Page 57 of The Billionaire’s Contract Bride

Aria looked at Damien. The cameras clicked continuously, capturing the quiet space between them.

Damien stepped forward, placing one arm securely around her waist. “My wife requested ninety days,” he told the press line. “She will have them.”

The crowd reacted as if a promise had been etched in stone. But Aria knew better—ninety days was not salvation. It was time. And in Damien Blackthorne’s world, time was a resource to be bought, guarded, and turned into a weapon.

Before security cleared the cordoned area, Marisol approached them. “Mrs. Blackthorne.”

“Aria,” she corrected, taking the nurse’s hands.

“My mother receives dialysis here three times a week,” Marisol said, her voice shaking slightly. “If this building closes, we have nowhere left to go.”

“It won’t close without a fight,” Aria promised.

“Do not promise outcomes you do not yet control,” Damien murmured as they reached the armored sedan.

“Then help me control the outcome.”

“You think funding is the only obstacle here.”

“Isn’t that what billionaires are for?”

He looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the dim street lights. “You are going to prove very expensive, Aria.”

“You should have investigated me more carefully before signing the contract.”

“I investigated you for five years.”

The sentence slipped out before he could catch it.

Aria froze in her tracks, her hand resting on the open car door. “What did you say?”

Lucien stood holding the door, looking straight ahead.

“Get inside,” Damien said quietly.

“You told me fourteen months,” she whispered, turning to face him.

“You knew that the photograph in the dossier was fourteen months old.”

“Five years?”

Behind the security barricade, camera shutters continued to click.

Damien stepped close, leaning down until his mouth touched the shell of her ear. “Not on the street.”

To the press, the posture looked like an intimate whisper between newlyweds.

To Aria, it sounded like the locking mechanism of another heavy door.

In the back of the car, the silence stretched thin and dangerous until the tinted windows rolled up completely.

“You made me look merciful tonight,” Damien observed, his voice calm.

“My apologies for damaging your reputation.”

“You made yourself a target.”

“I was already visible.”