The Contract Wife & The Billionaire

Chapter Three: Betrayal

Jaden watched from his monitor screen in his office, stunned and seething, as the little siren’s words cut through him. Her dismissal rang in his skull like a curse:

“Tell him he was averagely useful to my desires.”

All his life, ever since being branded and carved into submission by his aunt, he had sworn never again to be a woman’s plaything. He was the alpha, the predator, the one who broke women and left them scattered. That was how he survived. That was how he won.

Because in his mind, women always ruled from the shadows. No matter how gentle they seemed, they pulled the strings. His aunt had been overt in her domination, but Jaden believed all women carried the same hunger for control. And so he had lived to break them, one by one.

Until Eliana.

Her words had cut deeper than any whip. She had turned his entire creed upside down. She had rejected his wealth, his power, his gift—reduced him to a tool, a passing indulgence.

How dare she?

How could she flip the script, leaving him the one used, the one diminished?

Jaden sat frozen, fury boiling under his skin as he watched her vanish into the elevator, disappearing from the cameras’ sight.

Who is this woman?

Jaden King—New Orleans’ most dangerous billionaire—was, for the first time in years, afraid to find out.

And yet even more afraid not to.

Because Eliana Walker beckoned him. And that enticement was the one thing he could not control.

****

Her cab's drive home from the All Star Hotel she now realized belonged to Jaden King felt empty. It was as if she were floating, the car nothing more than a cocoon holding her pain together.

The more she relived how tender, gentle, and sweet he had been to her last night, and then how he vanished this morning without a word, pretending it had never happened, the more her heart bled.

I was a fool. What was I thinking? That a man like that would love a woman like me?

Eliana sniffed and wiped her tears. She walked into her small apartment, the same one her mother had died in. Until now, it had been the one place that felt safe and warm. Not this morning.

Her phone rang. It was her boss, probably calling to bark about something his insufferable self couldn’t handle. She ignored the call. Her head kept leading her. She pulled out her old traveling bag and began throwing her things inside. Not that she had much. All her life she had lived on rations. As a child she never owned more than two dresses or three pairs of underwear. Poverty had been her companion, and she had accepted it. This morning she hated it.

She hated that it made her feel small. That standing before a handsome, wealthy billionaire had reduced her to nothing.

No. She hadn’t folded. She shook her head angrily. She hadn’t. She had ignored his money. Who rejects two million dollars? No one. Not in today’s world. So no, she hadn’t folded.

That thought brought her a flicker of relief. Her tears finally stopped. She zipped the bag, slung it over her shoulder, and walked out the door.

It was summer. The air carried a light coolness with a hint of warmth. Her favorite season. She had never been a fan of the cold. She looked left, then right, and began walking. At first, it was aimless. She followed her head. Her mind had not formed a plan for this sudden decision to leave.

Everything became clear when she bought a train ticket at the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal and stepped onto the train. The last thirty minutes were a blur.

She looked down at her ticket. It was bound for Hammond Amtrak Station.

Hammond was a small town where Aunt Lois lived. A place of twenty-three thousand people, with a university, hospitals, and rows of old brick houses that carried the charm of a simpler time.

She settled into her seat and closed her eyes. The trip would take an hour. She hadn’t slept much the night before. Her rest was shallow, broken by dreams. When the train finally slowed into Hammond Station, Eliana felt she could breathe again.

****

Nightmares were a part of Jaden’s existence. They had been since the night his aunt, Zebel, branded him as her submissive. The cruelty of it had numbed his adolescent mind. She was a shrewd woman with the appetite of a jaguar and the venom of a viper, yet she carried a beauty so sharp and alluring it made her more dangerous than the biblical queen whose name she bore. Jezebel.

But the dream that came to him after Eliana Walker left his hotel was unlike any he had known. She had slammed his carefully laid plans in his face, dismissed him with the sting of her words, and walked away. Yet she had left an imprint. When he closed his eyes, she returned to him. In his dreams she was exactly what he feared.

An enchantress with claws reaching to seize his soul and drag him into the same prison his aunt had once built for him. She came snarling, her eyes full of hate, her malice so vivid he could taste it.

He woke up thrashing, his chest heaving with harsh breath, and the first thing that struck him was her perfume. It still lingered on the bed velvet sheets, clinging to the room long after she had left him rejected, insulted, and burning with want.

