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Home / Romance / BOUGHT BY THE RUTHLESS WILD BILLIONAIRE / Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

All Chapters of BOUGHT BY THE RUTHLESS WILD BILLIONAIRE : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

108 Chapters

CHAPTER 31

THE CONTRACT SHE SHOULDN'T SIGNA week passes where nothing is said about moving in together or commitment or the future. They exist in a holding pattern where they see each other daily but maintain their separate lives. Nora goes to her apartment. Dominic goes to his penthouse. They meet in the middle at his office or her office or at restaurants where they can be public and professional and also clearly together.Then one evening, she arrives at his penthouse to find him waiting with paperwork and a lawyer and the kind of formal setup that suggests he's been planning something significant. There's a contract on his table. There's a document that's legal and binding and requires her attention."I want you to move in with me," he says before she can ask what this is. "Officially. Not because we're hiding. Not because it's convenient for either of us. But because you're choosing to build a life with me and I need that choice to be protected."She looks at the contract. It's a legal docu

CHAPTER 32

HIS OFFER, HER ANSWERTwo weeks into living together, they fall into a rhythm that feels surprisingly natural given the complications of how they arrived at this point. He has his office. She has a study space that's becoming her own. They exist in the penthouse like two people who've learned how to share space without sacrificing autonomy. They eat breakfast together. They leave for work separately. They return to the same place. They build a life that's both together and independent.The adjustment she'd expected never really arrives. There isn't a period where she feels crowded or overwhelmed by his presence. There isn't a moment where she suddenly realizes she's made a mistake by agreeing to share her life so completely with another person. Instead, each day feels slightly easier than the one before it. Each day makes the arrangement feel less like an experiment and more like a reality that's quietly settling into permanence.She's learning his habits. She's learning that he drinks

CHAPTER 33

MOVED IN, LOCKED OUTThe security system of his penthouse is more complicated than most airport terminals. Nora discovers this on her third day of living there when she tries to order groceries online and accidentally triggers the perimeter alarm because she attempted to open the service entrance without using the correct code sequence. Within ninety seconds, security appears. Within two minutes, Dominic is on his phone asking if everything is okay. Within five minutes, he's leaving his board meeting to come home and check on her.She's standing in the kitchen looking at the touch panel that controls everything. There's a code for entry. A code for exit. A code for guests. A code for staff. A code for emergencies. A code that locks down the entire apartment if he deems it necessary. She's looking at this system and she's understanding that she's moved into a fortress disguised as a luxury penthouse."I didn't know about the service entrance alarm," she says when he arrives, barely cont

CHAPTER 34

THE HOUSEKEEPER KNOWS EVERYTHINGMaria has worked for Dominic for seven years. She's not just a housekeeper. She's a witness to his life in ways that he probably doesn't fully understand. She knows the pattern of his sleep by how many coffees he drinks. She knows his emotional state by what food he orders. She knows about his relationships by the items that appear and disappear from his apartment.She's watched people enter his life and leave it. She's watched short-term relationships that ended before they became meaningful. She's watched women who were impressed by his wealth and women who were intimidated by it. She's watched him become interested in people and she's watched him lose interest. She's observed enough of his life to recognize patterns that other people miss.She observes Nora with the kind of careful attention that suggests she's assessing her sustainability in Dominic's life. She watches them together. She notes the way they interact. She's cataloguing data like she's

CHAPTER 35

HE WATCHES HER SLEEPIt's three in the morning when Dominic wakes to the realization that Nora is finally sleeping peacefully next to him. Not restlessly. Not with the tension that usually characterizes her sleep. Peacefully, like she's made a decision to trust him and that decision is allowing her body to finally relax completely.He watches her in the darkness. He observes the way her chest rises and falls with her breathing. He notices the faint line of tension that's usually present between her eyebrows, the line that represents all her worry about this relationship, has disappeared. She looks younger when she's sleeping. She looks like someone who hasn't been through trauma. She looks like someone who's finally found peace.He's thinking about the conversation with Maria. He's thinking about the fact that other people see the complications in this relationship. He's thinking about the fact that he's probably going to hurt her again despite his best efforts. He's thinking about the

