Contract Wife, Real Love

Contract Wife, Real Love

Mu Xiaoou

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The video was only fifteen seconds long: a male burlesque dancer, all glitter and bravado, tearing off his pants. My finger slipped, and the screen flashed: Video sent to Liam. Panic seized me, cold and immediate. Liam, my workaholic, rarely-home, contract husband, recipient of my perfectly-crafted façade. I fumbled for my phone, desperately typing a lie: "Oh my god, Liam, you will not believe where Ashley dragged me tonight. I am so disgusted." His reply came instantly: "Okay." Just "Okay." No questions, no suspicion. He bought it. My easy escape was secure. But then, across the pulsing, chaotic nightclub, I saw him. Liam. He lifted his glass, his eyes dark and unwavering, a silent warning cutting through the noise. My perfect, distant husband, who was supposed to be a continent away, was here, watching me. He knew. The easy dance I had perfected–the detached, separate lives–was crumbling. The comfortable silence of our contract was shattered. "Having fun?" he drawled, a glint in his eyes I' d never seen before, cutting through my desperate lie. "I see your friend finally convinced you to enjoy the \'decadent\' lifestyle." He knew. He had known all along, and for some reason, he had played along. Why? I watched him approach, towering over everyone, and for the first time, I felt a knot of fear and something else entirely-a thrill-because this wasn't part of the contract. This was real. As I clung to his arm, playing the doting wife for his colleagues, every interaction felt charged with a new, unsettling current. This wasn't the escape I' d planned; it was something far more complicated. The man I married for freedom was suddenly making me feel trapped, yet strangely, incredibly seen. Who was Liam Patterson, really? And why did his silent scrutiny feel more intimate than any embrace?

Introduction

The video was only fifteen seconds long: a male burlesque dancer, all glitter and bravado, tearing off his pants.

My finger slipped, and the screen flashed: Video sent to Liam.

Panic seized me, cold and immediate. Liam, my workaholic, rarely-home, contract husband, recipient of my perfectly-crafted façade.

I fumbled for my phone, desperately typing a lie: "Oh my god, Liam, you will not believe where Ashley dragged me tonight. I am so disgusted."

His reply came instantly: "Okay." Just "Okay." No questions, no suspicion. He bought it. My easy escape was secure.

But then, across the pulsing, chaotic nightclub, I saw him. Liam. He lifted his glass, his eyes dark and unwavering, a silent warning cutting through the noise.

My perfect, distant husband, who was supposed to be a continent away, was here, watching me. He knew.

The easy dance I had perfected–the detached, separate lives–was crumbling. The comfortable silence of our contract was shattered.

"Having fun?" he drawled, a glint in his eyes I' d never seen before, cutting through my desperate lie. "I see your friend finally convinced you to enjoy the \'decadent\' lifestyle."

He knew. He had known all along, and for some reason, he had played along. Why?

I watched him approach, towering over everyone, and for the first time, I felt a knot of fear and something else entirely-a thrill-because this wasn't part of the contract. This was real.

As I clung to his arm, playing the doting wife for his colleagues, every interaction felt charged with a new, unsettling current. This wasn't the escape I' d planned; it was something far more complicated.

The man I married for freedom was suddenly making me feel trapped, yet strangely, incredibly seen. Who was Liam Patterson, really? And why did his silent scrutiny feel more intimate than any embrace?

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The Alpha's Regret: He Lost His Fated White Wolf

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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