All Chapters of Contracted to the man who broke me : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Adrian's POVThe campaign presentation lasted forty minutes longer than it needed to.Marcus had slides.Seventeen of them, each with a subheading and a projected engagement metric I was certain he had rounded up. I sat at the head of the table and said the things required of me and somewhere around slide eleven I stopped retaining any of it.The advertising lead was talking about target demographics.I was thinking about an empty coffee cup.Not the cup itself. The gesture. The way Ethan had reached for it knowing it was empty, just to have somewhere to put the motion that had nowhere else to go.I knew that gesture. I had seen it in people who were managing something they couldn't put down.I hadn't expected to recognize it in him."Sir."Marcus was watching me from the other end of the table with the expression of a man who had just repeated himself."The budget reallocation. For the digital push in Q3.""Approve it," I said."You haven't seen the revised numbers.""Send them to me

Ethan's POVThe mirror gave me back someone who looked composed.Baby pink linen, cream trousers, hair parted and gelled into place even though it was still damp at the roots. I looked like someone who had slept well and woken up unbothered and had absolutely not spent half the night lying completely still with his heart trying to escape his chest.Good. That was the version I needed today.I picked up my laptop bag and headed downstairs.---Mrs. Rosamund had the table set before I reached the bottom step. Sunny side omelette, golden at the edges. Toast. A glass of juice that caught the morning light. A small bowl of fruit salad on the side.She greeted me the way she always did. Warm. Unhurried. Like the morning was something to be savoured rather than survived.I returned her smile and sat down."Where is Adrian?" I asked, keeping my voice low, easy, like it was a purely logistical question."Finished his breakfast a while ago." She refilled the juice without being asked. "He's in

Adrian POVThe night had been warm.That kind of warm that settles under your skin and stays there. We had been somewhere past the point of teasing, past the careful restraint we usually kept between us, raw and unguarded and reaching for something neither of us had named yet.And then my phone rang.I ignored it the first time. Kept my focus where it was. But it rang again. And again. Persistent and merciless, the way only certain calls are.I pulled back with a low exhale. Looked at the screen. Pressed a brief kiss to his temple and told him to sleep. That these calls run long. That I would handle it.He made a soft sound of protest but did not argue.It ended in half an hour. Shorter than I expected. I set my phone down with something almost like relief and came back to his room, already half smiling at whatever expression he would give me.He was asleep.Deeply, genuinely asleep this time. No performance. Just him curled against the pillow, lashes still, breathing slow and even.I

Ethan's POVBy the time I reached the office, the warmth from my morning visit to Aunt Candia's house had settled into something quieter. The kind of calm that comes after a good visit, the kind that makes the rest of the day feel almost manageable.Almost.The floor was alive with its usual rhythm. Phones ringing, keyboards clicking, someone from the finance team rushing past me with a stack of folders pressed against their chest like they were carrying something fragile. I fell into the pace of it easily, the way you fall into a familiar song.As I passed Adrian's cabin, I glanced through the glass walls out of habit.He was having lunch with Noah.The two of them sat across from each other with Noah's tablet propped between their plates, some document pulled up on the screen. Noah looked relaxed, leaning slightly forward, gesturing with his fork, occasionally smiling at whatever point he was making. Adrian looked like Adrian. Focused. Still. Completely unreadable in the way that ha

Ethan's POVThe confession sat in the air between us like something fragile that neither of us knew how to pick up.Leon exhaled slowly after saying it, the way people do when they have been carrying something for too long and have finally, at great cost, set it down. His shoulders dropped. The tension that had been holding his body together for the last few minutes loosened visibly.He looked relieved.I felt nothing of the sort.I was frozen in the exact position I had been in when the words left his mouth, one hand still holding the edge of his blanket, my breath caught somewhere between my chest and my throat, my mind completely and utterly blank. The kind of blank that is not peaceful. The kind that comes from the sudden absence of every coherent thought at once.I did not move.I did not speak.I simply stood there, wrestling with something I had no name for yet."I like you a lot, Ethan," he said again.Quieter this time. More certain. Like saying it twice made it more real, or