CHAPTER 36

SHE FINDS THE PHOTOGRAPHThe drawer in his desk is supposed to be locked but it's not, which is probably how she ends up opening it while he's in the shower and she's looking for a pen that actually works. She finds pens. She finds papers. She finds a photograph that stops her entire world from rotating.It's a woman. She's blonde and elegant and dressed in a wedding dress that probably costs more than most people's annual salary. She's standing next to Dominic, both of them smiling at the camera like they're about to become husband and wife and spend eternity together in marital bliss. The photograph is professionally taken. It's framed in expensive glass. It's been kept and preserved like it's important. Like it's something worth remembering despite whatever happened that prevented the wedding from occurring.Nora is holding this photograph and she's trying to understand what she's looking at. She's trying to reconcile the fact that Dominic has never mentioned a previous engagement.

CHAPTER 37

THE WOMAN IN THE PICTUREVivienne Sterling is the kind of woman who exists in luxury magazines and exclusive country clubs. She comes from old money that predates most American family fortunes by generations. She's elegant and calculated and understands the game of wealth and power in ways that few people actually do. Dominic met her at a charity event six years ago and he decided consciously and deliberately that she was the perfect companion for his empire."I didn't love her," Dominic explains as they sit in his study late into the evening, the city lights casting long shadows across his face. "I thought I did at first but looking back with honest perspective, I was just attracted to the idea of her. I was attracted to what she represented. She was the kind of woman that made logical sense for my life plan. She understood the world I operated in. She didn't need anything from me except what I was already offering. She was efficient and beautiful and completely emotionally unavailabl

CHAPTER 38

HIS PAST HAS A NAMEThe meeting is set for a neutral location. A coffee shop in Midtown where neither of them has any history or memories or ghosts. Dominic asks Nora if she wants to come with him and she says absolutely not because being there would make it about her instead of about his actual relationship with Vivienne. But she spends the entire hour he's gone imagining what it's like when he sees her. Imagining whether there's still attraction beneath the years. Imagining whether some part of him still loves her.He returns to the apartment with an expression that's complicated and exhausted. He collapses onto the couch like the meeting took something fundamental out of him. He looks like someone who's just processed years of guilt and shame in the span of an hour."She didn't accept my apology," he says without preamble. "She told me that words don't matter. That an apology six years later is too little and too late. That I ruined her ability to trust people and no amount of words

CHAPTER 39

EVERYTHING SHE THOUGHT SHE KNEWThe call comes on a Thursday morning while she's still drinking her coffee and trying to wake up. Dominic's assistant transfers it to his office line while Nora is in his office working on her business division expansion plans. It's Vivienne. She wants to meet him again. She says there's something important she needs to tell him in person.Dominic goes to meet her and Nora stays at the office pretending to work while actually spiraling about what Vivienne could possibly want. She's imagining terrible scenarios. She's imagining that Vivienne is going to ask him to get back together. She's imagining that Vivienne is going to tell him she's never stopped loving him. She's imagining that he's going to discover he still has feelings for her. She's imagining that his past is going to pull him away from his present and drag him back into a world where Nora doesn't fit.He returns to the office hours later and he's visibly shaken. He takes Nora into his office a

CHAPTER 40

THE NIGHT THE WALLS CAME DOWNHe proposes without a ring because rings are about marking territory and he wants this to be about something different. He proposes without planning or grand gestures because those things are about impressing people and he wants this to be about honest connection. He proposes on a Wednesday evening in his kitchen while she's making dinner and he's watching her move through the space like it's the most natural thing in the world to share a kitchen with her.She's stirring something in a pot and humming slightly off-key and completely unaware that he's about to ask her the most important question of their shared life. She's being herself without performance or armor and that's when he knows he can't wait another moment.For weeks he's been carrying the question around with him. He's considered elaborate plans. He's considered expensive vacations and carefully selected locations and all the traditional ways people transform a private decision into a public ev

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