Flash Marriage to My Billionaire Boss

Chapter 6: The Matriarch

The A.C. mug was still on the kitchen counter when I came down the next morning.

I'd been using it for three days. Every morning, I'd fill it with espresso from the machine Ethan bought me, and every morning, I'd run my thumb over the initials on the bottom. A.C. Not Mrs. Sterling. Not the contract. Just me.

I hadn't thanked him. He hadn't asked.

That was becoming our language — the things we didn't say.

I was reading the news on my phone, feet tucked under me on the kitchen stool, when Mrs. Hollis appeared in the doorway with an expression that shifted the air in the entire room.

"Mrs. Sterling will be joining you for dinner tonight."

I blinked. "Mrs. Sterling?"

And then it clicked. Victoria. His grandmother.

"She arrives at seven," Mrs. Hollis continued. "She specifically requested to meet you."

The kitchen suddenly felt smaller. I set down the mug. "What's she like?"

Mrs. Hollis paused — a rare hesitation from a woman who always had the right word. "She's not what you expect."

"What does that mean?"

But she was already gone.

I spent the rest of the day trying not to panic. I changed outfits three times. Celeste had left me a wardrobe full of options, but nothing felt right — everything was too formal or too casual, too expensive or not expensive enough. I finally settled on a simple navy dress. Understated. Respectful, but not trying too hard.

I twisted my mother's ring until my finger ached.

At exactly seven o'clock, the front door opened without a knock.

Victoria Sterling swept into the foyer in a cloud of Chanel and silver hair. She was seventy-eight but moved with the energy of someone decades younger, a polished cane in one hand that I suspected was more fashion statement than medical necessity. Her eyes found me immediately — grey, like Ethan's, but warmer. Assessing.

She looked me up and down. Three seconds that felt like three years.

Then she smiled.

"So you're the one." She took both my hands in hers. The grip was surprisingly strong. "Let me look at you."

The second inspection was different — not judgmental, but curious. Like she was memorizing something she wanted to keep.

"You're prettier than your file photo," she said. "Ethan chose well."

Before I could respond, she was already moving past me toward the dining room, cane tapping, voice carrying like she owned the place — which, I supposed, she used to.

"I hope you like roast duck. I told the kitchen to make roast duck. Ethan hates roast duck, but he'll survive."

I followed her, not sure what else to do.

Dinner was unlike anything I'd experienced at Riverside Villa.

Victoria dominated the conversation — stories about Ethan as a boy, about his father Henry, about the Sterling Group before it was "Sterling Group" and was just "a warehouse and half a dream." She told me about the time eight-year-old Ethan tried to negotiate his allowance with PowerPoint slides.

"He was always going to be a businessman," she said, laughing. "The problem was, he forgot how to be anything else."

I laughed — a real laugh, the first one in days that wasn't forced. Ethan's grey eyes flicked to me from the head of the table. Something in them shifted. He'd never heard me laugh like that.

Victoria noticed everything. Of course she did.

"She's not a contract, you fool," she said, not even looking at her grandson. "You just don't know it yet."

Ethan's fork stopped mid-air. Just for a heartbeat. Then continued.

I twisted my ring under the table. Victoria smiled into her wine glass like she'd just won a bet with herself.

The doorbell rang at 8:47 PM.

Mrs. Hollis appeared in the doorway, her expression carefully neutral. "Miss Fontaine is here. She says she has an urgent matter to discuss with Mr. Sterling."

The temperature in the room dropped.

Victoria's smile vanished. "Tell her we're not receiving guests."

But before Mrs. Hollis could move, heels clicked on marble, and Bella Fontaine walked into the dining room like it belonged to her.

Blonde hair swept into an elegant twist. A cream silk dress that probably cost more than three months of my old rent. Diamond earrings. Perfect red lips. She was beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful — sharp, cold, and designed to cut.

"So this is her." Bella's eyes swept the room — Victoria, dismissive; Ethan, hungry — and then landed on me. Lingered. "The temp." She smiled. "How… unexpected."

She pulled out a chair and sat down without being invited.

"Don't mind me," she said. "I just wanted to meet the woman everyone's been talking about."

The next twenty minutes were the longest of my life.

Bella attacked with surgical precision, every sentence a blade wrapped in silk. "You must be so relieved. A year ago you were fetching coffee, and now you're dining with billionaires. It's quite the fairy tale." She tilted her head. "Almost too good to be true, isn't it?"

Ethan's hand moved to his tie. A slow tug. I noticed. Victoria noticed. Bella noticed — and her smile sharpened.

"Relax, Ethan," she said. "I'm just making conversation."

But her eyes stayed on me.

I didn't fight back. I didn't know how — not in this world, not with these weapons. So I sat there, twisting my mother's ring so hard under the table that the silver left a deep groove in my finger, and let Victoria end it for me.

"Bella, dear." The cane tapped once, hard, on the marble floor. "It's been charming. But we're done here."

Bella rose gracefully, unbothered. She smoothed her dress. Glided toward the door. And then, just as she passed my chair, she leaned down.

Close. So close I could smell her perfume — jasmine and something darker. Something venomous.

Her whisper was barely audible.

"You think you're the first woman he's made a deal with? Ask him about the last one." A pause. "Ask him what happened to her."

Then she was gone.

The front door clicked shut. The silence that followed was suffocating.

My hands were shaking under the table. I pressed them flat against my thighs.

Victoria looked at Ethan — a long, weighted look that said more than words ever could. Then she turned to me.

"She's a viper," Victoria said quietly. "She's been circling Ethan since she was nineteen. Her family has money, but no class. I rejected her years ago, and she's never forgiven any of us."

She touched my arm. Her fingers were cool against my skin.

"Don't let her into your head. That's what she wants."

Then she was gone too — the tap of her cane fading down the hallway, the front door closing one last time.

I stood alone in the marble foyer. Ethan was somewhere behind me — I could feel his presence, that stillness. I didn't turn around.

"Who was she talking about?" I asked.

The silence was his only answer.

That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Bella's voice played on repeat. Ask him what happened to her. Ask him about the last one.

Who was the last woman? Another deal like me? Something worse? Someone who didn't survive it? I thought about Ethan's hand going to his tie at the dinner table. About the way Victoria had looked at him after Bella left — not angry, not defensive. Something closer to grief.

There was a story here. A secret buried under six years of ice.

And I wasn't sure I wanted to know what it was.

I twisted my mother's ring in the dark. The A.C. mug sat on my nightstand now — I'd brought it upstairs after dinner, unable to leave it in the kitchen. I ran my thumb over the initials.

Ava Chen.

Not Mrs. Sterling. Not the contract.

But the woman who'd left that mug was falling into a marriage full of secrets. And one of them had just walked out the door wearing jasmine and a smile made of knives.