FORCED TO MARRY THE RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE IN 9 DAYS

### CHAPTER 5:THE COMA CONFESSION

Elena forgave him.

Not because what he said didn't hurt. It did. It gutted her.

But because at 2 AM, she found Caspian sitting on the floor outside the closet, head in his hands, still in the same clothes. He hadn't moved for hours.

"I meant every cruel word I said to get her out," he whispered when she finally opened the door. "But the cruelest part is... I meant to hurt you to protect you. And that's even worse."

He looked up, and for the first time since she met the ruthless billionaire, he looked like a boy.

"I'm arrogant. I'm ruthless. I ruin everything I touch. That's why Vivienne left. That's why my father Rowen —"

Elena cut him off. She knelt down.

"Stop talking."

And she kissed him. Softly. Forgiving him without words.

He kissed her back like a man drowning.

---

Three days later, he ruined it again.

It was the Sterling Industries Annual Gala — bigger than the dinner with Rowen. Caspian was supposed to bring Elena as his wife. Instead, at the last minute, his PR team told him investors were nervous about his "rushed marriage to an unknown."

So Caspian made a decision. A business decision.

He told Elena to stay in the car. To wait. To not come inside until he texted her.

"I need to do the first hour alone," he said, fixing his cufflinks, not looking at her. "It's just optics, Elena. Don't make it emotional."

"Optics?" Elena stared at him in her red dress, in the backseat of his Maybach, like an i***t. "You want me to hide? Like I'm something to be ashamed of?"

"It's one hour," he snapped, ruthless Caspian back in full force. "God, why does everything have to be a fight with you?"

That was when she got out.

"I'll walk," she said quietly.

"Elena, it's raining —"

She slammed the door.

She was crossing Park Avenue in her heels, rain pouring, when the black SUV that was speeding to make the light didn't see her.

Caspian saw it happen from the car window.

The scream he let out didn't sound human.

---

Elena woke up to white lights and beeping.

Concussion. Sprained wrist. Stitches on her left knee — seven of them. Not fatal. But enough to keep her in bed for a week.

Caspian didn't leave The Langford Private Clinic for that week.

He fired his PR team. He fired his driver. He slept in the chair next to her bed, holding her uninjured hand, in the same suit from the gala, now wrinkled and stained with rain.

"I almost lost you," he kept whispering while she slept. "Because I was trying to look good for men I don't even respect."

On the seventh day, when she could finally walk with a limp, she asked him to take her somewhere.

"Where?"

"The Langford Private Clinic. My mother is there."

Caspian went pale. He knew about her mother — in a coma for eight months after a stroke. Elena had married him partly to pay those hospital bills. It was in Article 9 of their contract: He pays for her mother's care at The Langford.

He drove her himself.

Her mother, *Margaret Alvarez*, lay still in the VIP wing of The Langford Private Clinic, surrounded by soft light and quiet machines breathing for her. Not a normal hospital room — a private suite with flowers Caspian had been paying for every week without telling Elena.

Elena sat down, took her mother's cold hand, and Caspian stood by the door, giving her space.

At first Elena just cried quietly.

Then she started talking.

"Mama, it's me," she whispered. "I need to tell you something. Something crazy."

Caspian's chest tightened.

"I got married. His name is Caspian Sterling. You would hate him. He's arrogant and ruthless and he thinks he can buy everything. It was... it was fake, Mama. At first. I signed papers. He needed a wife, I needed money for you. It was supposed to be simple."

She laughed through tears, stroking her mother's hair.

"But I think I'm falling for him, Mama. And I don't know what to do. Because one minute he looks at me like I'm the only thing in this world, and he holds me when I'm hurt, and he doesn't sleep because he's scared to lose me..."

She glanced back at Caspian — his eyes red, jaw clenched, listening to every word.

"And the next minute he tells his ex I'm just a toy. He makes me wait in the car like I'm embarrassing. He is so arrogant and so ruthless, Mama. And I don't know if this won't break me. Because I'm already having feelings for my fake husband. What if he never has feelings for me?"

Silence. Only the machines beeping.

Then, behind her, footsteps.

Caspian walked to her, knelt down beside her chair, and did something he had never done in front of anyone.

He took Margaret's other hand — his mother-in-law, a woman in a coma he'd never met — and he spoke.

"Mrs. Alvarez," he said, his voice hoarse, broken. "You don't know me. I'm Caspian. The arrogant, ruthless i***t your daughter married."

Elena stared at him, tears frozen.

"I promise you, I will not break her," he said to the woman in the coma, but looking at Elena. "I know I'm... I'm not good at this. At feelings. But I swear on my life, I have never been more scared than when I saw her in the street that night. If you wake up... if you wake up, I promise you'll see that I —"

He stopped. He couldn't say it yet.

He looked at Elena, his eyes full of everything he couldn't say.

Elena broke. She threw her good arm around him and sobbed into his shoulder, right there in front of her unconscious mother.

And for the first time, the ruthless billionaire didn't try to fix it with money or words. He just held her. While she cried for her mother, for their fake marriage, for the feelings that were becoming too real to survive.

In the bed, Margaret's finger twitched.

Neither of them saw it.

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