Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 119

Chapter 119

55%

155 vouchers

VENUS

When consciousness finally clawed its way back to me, it came fragments. My eyelids felt like they had been weighed down with lead, my head thick, foggy, heavy as if it no longer belonged to me. I blinked once, twice, and the blurred shapes. around me began to sharpen, not into comfort, not into safety, but into something unfamiliar.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Damp wood. Stale air. A hint hint of pine seeping through the cracks of whatever place we were in. The mattress beneath me was thin, lumpy, covered with a scratchy blanket that smelled like dust and old smoke. The walls weren’t painted. Bare wood planks, some splintering, some water-stained. A small window high up on one wall, no curtains, no glass. just wooden boards nailed shut from the outside.

The other cottage had been… if not home, then at least an imitation of it. This? This was a hiding place. Temporary. Makeshift. A hole dug into the world for a man on the run.

And sitting there, on the edge of the mattress, watching me with bloodshot eyes and a strange, almost pleading stillness, was Gerald.

For half a second, instinct screamed. Run. Fight. Bite. Claw. Do something. But I couldn’t. My muscles were still sluggish, my mind still swimming from whatever he had given me before we moved. Any sudden movement would give me away. Any sign of resistance could snap his thin thread of control and turn me into his next outlet for rage.

So instead, I did something I had never done before. Something I knew would make my skin crawl for weeks after. Something that might save my life.

I flung myself into his arms.

He jolted like I’d struck him, startled beyond words. His hands hovered midair for a moment, unsure, before slowly settling around me. Awkward. Hesitant. Like he couldn’t believe I’d actually touched him first.

“I…” My voice cracked, breath shaking. I made it tremble on purpose. “I had a nightmare.”

Gerald froze. His breath hitched audibly.

I forced my shoulders to shake. Clutched the front of his shirt, pressing my face against his chest like I needed him. Like he wasn’t the monster in every nightmare I’d had since the day he sole me from my life.

“I woke up and…” I swallowed hard, let a tear slip because I knew he needed to see it. “I was scared.”

And just like that, something in him broke.

His arms tightened around me, tentative at first, then firmer. One hand went to my hair, stroking it like a man petting a wounded animal. His other hand rubbed my back in slow circles and his breathing changed. Softer. Calmer. Relieved.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, voice cracking in a way that almost sounded human. “I’m here. You’re safe with me. No one can hurt you while I’m here.”

Safe.

If only he understood the irony of that word.

I tilted my head back, looked up at him with wide, tearful eyes, nd whispered, “Where… where are we?”

Something flickered across his face. A hesitation, a tightening of his mouth. He glanced toward the boarded-up window,

then back at me.

“Somewhere safe,” he said finally. No elaboration. No details.

1/3

15.03 Thu, Jan 8 GDG.

Chapter 119

4.55%

My heart sank, heavy and cold, but I didn’t let it show. I forced myself to nod, forced my face into the soft, tentative shape of gratitude.

“Okay,” I murmured. “I trust you.”

It felt like poison on my tongue. But it made him smile, faint, small, fragile as glass.

The next few days blurred into one another.

I played my part. Perfectly.

I ate when he brought me food, even when my stomach turned at the taste. I smiled faintly when he brushed my hair, let him hold my hand when he offered it. I stayed close when he was in the room, never flinching away from his touch. I told him I was sleeping better with him nearby. I told him I felt safer when he locked the door. I let him believe the fantasy he had been trying to force on me for weeks.

And slowly, inch by inch, I felt his walls come down.

He started leaving the cuffs off more often.

He started talking more about his childhood, about his sister Andrea, about how everyone had always left him or betrayed him except me. He would watch me like a starving man, drinking in every fake smile, every soft word I fed him.

“You’re different,” he murmured once, his thumb brushing my knuckles. “You understand me. You don’t look at me like they do.”

I wanted to scream in his face, I look at you like a prisoner looks at her captor. I wanted to spit the truth in his eyes. But instead, I whispered, “I know.”

It worked.

He started to believe it.

I saw it in the way his posture softened when I leaned into him without flinching. In the way his eyes warmed when I reached for his hand first. In the way he stopped triple-checking the locks every hour, his paranoia dulled by the illusion of my growing attachment.

But beneath all of it, I never forgot what this was. A game. A war had to win slowly. A strategy born from desperation.

Every day, I studied him like a predator studies prey. Every outburst catalogued. Every muttered word dissected. Every hint of weakness stored away.

And I learned something new about Gerald Marlowe:

He didn’t just want me trapped.

He wanted me to choose him.

That, I realized, was his greatest vulnerability. His delusion was just possession, it was a craving for devotion. He wanted me to love him, not just fear him. And if I could make him belice I was starting to give him what he wanted… maybe I could pull him far enough off balance to make a mistake.

So I smiled when my stomach twisted. I laughed softly when my heart wanted to break. I whispered “thank you” when my

soul screamed monster.

And every night, when he kissed my forehead and whispered promises about “forever,” I let him believe it.

2/3

15:03 Thu, Jan 8 GDG.

Chapter 119

Because if I played this long enough, hard enough, clever enough

Forever wouldn’t belong to him.

It would be mine again.

And when Aaron came-and I believed, with everything in me, that he

was close-I would be ready.

Because Gerald Marlowe wasn’t the only one learning how to play a part.

And soon, I’d stop playing entirely.

ས ཱཿ 55

55 vouchers

AD

Comment

Send gift

No Ads

15:03 Thu, Jan 8 GDG.