Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 117

Chapter 117

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VENUS

The silence wasn’t just thick anymore, it was sentient. It no longer filled the room passively; it loomed. It listened. It judged. Every second inside this place crawled across my skin like something alive. Something waiting. Gerald had grown quieter, but not calmer. There was a new edge to him now, a kind of mac energy that didn’t speak in volume but in tension. In the twitch at the corner of his mouth. In the pause between his movements. In the way he stood by the window and stared through the blinds, like the trees themselves were conspiring against him.

He was unraveling. Slowly. Horribly.

And I said nothing.

I didn’t ask anymore. Didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Not because I’d earned to cope but because I’d stopped hoping.

Escape? That was a fairytale I no longer read.

I lived by rhythms now. Not freedom. Not survival. Just cycles. woke up. I ate if he asked me to. I moved when told. I listened. I responded. I obeyed, even when it killed me inside.

The strange thing about imprisonment is how normal it becomes. How quickly the brain rewires itself to believe that anything outside of the cage is impossible. Gerald didn’t need guards or chains. He didn’t need a prison cell. He became all of it himself. The gate. The key. The shadow that watched me breathe.

And then-worse than all that-he started acting tender again.

One afternoon, he brought me lunch. A bowl of overcooked penne drowning in watered-down tomato sauce. It looked as lifeless as I felt.

“Eat more,” he said, tone light but firm, as he placed the plate in front of me.

I picked up the fork, chewed two bites, then placed it down.

“No appetite?” he asked.

“No,” I answered, voice low, even.

I saw it before it happened. The flicker in his eyes. The tightening of his jaw.

He gripped the fork, and with one sharp motion, it snapped in his hand.

He didn’t yell. Didn’t throw the plate. Just stared at the twisted fetal like it had betrayed him. Then, without a word, he cleared the table and walked away, as if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t just watched another hairline fracture in his carefully constructed fantasy.

That night, he tried to kiss me.

A simple thing. A soft press of lips. But I turned my face away.

His hands went still at my shoulders.

“Don’t you love me?” he asked quietly, voice trembling just beneath the surface.

“I do,” I lied.

He held my gaze for a long time. He didn’t believe me. But he pretended he did. Just like I pretended he hadn’t struck me last week. Just like I pretended the bruises were clumsiness and the nausea was nerves.

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15:02 Thu, Jan 8 G

Chapter 117

That was our game now: mutual delusion.

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He brought me books sometimes. Cheap paperbacks with worn covers, thinking I’d enjoy the distraction. He brushed my hair in the mornings, humming songs I used to love. He folded my clothes, laid out pajamas. At first, it terrified me. Then it disgusted me. And now… it just numbed me.

The smallest infractions set him off. If I didn’t smile at his jokes If I asked why I couldn’t open a window. If I requested to step outside the room.

That last one had been a mistake.

“Gerald,” I’d said once, softly. “Can I just… walk outside? Just for live minutes?”

He didn’t answer.

He stared at the door. Long. Cold.

Then he turned off the light.

And left.

The shadows didn’t scare me anymore. Only the quiet did.

Dinner that night was different. No slammed plates. No cracked cutlery. He smiled a lot. Said I looked beautiful in the dress he laid out. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t muster it.

Later, he walked me to bed.

He pulled the covers up to my chin like a caretaker with a child.

Then he brushed the hair from my forehead and kissed it.

“I’ll see you in the morning, my love.”

The lights went out.

But sleep came too quickly. Too unnaturally.

Like someone had reached inside me and flipped a switch.

The last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed me was Gerald’s voice. Muttering. Whispering. Not to me.

To himself.

“They’ve found us… compromised. No time. No time.”

Then black.

I didn’t know how long I was out.

But I knew I was moving.

Air brushed past my face cool and brisk. My arms felt weightless my body limp. I floated somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, between reality and oblivion.

Voices. Or maybe just one voice. His.

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Chapter 117

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“They can’t have her. Not after everything I’ve done. She’s mine I saved her. They don’t get to take her back.”

My head lolled to the side. My cheek pressed against fabric. Leaher seats. The smell of gasoline and sweat and something

metallic.

He was driving. I couldn’t open my eyes fully, but I could feel it the vibration of tires over gravel. The sharp turn of the wheel. The speed.

I tried to speak.

Nothing.

I tried to lift my arm.

Nothing.

Sedated. Again.

He’d drugged me. Again.

He was talking non-stop now. Rambling to himself.

“They’ll think she’s dead. They think I’m gone. But we’re not gone. We’re safe. We’re going somewhere no one will find us. She’ll understand. She’ll see how much I love her.”

I drifted. Sank.

Came back.

The car had stopped. Doors opened. Closed. Arms around me. was being lifted. Carried.

The air was different here. Colder. Thinner. The scent of pine. Moss. Damp earth.

We were in the woods.

I felt myself being lowered onto something soft: blankets, maybe. A mattress. The faint creak of old wood beneath us.

He was still talking.

“They’ll never find us. Not here. No cameras. No signal. No one o ruin this.”

He stroked my hair. Whispered things I didn’t want to hear.

“You make me real, Venus. Without you, I’m nothing. You give he color. Shape, Life, You’re the only real thing I’ve ever had.”

I wanted to scream.

But I was trapped in my own body. Mute. Motionless.

The drug hadn’t fully worn off.

He kissed my forehead. Again.

“I’m

sorry

I had to move us. But I won’t let anyone take you. Not Aaron. Not anyone.”

Aaron.

Even in this haze, the name rang like a bell.

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15:03 Thu, Jan 8 GDG

Chapter 117

Because now I understood something vital.

He wasn’t running from the law.

He was running from Aaron.

And that meant Aaron was close.

Close enough to scare Gerald.

Close enough to chase him into the woods.

Close enough to save me.

And for the first time in weeks, a new thought stirred behind the fog:

Hope.

Small. Quiet.

But alive.

Because monsters only run when they feel hunted.

And Gerald Marlowe was terrified.

Good.

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