Contract Marriage With My Billionaire Boss (Venus and Aaron) novel Chapter 205

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AARON

The spray

of the shower felt like a brutal scrubbing-not of dirt, but of some clinging, invisible filth. I stood under the blistering water, my forehead pressed against the cool, tiled wall, letting the heat punish my skin. It didn’t help. The exhaustion ran bone-deep, a kind of rot the water couldn’t rinse away.

What happened?

The question was a relentless hammer in my skull, and every answer I tried to grasp dissolved like smoke.

–

I remembered arriving at the hotel that much was clear. There’d been a late dinner after the conference, some foreign investors I barely cared to impress. A glass of wine, maybe two. I remembered shaking hands, polite laughter, the dull murmur of business talk. Then – nothing. A clean, merciless blank. Like someone had performed surgery on my memory.

I didn’t even remember how I ended up by that river in Paris.

I finished the shower. The water turned cool. Getting dressed felt mechanical-the clean, crisp shirt, the fresh trousers. I was putting on the armor of normalcy, but underneath I was hollow. The man in the mirror was a stranger: grey, unshaven, his eyes filled with the terrified realization that he was living a nightmare he couldn’t wake from.

How could I face her?

–

Venus. The one woman who knew me truly knew me and yet now looked at me with quiet dread. She had asked me to come up, to freshen up, to talk. The moment of reckoning had arrived.

I smoothed my hair one last time, my hands trembling. The silence of the bedroom pressed down like a velvet cage. I walked toward the door, each step heavy on the carpet. Just before my hand touched the knob, a soft, familiar knock sounded.

“Aaron? It’s me.”

Her voice was muted, gentle and it shattered what little control I had left. I opened the door.

Venus stood there, her hair loosely tied back. No makeup. Exhaustion and fear etched across her beautiful face. She didn’t look angry-she looked broken. That was worse.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

I stepped back wordlessly. She entered, closing the door behind her with a quiet click that sounded far too loud. She didn’t come closer, keeping the room’s length between us-a silent, aching chasm.

“You look tired,” she said softly.

“I am.” My voice was rough. “I’m sorry, Venus. For everything.

She nodded slowly, arms folding across her chest. “I know you are. I trust you Aaron, but I need more than an apology. I need to know what happened.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, the clean shirt suddenly feeling like a straitjacket. “I don’t know,” I said, the

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words tasting like ash. “I honestly, truly don’t know.”

Her gaze hardened, just slightly. “Don’t say that.”

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“It’s the truth,” I insisted, moving to the bedside table for something solid to hold onto. “I remember the dinner. I remember leaving the restaurant. And then… nothing. It’s blank. I don’t even know how or when I left the hotel last night.”

“The woman, Aaron,” she pressed, her voice trembling. “The one in the pictures. Who is she?”

I met her eyes, my confusion raw and real. “I swear to you, Venus, I’ve never seen her before. Her face-her name-I don’t know any of it. I don’t know how she got there, or why.”

She took a shaky breath, searching my face for any trace of a lie. “Okay. Let’s assume that’s true. That she’s a complete stranger. Tell me, then-” her voice dropped to a whisper heavy with dread-“did you sleep with her?”

The air vanished.

The word no rose to my lips-but it stuck. A terrible silence filled the room. How could I say no when there was a blank spot in my mind wide enough to bury a crime? The pictures were damning. The headlines were clear. Could I have done it? The fear that the answer might be yes choked me.

My mouth was dry. I couldn’t lie. Not to her. But I couldn’t swear to something I didn’t remember.

Her eyes filled. The sight of her pain cut through me like a blade.

“Aaron,” she whispered, broken, pleading. “Please. Look at me. Tell me. Did anything happen between you two?”

I stared at the carpet, the table, anywhere but her. My silence grew enormous-a betrayal heavier than any lie.

“I… I can’t,” I finally managed, my voice barely audible. “I can’t answer you. I don’t know.”

That was the fracture.

She flinched, as if struck. The last of her control shattered. Her hands fell. A sob broke free, muffled behind her palm. “I can’t,” she gasped, her voice ragged with tears. “I want to trust you-God, I want to-but you have to help me, Aaron! Give me something. Tell me you fought it. Tell me you were drunk. Tell me anything. But this this silence-” her voice cracked completely “-I can’t fight for you if you won’t give me the sword.”

