Contract Marriage with Mr Billionaire

Chapter Four

ELARA’S POV

The old pocket watch in my hand felt like a living heart, warm and heavy with secrets. The engraved date, one year from today seemed to pulse against my palm. Remember. The word echoed the whisper in the gallery. My own breath sounded too loud in the silent corridor as the last of the distant chimes faded, leaving a deeper silence in its wake.

I couldn’t keep it. It wasn’t mine. But the idea of leaving it on the cold floor felt like abandoning a clue. I slipped it into the pocket of my dress. Just then, a door clicked shut somewhere deeper in the house. I froze, ears straining. Not Mrs. Danvers’s firm step. This was lighter, quicker. A rustle of fabric.

“Hello?” My voice was a thin thread in the vastness.

No answer. But the air changed. It grew colder, sharp with that scent again., cutting through the smell of old wood and polish. I took a step back toward my room, and a floorboard groaned behind me. I whirled. Nothing. Just the long, dim hallway, the weak light from the window painting bars across the floor.

I hurried to my wing, my skin prickling. The grand rooms I passed felt different now, not just empty, but emptied. As if something had been forcibly removed from them. The eyes in the painted landscapes seemed to follow my hurried steps. By the time I reached the sanctuary of my bedroom, my heart was a frantic bird against my ribs. I locked the door but it made me feel a little bit safer.

The warmth of the watch was fading, leaving it cold. I took it out and placed it on the bedside table. The shattered face stared back, a fractured moon. Why was it warm? Who had dropped it? Lucien? The date couldn’t be a coincidence. It was the exact term of our contract.

As dusk bled into night, the house’s personality shifted. The quiet wasn’t peaceful; it was a held breath. I ordered a simple dinner in my room, unable to face the cavernous dining hall. Mrs. Danvers brought the tray herself, her gaze sweeping the room and lingering a moment too long on the watch on my table. She said nothing, but her silence was a loud accusation.

“Does Mr. Blackwood often lose things?” I asked, forcing a casual tone.

“Mr. Blackwood,” she said, placing a napkin with precise finality, “never loses what is his.” Her eyes flicked to mine. “Some things have a way of returning, regardless.”

She left, and her words coiled in the room like smoke. I ate without tasting, my attention split between the darkening window and the watch. When full darkness fell, the whispers began.

Not from the walls this time. From the window. I drew the heavy curtain, but it didn’t help. The feeling of being observed was a physical pressure, a chill that started between my shoulder blades. I climbed into the enormous bed, pulling the covers to my chin, a child afraid of the dark. The watch on the table gleamed dully in the sliver of moonlight. Remember.

Sleep, when it came, was thin and haunted. I dreamed of the portrait gallery, but the women were turned away. I walked toward them, and they all slowly turned their heads. They had no faces. Just smooth, blank skin where their features should be. And from that emptiness, the whisper came again, clear and desperate:

“Find us.”

_ _ _ _

LUCIEN’S POV

The city lights were a distant, meaningless galaxy from my office window. I had spent the day in meetings, signing papers, making decisions that shifted millions. A normal day. A mask. The entire time, my mind was sixty miles away, in the stone silence of the Manor.

Mrs. Danvers had reported Elara’s movements. The library. The gallery. Her conversation with the groundskeeper, though she hadn’t spoken a word to him. The woman was observing, piecing together the edges of the puzzle. She was smarter than the others. More resilient. It filled me with a dread that was dangerously close to hope.

Returning late, the Manor felt charged. The air in the great hall was stale with cold, but beneath it was a new frequency, a faint, psychic hum of disturbance. She had stirred something. The house was… noticing.

I went straight to the west wing door. I pressed my palm against the cold, dark wood. Silence. But it was a watchful silence. I could feel the old pact in the grain of the wood, a throbbing reminder of the clock now ticking. One year. I had stolen a watch from the vault today, an old family piece, and left it for her to find a childish, reckless clue. A cry for help disguised as a mystery. Remember. Remember the deadline. Remember what happens to wives here.

When I passed the entrance to the portrait gallery, I stopped. The smell hit me at first faint, sweet decay of roses. The hair on my neck stood. She had been here, and her presence had agitated the memories in the stone.

I walked to Catherine’s portrait. In the dark, the vandalized canvas was a wound. Mrs. Danvers had “cleaned” it. Now, in the moonlight, the scratches looked fresh. I could almost feel the frantic desperation of the gesture. Don’t look. Don’t see what I saw.

A floorboard creaked upstairs. In her wing. A soft, panicked sound followed, a gasp muffled by bedding. A nightmare. My hands clenched. Every instinct screamed to go to her, to offer comfort that I had no right to give. To be the protector I was contractually forbidden to be.

I stood at the bottom of the grand staircase, trapped between the weight of the house above me and the dark pull of the legacy below. The whispers were starting tonight. I could feel them gathering in the dark corners, drawn by her fear, her curiosity, her difference. They were the echoes of my failures, and they were hungry for a new sister.

She was in the labyrinth now. And I had put her there. The worst part was the terrible, traitorous thought that followed: I didn't want her to find her way out. I wanted her to find me in the center of it, even if it doomed us both.

From the shadows of the library doorway, there was a soft echo, the sound of a wedding gown that hadn't been worn in thirty years, moving through the dark.