Page 45 of The Billionaire’s Contract Bride

DAMIEN: Because your actions carry my name.

CELESTE: I am not your property!

DAMIEN: The contract says otherwise.

Aria’s stomach twisted into a knot.

Seven years ago, Damien had lacked the restraint he now claimed to possess. Something—or someone—had taught him a brutal lesson about control.

The final transcript ended on a far darker tone:

CELESTE: If you force me to stay, I will destroy you and this company.

DAMIEN: If you wanted to leave, you should have asked before you betrayed me to my family.

CELESTE: I am asking now.

There was no typed verbal response recorded. Only a stark handwritten notation at the bottom:

Request granted. Identity secured. Account offshore funded.

Aria turned the page. Pasted inside was a surveillance photograph showing Celeste boarding a train in Zurich six months after her public disappearance.

She was alive.

The following page contained record receipts of substantial wire transfers from a private Blackthorne offshore account to an alias Aria didn’t recognize.

Damien hadn’t killed her. He had paid her to vanish.

Attached to the back were confidential medical reports, police filings, and a final handwritten directive:

She made her choice. Do not search for her again.

“You are developing a dangerous habit of entering locked rooms,” a voice cold as ice remarked from the shadows.

Damien stood in the doorway.

Aria didn’t flinch. She closed the leather file. “Celeste is alive.”

“She was when that photograph was taken,” he replied smoothly, stepping into the room.

“You paid her off.”

“I funded her silence and guaranteed her physical protection.”

“Protection from whom?”

“From me—according to her.”

Aria stared at him across the desk. “What did you do to her, Damien?”

Damien walked over to the terminal and activated a secure display screen. “Celeste was selected by our families to consolidate assets. She wanted the Blackthorne name, the lifestyle, and the immunity. She did not want me.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“She also sold proprietary corporate logistics to my uncle Victor.” He punched in an access code, bringing up a video file.

On the screen, a tearful Celeste sat in an undisclosed hotel room. A severe bruise discolored the left side of her jaw.