Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 137

Chapter 137

VENUS

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The thing about Aaron was… he didn’t know how to do half-measures.

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If he cared, he cared with his whole damn spine. No diluted attention. No “I’ll check in later.” You got the full force of him, every hour of every day, like he’d decided the rest of the world could wait.

And now, apparently, the rest of the world was waiting.

Because Aaron was here. Always here.

That night, the words he’d said-I never want to lose you-kept replaying in my head. They clung to me, curling around every breath-I took.

It should have made me feel safe.

And it did… but there was something else underneath, something I didn’t have a name for.

It was past midnight. He’d insisted I sleep in his bed again, his tone so certain I didn’t even think about arguing. The lights were dim, the air cool, the sheets crisp in that expensive way that made you think of hotels you couldn’t afford.

I woke sometime after three, heart pounding, the remnants of a dream still clawing at me. I didn’t remember the details, just the weight in my chest and the ache in my throat.

Aaron was awake.

I don’t know how I knew it-he wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking—but I felt it.

“You’re tense,” I murmured into the dark.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said, voice low, steady.

The therapist insisted he doesn’t wake me up from any of my episodes. Said it was dangerous.

“I don’t remember it.”

He didn’t answer right away. Then,

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got you now.”

The way he said it made my stomach flip.

Like it wasn’t just reassurance, it was a promise. Or maybe a warning.

I turned onto my side to face him. Even in the shadows, his eyes found mine like he’d been waiting for me to look.

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Chapter 137

“You gave up everything for me,” I whispered.

He didn’t flinch. “I didn’t give up anything worth keeping.”

“You think the company wasn’t worth keeping?”

:)))

“It’s a company, Venus. I can build another one. I can buy one. I can take one.” His voice sharpened. “But I can’t replace you.”

That did something to me.

Something I wasn’t ready to admit out loud.

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His hand slid under the covers, fingers curling loosely around my hip. Not tight. Not demanding. But there. Anchoring me.

“You don’t have to-” I started.

“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” he cut in, his tone a slow, controlled burn. “You disappeared for two months. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”

My breath caught.

“I woke up every morning and checked my phone before I even sat up. Hoping. Waiting. Bargaining with myself that today would be the day I heard from you.” His thumb traced absent circles into my skin, a softness at odds with the steel in his voice. “By the end, I would’ve burned cities to the ground just for a lead.”

“Aaron…” My voice was barely a whisper.

“I’m not letting that happen again. I don’t care who I have to cut down, or what it costs me. You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

The air between us thickened until I could feel my pulse in my ears. His gaze didn’t waver-dark, intent, as if he was willing me to understand something deeper than the words themselves.

For a second, I thought he might kiss me.

For a second, I wanted him to.

But then he just pulled me closer until my forehead was pressed to his collarbone, his heartbeat a steady, stubborn rhythm against my cheek.

“Sleep,” he murmured, softer now. “I’ll keep watch.”

I didn’t argue.

Morning came, but it didn’t feel like morning.

It felt like the same suspended time I’d been living in since the hospital, the same quiet, heavy stillness,

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Chapter 137

broken only by the hum of the city somewhere far below the penthouse windows.

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Aaron was with me, like always. He didn’t even pretend to have somewhere else to be anymore. He took me to see the therapist once a week, always with enough security to make bystanders stare. I didn’t complain. And when we came back, he stayed with me.

We were on the couch, sunlight pooling across the floor, a mug of tea cooling in my hands. He’d noticed the slight shiver creeping up my spine all morning, and I could see the exact second he decided to fix it.

“I’ll get you a blanket,” he said, already moving toward the bedroom.

I opened my mouth to tell him not to fuss, but the landline rang.

The sharp sound cut through the calm like a blade.

I don’t even know why I answered it. Habit, maybe. Or maybe I thought it would be harmless: a concierge check-in, a wrong number, one of those bland automated messages.

I pressed the receiver to my ear.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Just a low, steady hiss of breathing.

I almost hung up. Almost.

But then

“Venus.”

My blood turned to ice.

That voice. That deep, rasping syllable drawled over my name, slow enough to drag claws across the inside of my skull.

Gerald.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The receiver felt like it weighed fifty pounds in my hand.

“You’re alive and You’re with him,” he said, and my vision tunneled. The living room warped and tilted until it wasn’t the living room anymore.

The smell hit me first-stale sweat and damp concrete.

Then the cold, seeping into my bones until even my teeth ached.

A dim bulb swinging overhead, casting jagged shadows on the wall.

His shadow.

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My chest locked. My lungs refused to work. My hands trembled so violently the phone slipped from my grasp and clattered against the hardwood, Gerald’s voice still spilling from it in broken, taunting fragments I couldn’t make out anymore.

I was there again. Not here. Not safe.

Inside the coffin, panicking and in the dark.

That low chuckle, so close it felt like breath against my car.

“Venus-”

I didn’t hear the bedroom door or Aaron’s footsteps. I only registered him when a shadow dropped to its knees in front of me.

“Hey…hey, look at me.” His voice was sharp, commanding, cutting through the fog, but my body didn’t respond. My arms were locked around myself, nails biting into my skin, rocking without even realizing it.

He caught my chin in one hand not gentle, not cruel but Insistent.

“Venus. You’re here. In the penthouse. With me.”

My breath came in short, erratic bursts, my throat closing like I was drowning.

His gaze flicked to the phone on the floor. He heard it-the faint hiss of Gerald’s voice-and something shifted in his expression. Not just anger. Something colder.

Something lethal.

The next moment, the phone was in his hand, ripped from the floor so hard the cord strained.

“This is the last time you’ll ever speak her name,” he said into the receiver, voice low enough to scrape bone. “And when I come for you, Gerald-and I will-you won’t have time to beg. You can’t hide forever.”

He slammed the phone back into the cradle so hard I thought it would crack.

Then his attention was back on me, his hands framing my face, eyes searching mine with the same ruthless precision he used to dismantle enemies.

“You’re safe,” he said, slower this time. “Say it.”

I shook my head, the words caught somewhere in my chest.

“Say it, Venus.” His thumbs pressed just enough against my cheeks to make me focus. “You’re safe. With me.”

It came out in a broken whisper. “I’m… safe.”

His jaw tightened, but his grip softened. “Good girl.”

Then he was pulling me into his chest, wrapping me in so much solid heat I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. I buried my face in his shirt and let the smell of him-clean, sharp, grounding-drag me the rest of

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Chapter 137

the way back to the present.

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But I knew, even without looking, that while I was curled against him trying to remember how to breathe…

Aaron was already planning exactly how he was going to make Gerald regret ever picking up the phone.

AD