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Home / Romance / The Kane Contract: Vows of Venom / Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Kane Contract: Vows of Venom: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

79 Kabanata

The Viral Bride

The phone vibrates so hard it falls off the nightstand and cracks on the marble like a bone snapping.I’m already awake, have been for hours, curled on my side in Alexander’s black silk bed that still smells like cedar and stranger. My knees are pulled to my chest, arms wrapped around the barely-there curve of my stomach like I can shield the baby from the fact that its mother is falling apart.I count kicks instead of sheep. One every seven minutes. A tiny Morse code that says stay alive, Mommy.The screen is spider-webbed but breathing.4,892 notifications.I open X with a thumb that feels borrowed.#LiviaKane is the number-one global trend. Above actual wars. Above actual deaths.The photos are everywhere: courthouse steps, white dress clinging to yesterday’s grief, Alexander two steps behind like a beautiful reaper. Someone zoomed so close on my ring finger the black diamonds look like bullet wounds.The comments are a coliseum of teeth:“She upgraded from garbage to nuclear weapo

The Stock Market Bleeds

I’m still in the same black leggings and cream cashmere, hair a rat’s nest from yesterday, eyes puffy from the bathroom-floor breakdown, when I open the old laptop I rescued from the duffel.The external drive clicks into place like a magazine sliding into a gun.I’ve been sitting cross-legged on the east-wing couch for forty-three minutes, cursor hovering over the folder labelled WHITFORD_BURN.Inside: eight years of emails, Slack threads, recorded calls, cap tables, everything Theo ever tried to hide behind “bro culture” and charm.I start with the juiciest.2021-09–14 From: theo@whitfordtech.com To: board@whitfordtech.com Subject: Equity for Livia HarperShe’s asking for founder-level shares. I love her, but she’s just the girlfriend. We keep her hungry, she keeps building. Vote no.I attach the full thread (twelve board members agreeing, one coward abstaining).I open @LiviaActually.Caption:He told the board I was “just the girlfriend.” Here’s the receipt.Post.I don’t wait to

The White Rose Mystery

Day six in the Kane fortress.I wake to the scent of something green and wet, like a greenhouse after rain.My eyes snap open.A single white rose lies on the pillow beside my head, dew still clinging to its petals as if it was cut seconds ago.I did not put it there.I sit up so fast the black silk sheets slide to my waist, heart slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.The bedroom door is still locked from the inside. The keypad glows green with my code (0714) untouched.I haven’t opened this door since yesterday’s coffee victory.My skin crawls like a thousand insects are marching under it.I pick the rose up by the stem. No thorns this time; someone trimmed them with surgical precision. The cut is clean, almost tender.He was here. While I slept. While I was vulnerable.My stomach flips (not morning sickness, something colder).I walk barefoot through the east wing, pulse hammering in my throat, checking every surface like I’m hunting a ghost.One on the bathroom count

Ice Queen Rising

Day ten in the Kane fortress.I wake up knowing today is the day I stop hiding.The east wing mirror shows a woman I barely recognise: cheekbones sharpened by stress and unrelenting morning sickness, eyes colder than the black diamonds locked around my throat, mouth set in a line that could slice steel. I look like a queen forged in fire. But inside I’m still the girl who cried on the bathroom floor six nights ago, counting heartbeats in the dark because they were the only thing that felt real.How did I get here? One moment I was building an empire with the man I loved, the next I’m pregnant, betrayed, and married to a stranger who looks at me like I’m both his weapon and his weakness. What if the mask slips today? What if they see the cracks? What if he sees them?I dress like I’m going to war.White coat, cinched so tight at the waist it almost hurts, falling to mid-calf like a wedding dress made of vengeance. Beneath it: a black silk sheath that clings to every new curve the pregn

Almost

Day twelve in the Kane fortress.The sky has been brooding all afternoon, heavy clouds rolling in from the Bay like an army gathering for war. I’ve been pacing the east wing since lunch, the white roses in the vase on my desk mocking me with their perfect, unblemished petals. Seven now. Seven silent intruders that slip past locks and logic, reminding me that nothing in this penthouse is truly mine, not the rooms, not the silence, not even the air I breathe.I try to work on my laptop, sketching out a new app idea in code, something simple, a predictive tool for small businesses to track cash flow, the kind of thing I built in college when I had nothing but ambition and a library card. But my fingers keep freezing on the keys.Why am I even trying? This is his tower. His world. Every line of code feels like borrowing from the enemy. And the enemy is down the hall, waiting for me to crack.The first rumble of thunder shakes the glass walls at 7:42 p.m. I ignore it, keep typing.By 8:03,

