Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 160

Chapter 160

AARON

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60

She finally slipped under. My girl. My fighter. Breathing ragged against my chest, her fists tangled in my shirt like if she let go she’d drop straight into the pit her mother left behind.

I didn’t move. Didn’t dare. One wrong shift, and the demons would come dragging her back into the blood. Not on my watch. Not while I had breath in me. So I sat there in the dark, one hand buried in her hair, the other heavy on her hip, staring at her face like my eyes alone could guard her sleep. As if keeping them open was the only wall between her and the hell Martha carved.

The door creaked.

I didn’t need to look. The air told me who it was before his boots even touched the rug.

Colton.

“What the hell were you thinking taking her there in the first place?” I hissed, voice low, sharp, honed like a blade in the quiet. “You should’ve stopped her. And the fucking guards-where the fuck were they?”

Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t fair. The guards tried. They’d called me half a dozen times, voices tight with panic when she pushed past them. And what were they supposed to do? Throw her over their shoulders, lock her in? She would’ve burned them alive with her fury if they’d tried. No, this wasn’t their failure.

It was Colton’s.

My glare cut into him like a blade. “One whisper of danger and you should’ve shut that apartment down. Instead you let her walk straight into-” my jaw clenched until the words cracked “that slaughter.”

Colton didn’t fire back immediately. His jaw flexed, his eyes cold steel, his voice tight. “Don’t act like I wanted this, Aaron. You think I don’t know what it did to her?”

I was on my feet before I knew it, leaving Venus curled on the cushions, wrapped in what little peace I’d carved for her. My fists curled, the urge to put him through the wall burning white-hot under my skin. “You let her get close enough to smell her mother’s blood. Do you get that? Do you understand? She’ll never wash it out, Colton. It’s etched into her now.”

He stepped forward, matching me, eyes hard. “That wasn’t my failure. I told her to stay in the car. But you know Venus.”

I did. Christ, I did.

Colton’s voice dropped, clipped and bitter. “This wasn’t chance. That scene-those words on the wall-it wasn’t cruelty. It was calculation. Precision. And I’d bet my last breath it ties back to that psychopath we’ve been hunting for months.”

The words lit gasoline in my veins.

And then the third shadow joined us.

20:37 Wed, Jan 14

Chapter 160

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Connor. Of course. Always the one with the facts, the man carrying the blade dressed as paper.

60

He didn’t so much as glance at Venus. Smart. He crossed the room, jaw tight, eyes darker than usual, and slid something across my desk. Evidence bag. Photo on his phone. Transcript. Clinical. But his voice when he spoke was weighted like a tombstone.

“They found this in her hand,” he said. “Gerald wrote it.”

The name hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest.

I snatched the phone.

The image filled the screen. Blood-soaked paper, Martha’s corpse fingers curled around it like a grotesque gift.

I did it for you, my love. We will be together again. I swear.

The words burned. They blurred. For a second my breath locked in my throat, strangled by rage so sharp it almost tasted metallic.

Four months. Four fucking months hunting him. Dragging every contact through the dirt, tearing down safe houses, bleeding sources dry. Every whisper, every lead, every alley turned upside down. Four months of chasing shadows and somehow Gerald still slipped the noose.

And now? He didn’t just slip it. He tightened it around our throats. He got cocky. Brazen enough to orchestrate this massacre, to put his hands, his message, his obsession into her life again.

Colton swore under his breath. Connor stood silent, jaw tight, waiting for the explosion he knew was coming.

I laughed. Low. Hollow. The sound of a man past breaking. It wasn’t humor, it was the kind of laugh that made both men stiffen because they knew what it meant. They’d seen me like this before.

“He’s in the wind, and instead of digging deeper, instead of disappearing, he decides to leave her a fucking love letter,” I said, voice raw, splintering under the weight of it. “You know what that means?”

Connor didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“It means he’s close.”

My fist slammed into the desk, wood splintering, the crack ringing like a gunshot through the study. Venus stirred in her sleep, a soft whimper leaving her lips. I froze, every muscle locked, forcing myself back to stillness so I didn’t wake her.

But the rage didn’t ebb.

It calcified

“He wants her rattled,” I said, softer now, voice dropping lethal. “He wants her afraid. He wants her to start doubting, start begging for the ghost of him.”

My gaze snapped back to them both, sharp enough to draw blood.

20:37 Wed, Jan 14

Chapter 160

(60

“The next time Gerald crawls close enough to whisper her name, I’ll cut his tongue out and make him choke on it.”

The phone creaked in my grip, the photo of that letter smearing under my thumb, Gerald’s neat little promise of reunion shredded into pulp.

Four months of shadows. Four months of failure. Four months of him playing god in the dark.

That ended tonight.

Because Gerald had just renewed his death sentence in ink.

And I was finished waiting.

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