Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 118

Chapter 118

AARON

The cottage sat like a secret on the edge of nowhere.

Dark wood. Dead leaves. Silence thick enough to choke on.

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I killed the engine, stepped out, and let the cold air bite into me My boots crunched on gravel as I approached, every instinct screaming that this was it. That she was close. That I was finally standing on the line between hell and salvation.

The front door wasn’t locked. It creaked when I pushed it open, dust motes drifting in the beam of my flashlight. The smell hit me first-not rot, not mold. Something else. Stale air, faint lavender, and underneath it… fear.

The cottage was clean. Too clean. No mugs on the counter. No trash in the bin. No stray hair in the sink. Like no one had ever lived here. Like the place had been scrubbed raw.

Except I knew someone had been here.

Venus had been here.

I moved room to room, my breath sharp, my gun steady. Nothing. Empty closets. A stripped-down bathroom. A kitchen that looked like a showroom piece. It wasn’t until I reached the last door down the narrow hallway that I felt it.

The air was heavier. Tainted.

I turned the handle.

The room was small. A bed shoved against the wall, sheets crumpled and stained faintly with something that looked too much like old tears. A blanket folded neatly on a chair like it had been placed there with obsessive care. And then

The cuffs.

Bolted to the bedframe. Metal worn from use. A few strands of long dark hair caught in the hinge.

I froze. My chest locked, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.

She had been here. My Venus. My wife.

I walked in, slow, deliberate, as if moving too fast would shatter he evidence. My fingers hovered over the cuffs, my throat burning. I wanted to rip them out of the wood, tear the whole bed apart, burn this place to the ground.

But rage wouldn’t help me now.

I forced myself to scan the room with a soldier’s precision. Clot es. A small pile folded on the dresser. Women’s clothes. Hers? Maybe. They smelled like detergent, but faintly, faintly, there was her. Her shampoo. Her perfume, buried under layers of Gerald’s madness.

A plastic water bottle sat in the corner. Half-empty. Beside it, an empty plate. And….. The bag, the bag from the mall. The day I bumped into him.

My vision blurred red.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Connor.

He picked up on the first ring. “Tell me you have something.”

“I found where he kept her,” I said, voice flat and dangerous. “A cottage, two hours outside the city. She was here, Connor.

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Chapter 118

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The cuffs, her clothes-it’s all here.”

“I’m sending a team now.”

“Send Rick. Every man you can spare. Lock this place down. I’m leaving before he gets wind and vanishes again.”

“You’re leaving?” Connor sounded like he couldn’t believe it.

“I need a trail,” I ground out. “He didn’t just disappear. He took her somewhere else. If I stay, I’m staring at four walls and a memory. I need to move.”

I ended the call before he could argue and stalked back to the car. My pulse was a drumbeat of fury and desperation. I drove. Roads blurred. Miles disappeared under my tires.

But there was nothing.

No car matching Gerald’s description. No hint of him on the backroads, the highways, the dirt tracks leading deeper into nowhere. Just empty road and the taste of failure coating my tongue.

By the time I circled back, hours had passed. My headlights washed over the cottage again. This time, Connor’s car was there. Another SUV behind it.

Colton was standing by the porch steps, his face grim, his arms grossed. Connor met me halfway, his expression carved from stone.

“You were right,” he said without preamble. “It’s Gerald. He rented this place under an alias tied to a Marlowe subsidiary. We pulled prints from the cuffs and dishes. It’s him.”

“And Venus?” My voice cracked like glass.

Connor’s jaw flexed. “She was here, Aaron. We can’t confirm when he moved her, but…” His eyes flickered to the room behind him. “She’s not far. He won’t risk taking her too deep off grid without supplies.”

Colton stepped forward, his voice low but edged. “This isn’t just obsession anymore. This is possession. He’s escalating. And he clearly had this planned out, who’s to say he doesn’t have supplies where he took her to?”

I turned my gaze back to the dark trees around us, my hand tight on the car door.

Gerald had been here. He had kept my wife shackled in that room, breathing fear and despair, while I sat in my penthouse thinking I’d lost her forever.

Now I knew.

Now there was no mistaking it,

Gerald Marlowe had declared war.

And I wasn’t just hunting him anymore.

I was going to bury him.

He’ll regret taking my Venus from me.

That’s a Promise.