Contract Marriage with Mr Billionaire

Chapter One

ELARA’S POV

The envelope was laying on my kitchen table. I stared at it, my fingers still gritty with the dirt from my father’s grave. The wax seal was blood-red, imprinted with a crest. I didn't recognize a twisted tree with thorns for branches. My name was written across the front in a sharp, slanting hand: Elara Voss. Not a printed label. Someone had taken a pen and carved my name into that expensive paper.

I was twenty six years old, but I felt a hundred. The apartment was cold because I couldn’t pay the heating bill. The silence was so loud it hummed in my ears. In the other room, a stack of final notices sat on the counter, a white mountain of everything I owed. The bank had called that morning. The business in my father's life was officially gone. Swallowed by debts he’d kept hidden. They said he jumped from his office window. They called it suicide. But my father didn’t jump. He was afraid of heights.

My hands trembled as I broke the seal. Inside was a single sheet of thick, cream-colored paper. No greeting. No signature. Just eleven lines of text.

CONTRACT OF MATRIMONY & SETTLEMENT

Party A: Lucien Blackwood

Party B: Elara Voss

Term: One (1) year.

Conditions:

· Party B will live at Blackwood Manor.

· Party B will fulfill public spousal duties as required.

· Party B will obey all rules of the household.

· No emotional attachment will be sought or offered.

· No questions regarding Party A’s affairs will be permitted.

Consideration: Upon fulfillment, all debts of Party B and the late Arthur Voss will be irrevocably cleared.

Additional: Protection will be available during this period.

I read it three times. The words were legal, and absolute. My breath fogged in the icy air of the kitchen. A year. One year of my life, in exchange for a mountain of debt erased. In exchange for protection. From what? I didn’t know. But I knew the men who’d been circling the ones with cold eyes who’d asked when, not if, I’d pay. My father’s “suicide” had not made those men go away. It had made them hungrier.

I picked up the pen from the table. It was cheap, plastic, the last one from a pack my father bought. I clicked it once. The sound was too loud. I thought of his laugh, warm and rumbling. I thought of the empty chair at this table. I thought of the shame of losing our home, of having nowhere to go. Of having no answers.

I signed.

The ink was blue against that page. Elara Voss. My name looked small. As soon as I lifted the pen, my phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

A car will collect you at 8 AM tomorrow. Pack one suitcase. Do not be late.

_ _ _ _

The car was a silent, black beast that gleamed under the morning’s gray rain. It looked out of place on my crumbling street, like a panther in a junkyard. The driver, a man in a dark suit, said nothing as he took my single, scuffed suitcase. He didn’t meet my eyes.

We drove for hours, leaving the city behind. The world turned into a blur of rain-soaked hills and skeletal trees. I leaned my forehead against the cold glass, watching my reflection, a pale ghost over a dying landscape.

What was I doing? Who was Lucien Blackwood?

I Googled him last night. The results were a curated gallery of power: a reclusive billionaire, old money, a face that appeared in society pages only rarely. He was always impeccably dressed, unsmiling, his eyes the pale blue of glacier ice. The articles called him “ruthless,” “brilliant,” “the man who buries his enemies quietly.” And I had just agreed to become his wife.

Blackwood Manor didn’t emerge from the mist so much as it condensed from it. One moment there was only fog, and then there it was a monstrous silhouette of gray stone, turrets, and too many windows. It wasn’t beautiful. It was severe, a giant’s fist of rock and leaded glass clenched against the sky. My heart began to pound a dull, sick rhythm against my ribs.

The car stopped before a grand staircase. The driver opened my door. The air here was colder, smelling of wet pine and something else… something like damp earth and old roses.

He stood at the top of the steps.

Lucien Blackwood.

He was taller than the photos suggested, and somehow more real. The sharp cut of his black coat, the perfect line of his trousers. His hair was indeed black as pitch, his face all harsh, elegant angles. And his eyes were that impossible, pale blue. They found mine and held them from twenty feet away. There was no welcome in his gaze. It was an assessment. A calculation. He looked at me the way one might examine a piece of art, checking for flaws, determining value.

I climbed the steps, my legs weak. The wind cut through my thin coat.

“Elara Voss,” he said. His voice was lower than I expected, calm and smooth, like stone worn by a deep river. It didn’t match the youth of his face.

“Mr. Blackwood.”

A flicker of something amusement? touched his mouth. It didn’t soften him. “You will call me Lucien. Come inside.”

He didn’t offer his hand. He simply turned and walked through the enormous oak door, leaving me to follow. I crossed the threshold into a vaulted entrance hall. It was stunning and utterly lifeless. A marble floor stretched into shadow. A staircase curved upwards like a frozen spine. The air was still and smelled of polish and emptiness.

He stopped in the center of that vast space and turned to face me. “The rules are simple,” he said, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. “You will have your own wing. You will not enter mine. Meals are at eight, one, and seven. You will be dressed appropriately for any public engagements. You will not discuss our arrangement, or my business, with anyone.” He paused, his icy eyes tracing my face, my worn shoes, my death-grip on my purse. “You will not ask me questions. Do you understand?”

I nodded, my throat too tight for words.

“Good.” He took a step closer. He smelled like sandalwood and frost. “This is a transaction, Elara. Nothing more. Perform your role, and in one year, you will walk away free.” He reached out then, not to touch me, but to indicate the house around us. “This is your gilded cage. Make yourself at home.”

He began to walk away, his footsteps echoing in the silence.

“Why?” The word tore from me, desperate and small.

He stopped but didn’t turn. “Why what?”

“Why me?”

He was silent for a long moment, looking into the shadows of the hallway ahead. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it.

“Because you look like her.”

Then he was gone, swallowed by the gloom of the mansion. I stood alone in the grand, hollow hall, the cold seeping through my shoes. From somewhere deep within the house, as if carried on a draft, I heard the faint, unmistakable sound of a woman weeping.