The Contract Bride

Seventeen – His POV (The Past That Chains Me)

Sleep never came easy. Not for me.

I sat in the darkened study long after Elena had retreated to the guest room, a half-empty glass of scotch burning in my hand, the city stretching endlessly beyond the glass walls. From here, New York looked almost peaceful, its chaos muted into a sea of lights. But I knew better. The city was like me—alive, restless, never truly sleeping.

And tonight, my mind was a battlefield.

Damien’s smirk still haunted me. His hand on her skin, the way he looked at her like a pawn he could move across the board—it made my blood boil. But it wasn’t just rage that kept me awake.

It was fear.

Fear I hadn’t felt in years.

I closed my eyes, and the past came roaring back, uninvited.

I was sixteen the first time I understood betrayal.

My mother—elegant, poised, the perfect society wife—smiled through the bruises of my father’s words, through the coldness of his touch. Their marriage had been forged in steel and money, not love. Love was weakness. That was the lesson drilled into me every night as their silent wars echoed down the hall.

I swore I’d never be like him. Never cage someone in a loveless union. Never let marriage become a prison.

And then I learned the other side of the blade.

Her name was Isabelle. The first and only woman I’d allowed close. I was twenty-two, arrogant, still foolish enough to believe in loyalty. She was beautiful, bright, sharp enough to slip past my defenses. She said she loved me. She said I was different.

And I believed her.

Until I discovered the truth.

She hadn’t wanted me. She’d wanted access. To my name. To my father’s money. To the power she thought she could siphon off by being with me. And when I refused to be her stepping stone, she left. Not quietly. She left in pieces—my secrets whispered into the wrong ears, my trust ripped apart.

She left me standing in the ruins of my own naivety.

That night, I made a vow: never again.

Never again would I let anyone close enough to use me, close enough to hurt me. My heart became a vault. Locked. Guarded. Untouchable.

And it worked. For years, I built walls so high no one dared climb them. Women came and went, beautiful distractions that never touched the core of me. Business thrived. My empire grew. My name became iron.

But somewhere along the way, solitude became my closest ally.

And now… Elena.

I dragged in a breath, my chest tightening at the thought of her.

Elena wasn’t supposed to matter. She was supposed to be a contract, a convenient arrangement to silence the vultures and secure my position. A signature. A ring. Nothing more.

But every day with her was a c***k in the walls I’d spent years fortifying.

Her laugh when she forgot to be guarded. The way her eyes softened when she thought no one was looking. Her fire—God, her fire—that refused to bow to me even when I demanded obedience.

She wasn’t like Isabelle. She wasn’t like my mother. She wasn’t like anyone.

And that terrified me.

Because the closer she got, the more I remembered the boy I used to be—the boy who still wanted something as reckless as love.

I set the glass down and pressed my hands to my face, exhaling hard. I couldn’t want her. Wanting her meant giving her power. Power meant weakness. And weakness in my world was fatal.

But every time Damien’s name crossed my mind, all I could think was: if he ever touched her again, I’d burn him to ash.

That wasn’t business. That wasn’t strategy. That was personal.

And personal was dangerous.

I rose, pacing the length of the study, the weight of memory pressing against my ribs. My phone buzzed on the desk, a message from my head of security:

We’re digging. Will send you Damien’s ties by morning.

Good. I needed leverage. I needed to remind Damien Blackwood that Elena Carter wasn’t his to touch.

Mine, a voice whispered again, insistent, brutal.

I scrubbed a hand down my face, trying to shake the thought. But then I remembered her expression in the car tonight—the way her eyes had widened when I pressed her hand to my chest, the way her breath had caught as if she felt the storm inside me.

And the worst part?

She didn’t look afraid.

She looked… tethered. Like she wanted to understand me, even when I gave her every reason to run.

The door creaked softly. I turned.

Elena stood in the doorway, wrapped in one of my shirts, her hair spilling around her shoulders, her eyes hazy with sleep—or maybe with everything unsaid between us.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The silence stretched, heavy, charged.

Then she stepped inside, her voice soft but steady. “You’re still awake.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t sleep much.”

Her gaze flicked to the glass of scotch, then back to me. “Nightmares?”

Not nightmares. Memories. But I couldn’t tell her that. I couldn’t tell her about Isabelle, about my parents, about the cracks I’d hidden for years.

“Something like that,” I said instead, my voice rough.

She studied me for a long moment, as though weighing whether to push further. Then she whispered, almost too softly to hear, “You don’t always have to be steel, Alexander.”

The words sliced through me, because they were the one thing I couldn’t afford to believe.

I turned away, staring out at the city again. “Go back to bed, Elena.”

But even as I said it, I wished she wouldn’t.