Library
Maghanap
Home / Romance / The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride / Pointless Cruelty

Share

Pointless Cruelty

Author: Chinwe
last update Petsa ng paglalathala: 2025-10-23 20:25:43

Vivienne POV

~•~

The days after the dinner party felt like walking through fog. My mind refused to rest, not even for a second. Damon and Catherine’s offer replayed like a broken record—her blunt explanation, his cool announcement of me as his fiancée without my consent, the promise of money, the threat of two whole years tied to them.

I couldn’t decide if it was an opportunity or a trap. And what unsettled me most was the truth I couldn’t see. Were they really trying to protect their father’s
Patuloy na basahin ang aklat na ito nang libre
I-scan ang code upang i-download ang App
Nakaraang Kabanata Susunod na kabanata
Locked Chapter

Pinakabagong kabanata

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   The Bait

    VIVIENNE~•~I woke up before the alarm and lay there a minute trying to remember which ceiling I was looking at.That's what the size of this place did to me now. We'd been gone long enough that the house had gone back to feeling like a stranger, all that room around the bed, the dark sitting in corners too far away to reach. At Elena's the kitchen and the living room were one room and I could hear Liam breathing from anywhere I stood. Here there was a whole hallway before I got anywhere, then the stairs, then more house under that, quiet and polished and waiting on me to remember how to live in it.We'd come back two days ago, once the custody fight was done. No hearing left to win, nobody left to run from on that front, so there was no reason to keep hiding at Elena's. Damon had the cars loaded and brought us home, back to the big house where all of it started. I'd spent the first night awake just getting used to it again.I came down to the smell of toast and the sound of my son a

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   Together

    DAMON~•~"Are you gonna leave too? Like Daddy did?"I had the answer. It was one word and I'd have given it to anybody else without a second of thought. *No.* I'd built my whole life on saying the hard thing first and watching people scramble after it.I couldn't get it out of my mouth.Because the word he wanted was *forever*, and three hours ago his mother stood in a marble hallway and told me she'd been lying to me for weeks, and I didn't know anymore if the thing I'd promised this kid was a thing two grown people could keep. I wasn't going to hand him a *forever* and then break it down the middle in front of him. He'd already had one man do that.So I got down on one knee by the bed, and I gave him what I had that was true."You see me here, buddy?"He nodded, his chin still going."I'm here right now. I checked your closet tonight, same as every night." I pulled the blanket back up over him. "You ever known me to skip one?""No." It came out wet. "But that's not forever."Six ye

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   Like Daddy Did

    VIVIENNE~•~"Mommy!"Liam came barreling down the hall the second I got the door open, and he hit my legs and grabbed on with both arms, and for a minute I just stood there holding onto my kid and trying to remember how to breathe."Did you win? Did you talk to the judge?" He tipped his head all the way back to look up at me. "Marco let me have two ice creams and said I couldn't come, but I drew you a picture. You wanna see it?"I got down on my knees right there on the floor and took his face in both hands."Listen to me, baby. You're staying right here. With me. Nobody is taking you anywhere, not ever, you hear me? It's done. It's over.""For real real?""For real real. I promise you."He threw both arms around my neck and squeezed so hard it hurt, and over the top of his head I saw Damon standing in the kitchen doorway, watching the two of us. The second my eyes hit his, he looked away."Liam, go wash up," Damon said. "Dinner's almost ready.""Mommy says nobody's taking me!" Liam

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   The Same Coin

    VIVIENNE~•~Elena sat back down beside me and folded her hands on the table like she hadn't just lit her whole life on fire in front of a judge, and I couldn't stop shaking.She'd done that for me. For Liam. She'd stood up in open court and put every bit of it on her own back so the word "tampering" would never touch Damon or me, and the worst part, the part I couldn't breathe around, was that I'd helped her hold those records. I'd kept the copy. I was every bit as in it as she was, and she'd just made sure the whole world would never know."Counsel, both of you sit." Okafor took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I've heard enough for one morning."The whole room went still."Mr. Ackerman, your motion to strike is granted. The evaluation's gone. I can't trust a report that came out of an improper contact, and I won't pretend otherwise." She set the glasses back down. "But before your client gets comfortable, let me say what I watched happen on that stand."William s

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   Six Years

    ELENA~•~I'd spent my whole career learning not to react in a room like this, and I needed every bit of that training now, because Ackerman had just laid my sin out on the record and the only thing holding me up was the habit of a still face.Every head in the courtroom had turned to me. I could feel them. The judge, waiting. William, looking pleased with himself for the first time all morning. Ackerman, easing back into his chair.Damon wasn't looking at me, though. He'd turned in his seat, and he was looking at his wife.That was the thing that decided it. Not the motion, not the records, not fifteen years of work about to burn in front of a judge who'd always liked me. It was the question I could watch forming on Damon's face while he stared at Vivienne, and the fact that I knew exactly what it was.He was wondering if she'd known. And the second he decided she had, that was the end of them, the one real thing either of them had managed to make out of this whole ugly arrangement.

  • The CEO's Untamed Contract Bride   Exhibit Fourteen

    VIVIENNE~•~I had my hands folded on the table so nobody could see them shaking, and I kept my eyes on the judge, and I worked at looking like a woman whose whole life wasn't sitting on a piece of paper she'd helped poison."…found the child to be safe, healthy, and strongly attached to both adults in the home." Elena read it straight off Hale's report and let the words sit a second. "Those are the evaluator's own words, Your Honor. Not mine."Judge Okafor turned a page, reading along. "I've got the report, counsel. Been through it twice.""Then the court has seen her recommendation. The boy stays right where he is, with his mother and Mr. Langford.""I've seen it." Okafor looked over her glasses at the other table. "Mr. Ackerman, I'll be straight with you, this is about as clean a report as I get in this room. What've you got?"For one second I let myself believe it. We were so close I could taste it. The judge was nodding, the report was good, Liam was home with Marco building anot

Higit pang Kabanata

Maaari mong magustuhan

Galugarin at basahin ang magagandang nobela
Libreng basahin ang magagandang nobela sa GoodNovel app. I-download ang mga librong gusto mo at basahin kahit saan at anumang oras.
Libreng basahin ang mga aklat sa app
I-scan ang code para mabasa sa App
DMCA.com Protection Status