The Offshore Accounts

The morning after the almost-kiss.I wake gasping, the phantom heat of Alexander’s breath still ghosting across my lips like a brand I can’t scrub off. My skin is on fire, every nerve ending screaming from a kiss that never happened. I’m on my back, one hand pressed to my stomach where the baby is already kicking like it felt the storm too, the other clenched in the black silk sheets that smell like him (cedar and something darker I refuse to name).One inch. One fucking inch and I would have let him ruin me. No. I would have ruined him. I wanted to. God help me, I wanted to taste the violence in his mouth, wanted his hands on my throat, wanted to punish him for every white rose, every locked door he walked through like he owned my dreams. I wanted to punish myself for wanting it.I sit up too fast, head spinning, room tilting like the storm never left. The bedroom is flooded with gray pre-dawn light, the city below still asleep, oblivious to the fact that I just almost betrayed every

Theo’s 3 A.M. Voicemail

I wake to the sound of my phone buzzing like a trapped insect.The east wing is pitch black, the city lights muted by heavy rain curtains. I’m tangled in black silk sheets, one hand on my stomach where the baby is still (finally, a night without kicking marathons), the other reaching blindly for the phone on the nightstand.The screen glows with an unknown number. San Francisco area code. Theo’s.I answer, heart slamming.“Livia?” His voice is slurred, thick with whiskey and something broken. “Liv, baby, please”I don’t hang up.I put it on speaker and set the phone on my lap, staring at it like a bomb about to detonate.He’s sobbing now, ragged and ugly, the kind of cry that comes from a man who’s lost everything and knows it.“You’re killing me, Livia,” he chokes out. “You’re fucking killing me. The stock, my mom, she won’t stop crying. Amara left. She left me, Liv. Because of you. Everything’s gone. The company, the money, my life. You did this. You fucking did this Livia.”Silence

Amara’s Fake Bump Debut

I wake up at 6:47 a.m.The east wing is quiet except for the low hum of the city sixty-five floors below. I lie on my back staring at the ceiling, one hand on the bump that’s finally big enough to make sleeping on my stomach impossible, the other clenched in the sheets that still smell faintly of Alexander’s cologne even though I changed them two days ago.I hate that I notice.I hate that I keep noticing.I hate that I woke up wet and aching and angry because my body apparently decided to side with the enemy while my brain was asleep.Stop. He’s the contract. The man who owns the building, the codes, the air. The man who stood one inch from kissing you and walked away like it cost him nothing. He’s not your lover. He’s your jailer wearing a better suit.I roll out of bed and pad to the bathroom. The mirror shows a stranger: eyes still puffy from yesterday’s crying jag, lips bitten raw, hair a wild halo that makes me look half-feral. I splash cold water on my face until the shock of

Boardroom Execution

Day eighteen.I wake up knowing today is the day I take back what is rightfully and has always been mine.My bathroom mirror shows a woman carved from vengeance: cheekbones sharp enough to cut, eyes cold as winter steel, mouth painted Vendetta red because today is war and I intend to look like the general.I dress for the kill.Blood-red silk dress, custom, poured over every curve the pregnancy has given me. The neckline plunges just enough to remind them I’m still a woman, the slit climbs high enough to remind them I’m untouchable and sexy even while being pregnant. Black heels with the red soles that have become my signature (every step a bloodstain on their conscience). Hair twisted into a low knot so severe it could slice glass. A diamond necklace around my throat like a collar I put on myself.Alexander is waiting in the foyer when I step out.Black suit, black tie, white pocket square folded into a blade. His eyes do one slow, deliberate sweep (from the red soles to the red mout

The Elevator Incident

Day twenty in the Kane fortress.It’s been five days since the almost-kiss in the hallway, five days of pretending it never happened, five days of locked doors and white roses appearing in places they shouldn’t (inside my coffee mug, tucked into the pages of the notebook I keep under my pillow, on the ultrasound printout like a cruel joke).Five days of him watching me from across the breakfast island with eyes that say too much and nothing at all.I hate him.I hate that I wake up wet and aching, fingers clenched in the black silk sheets, body remembering the way his breath felt one inch from my lips, the way his hand hovered at my waist like a promise he never made.I hate that I touch myself in the shower thinking about what would have happened if the lightning hadn’t flashed, if the power hadn’t surged back on, if we hadn’t jerked apart like we’d been burned.I hate that I come whispering his name like a curse.I get out of bed, legs shaky, and dress like armor.I leave the east w

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