A rational mind would have dismissed it as nothing more than a trick of memory, the brain weaving dreams from feeling and shock. But Jaden had lived under a spell before. He knew the grip of manipulation. His aunt had bound him with more than chains of flesh.

She no longer demanded his body as often as she once had. She had found younger prey to satisfy her hunger. But sometimes her voice would call, and he would be powerless. He would return to her bed, hating himself for the way his body betrayed him, hating her for the pleasure she coaxed out of his shame.

The world saw him as an egomaniac, drunk on wealth and power, driven by selfish gain and the need to dominate. They never saw the truth. They never saw the man beneath, who was a victim trapped in chains no amount of money could break him free from. No one knew. No one cared to look close enough. They all judged him, and he hated them for it.

He didn’t know how Zebel, his Aunt, had managed it. Probably years of whips and whispered rewards had burrowed into his mind until her shadow lived inside him. The sight of her could reduce him to stammering ruin. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t even lust. It was witchcraft of the cruelest kind, and he had never escaped it. Which was why the idea of ever letting any woman stay more than one night with him was something he would never do or agree to.

No one knew that was the reason behind his attitude towards women. Especially not women like Eliana Walker, who thought his coldness and distance were weapons to hurt them, when in truth they were shields to protect what little of himself he had left.

Jaden dragged a breath into his lungs. His skin gleaming with sweat even with the AC's chill air on full blast.

“Are you alright, sir?” The voice was Jeffrey’s. Even in the dead of night, his valet wore his suit, the picture of perfect composure. He was the son of old London nobility, and though his father had squandered the family fortune on arrogance and gambling, he still retained the culture of his lineage. Once a gentleman, always a gentleman. Only Jeffery knew about his trauma.

He had come into his employment right after Jaden had come into his inheritance and had tricked his Aunt into allowing him to move out of her estate along the Oak Alley Plantation owned by her late husband, who died mysteriously on the night of their wedding.

Jaden turned his emerald eyes on him, searching for judgment, for pity. There was none. That pleased him.

"It's Just a dream. I’ll be fine. Go back to your room, Jeffery,” Jaden said flatly, lying back on the bed. But it was not just a dream. It was a curse, and it would return to him the moment sleep claimed him again.

---

It was easy to locate Aunt Lois’s home. Eliana boarded a cab from Hammond Station, and within minutes they rolled down East Thomas Street before turning onto South Magnolia. The cab slowed before a weathered one-story house. Its blue paint was faded and peeling. A wide porch stretched across the front, shaded by an oak tree, two rocking chairs waiting in stillness. The steps were chipped with age. Lace curtains fluttered faintly in the windows. It wasn’t grand, but the house carried the quiet warmth of a place that had sheltered generations.

Aunt Lois was waiting at the door. She was a small woman with the same fiery red hair Eliana and her mother shared, her smile bright but her eyes too knowing. Eliana had often thought, if witches truly lived in New Orleans as the stories claimed, Aunt Lois might be one of them. She always seemed to know more than anyone should.

“Hello, Eliana. You’ve finally arrived,” Aunt Lois said, embracing her.

“You sound like you were expecting me. "Were you?” Eliana asked, narrowing her eyes.

Aunt Lois didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at her with something softer, a pity that chilled Eliana’s skin even though it was nearly 34°C outside the humid sweltering air of Hammond.

“The future is not so bright for you, my dear. But you must be strong. I see pain ahead, lots of it, but I also see a light about to grow within you. That light will bring the joy you’ve been missing at the end." She said and patted Eliana’s cheek with gentle fingers.

Eliana gassed and stepped forward. Eager to know more. To understand.

Could this pain be tied to him? To Jaden King?

“What does that mean, Aunty?" "Pain? Light? I know I’m sad about sleeping with someone I shouldn’t and expecting more, but what light? And what do you mean it’s about to grow inside me?” Eliana pressed.

There was no answer. Aunt Lois simply smiled, and took her bag and opened the door. The scent of lavender and honey greeted her as she stepped inside, sweet and warm, chasing away the sting of her aunt’s words. She didn’t know it, but those words were prophecy. And not even her legs, nor trains, nor planes, would carry her far enough to escape it.