Her gaze held one last, desperate plea before it crumbled into defeat. I could see her losing the battle between love and the gaping hole in my story.

Still, I said nothing. Because I had nothing to give.

My guilt wasn’t for what I remembered-but for what I couldn’t deny. My silence was the truth, but to her, it was a confession.

“I… I can’t,” she repeated, tears streaming. She stepped back toward the door. “I can’t do this.”

And then she turned and fled.

The silence she left behind was deafening. Her footsteps thudded down the hall.

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“Venus! Wait!”

The word tore from my throat. I stumbled forward, panic flooding me. I couldn’t lose her-not like this.

I saw her racing down the long hallway, her grey robe a blur, heading toward the guest wing.

“Venus! Please! Listen to me!” I shouted, chasing her.

My cries shattered the calm of the house. Downstairs, at the bottom of the staircase, Sabine, Colton, and Connor looked up from a hushed conversation.

Sabine’s hands flew to her mouth. Colton’s jaw tightened. Connor’s eyes narrowed, already reading the disaster unfolding.

Venus reached the end of the hall, near the unused library. She fumbled with the knob, wrenched it open, and threw herself inside. The door slammed with a brutal finality.

I reached it seconds later. My hand gripped the cold metal knob-it wouldn’t turn. Locked.

“Venus! Open the door!” I shouted, pounding the wood. “Please! Just talk to me! It’s not what you think!”

A single, broken sound came from behind the door-a choked, desolate wail. The sound of my wife breaking.

I struck the door again, frantic, desperate.

“Stop it, Aaron.”

A hand clamped on my shoulder-firm, immovable. I spun around to find Connor’s stony face.

“Let go of me, Connor. I need to get to her.

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“No,” he said, voice flat and final. “You’ve done enough damage for one night. She needs space. You need to calm down.”

Sabine and Colton were on the stairs now, their faces pale with alarm. Sabine’s eyes glistened. Colton’s gaze was cold, controlled fury.

“He’s right,” Colton said lowly. “Give her a moment. You both need to breathe.”

Connor didn’t wait. He pulled me back from the door, steering me down the hallway. I resisted, straining toward the sound of Venus’s sobs, but Connor was stronger-unyielding. He shoved me into the bedroom and locked the door behind us.

He didn’t speak right away. When he finally did, his voice was gravel and steel.

“You said you didn’t remember,” he said. “You said you didn’t know the woman.”

“It’s true!” I pleaded, running a hand through my damp hair. “I swear on the children’s lives—I don’t remember any of it!”

“Then pull yourself together, Aaron,” Connor snapped, his tone razor-sharp. He stepped closer until we were inches apart. “You just drove the only person who’d fight for you to hysterics because you couldn’t give her a simple yes or no. This isn’t about protecting yourself anymore-it’s about your life. Your family.”

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He yanked a chair around and pointed to it. “Sit.”

I obeyed, collapsing into it, hollow and shaking.

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Connor leaned over the back of the chair, his voice low but burning. “I protected your privacy at the airport. I got you home. I kept the press away. Now you’re going to give me something: not for me, not for Venus, but for the investigation we’re about to start. We can’t fight shadows, Aaron. We need facts. You know I’d never abandon you and neither would she-she needs time to process all of this.”

He took a breath. “You said you were at dinner. You said you left. Now tell me everything-every detail. I don’t care how small, how strange, how meaningless it seems. We’re going to build this memory back piece by piece. Start from when you left the restaurant. Did you get a cab? Walk? Call a car? Who was the last person you spoke to? I don’t care if it was the waiter or the valet-tell me everything.”

His demand hung in the air, heavy as judgment.

I closed my eyes, forcing away the image of Venus’s broken face, and reached into the void-searching for the thread that might save me.

“The restaurant…” I began, my voice hoarse. “It was… warm. Too warm. I remember saying goodbye to Chen. And… I remember walking toward the main entrance. I was outside. A slight breeze. I pulled out my phone…’

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