Page 88 of The Billionaire’s Contract Bride

“You look imprisoned,” Aria countered softly.

“I am.”

“You confessed to federal financial crimes you didn’t commit.”

“I confessed to enough crimes I did commit,” Damien answered, his expression unreadable. “It balances out.”

“That was not your choice to make for me, Damien.”

“No.”

“Stop agreeing with me when you would do the exact same thing all over again.”

A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. “How is our child?”

Aria pressed her hand against the cool glass. “The size of a blueberry, according to Dr. Patel.”

A sudden, overwhelming tide of raw emotion broke across Damien’s features before he managed to pull his composure back into place.

“Aria—”

“I am clearing my name,” she said, her voice firm and unshakable. “And then I am clearing yours.”

“Do not expose yourself to Victor,” he warned, his eyes flashing.

“You gave me the company.”

“I gave you a weapon.”

“Then trust me to aim it.”

She hung up the receiver and stood, ending the call first.

Three days later, federal prosecutors officially dismissed all criminal charges against Aria Vale-Blackthorne.

Damien’s legal team filed for his immediate release pending a judicial review of his separate admissions.

He was sitting in the processing room waiting for his personal belongings when his cell door opened. Lucien stood on the other side, his phone already in his hand, his face deathly pale.

“Damien,” Lucien said, his voice shaking. “The hospital just called.”

Evelyn Vale was gone. Her room was empty, the monitor cables severed on the floor.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Her Empire

Hours earlier, the hospital security footage that Aria and Lucien watched was painfully clear, yet utterly deceptive.

It captured a wheelchair rolling through the dimly lit basement service corridor at 3:12 a.m. Evelyn Vale sat inside it, slumped forward, her chin resting against her chest. Pushing the chair was a woman wearing dark green surgical scrubs, a high ponytail, and a surgical mask pulled down to her chin.

Her face was unmistakably Celeste Laurent’s.

“It isn’t her,” Lucien declared, his voice flat as his fingers flew across his console in the command van. He ran a high-density forensic spatial filter over the frame, zooming in on the nurse’s cheekbones. The pixels warped subtly. “Look at the refresh rate around the jawline. It’s an AI spatial skin. Someone executed an algorithmic frame-replacement over an existing camera log to give us Celeste’s face.”

Aria stared at the screen, her phone already pressed to her ear. She dialed Celeste’s encrypted line anyway.

It rang four times before dropping into static.

Twenty minutes later, a ping chimed on Aria’s phone from an untraceable satellite node. The message contained a single high-resolution photograph: Evelyn sitting inside the narrow cabin of a private mid-size aircraft. She was connected to a portable cardiac monitor, her face pale under the harsh cabin lights, but her eyes were open. Resting on the folding table beside her arm was a folded copy of The Wall Street Journal—showing today’s date clearly above the fold.