob hummed.

I stopped freezing.

Once more, it turned.

I inhaled and focused on the door. It had not occurred to me.

Another turn, this one more acute and angry.

There was someone trying to enter.

Before my head caught up, my legs moved. I hauled the paperwork beneath the mattress. I then stretched for the empty nightstand drawer and opened it.

No key. No weapon here.

The knob swirled once more. The lock moaned.

Molly? Jack spoke from the other side, dripping. "Why'd you hurry off so quickly?"

I took a step back.

"Exit."

His voice sank to lower pitch. "Are you concealing something?"

I missed the response.

Quiet.

Then a little laugh in silence.

"I can be patient," he said. "But you should know, this house has a way of unlocking what's hidden."