Contract Marriage with Mr Billionaire

Chapter Five

LUCIEN'S POV

The rustle in the library doorway froze the air in my lungs. Not Danvers. Not Elara. Something older, thinner, woven from memory and regret. I didn’t turn. To acknowledge it was to give it power. Instead, I focused on the cold weight of my own watch in my waistcoat pocket, a twin to the one now sitting on Elara’s nightstand. A reckless, stupid gesture, leaving it for her. But the compulsion had been a physical ache, let her see the deadline, let her know the clock is real.

The scent of old roses and damp earth intensified, then faded, as if a presence had drifted past me, up the staircase toward the east wing. Toward her. A cold knot of fear, sharp and acidic, tightened in my gut. It was too soon. The house wasn’t supposed to stir this early in the cycle. Her curiosity was a flame, and the dormant things here were moths beginning to twitch.

I ascended the stairs, my footsteps silent on the runner. The door to her wing was just ajar. From within, I could hear the soft, frantic rhythm of her breathing, awake and afraid. I stood there for a long minute, a sentry in the dark, my hand inches from the polished oak. I wanted to push it open. To say something, anything, that wasn’t a rule or a threat. But what could I offer? Comfort was a lie in this place. My protection was the very thing that put her in danger.

Down the hall, a floorboard groaned under a weight that wasn’t mine. A draft, colder than the rest, snaked around my ankles. It carried a whisper, not in my ear, but in the back of my mind, a thought that wasn’t my own: Mine.

It wasn’t referring to me.

I went back to my study, the only room that still felt like my own. The ledgers on my desk detailed empires, but the most important account, the one of lives owed and paid, was kept in no book. I opened a locked drawer and pulled out a small, leather-bound journal. 2014. Violet’s year. Her handwriting, neat and it filled the first few pages with mundane observations about the gardens, the weather, and a book she was reading. Then, midway, the entries changed.

“L says dreams are just stress. But I hear them arguing in the walls. Two women. One weeps, one sounds so angry.”

“Found the blueprints. There’s a room on the west wing plan that isn’t on the house tour. L says it was sealed. His eyes get that flat, cold look when he lies.”

“He kissed me today and I tasted grief. What is he mourning? I’m right here.”

The final entry was a single line, the ink blotted as if by a trembling hand:

“I know what happens to the wives.”

I closed the journal. The warmth of the study lamp felt like a mockery. Violet had come closer than any of the others to understanding. She’d been brave. And for her bravery, the house had consumed her faster. Now Elara was on the same path, and she was smarter, more stubborn. She had a friend on the outside, a digital tether to the world. That was a new variable. A dangerous one.

_ _ _ _

ISOBEL’S POV

My apartment was a war room. Laptop glowing, three empty coffee cups, and a wall of notes I’d scribbled on printer paper and taped up. Lucien Blackwood’ public façade was a polished black monolith: philanthropy, board seats, silent partnerships. Boring. Untouchable. But you don’t get that rich, that quietly, without leaving cracks.

I’d bypassed the business stuff and gone digging for the human traces. Social media was a ghost town. No old classmates spilling secrets. But property records… those told stories. Blackwood Manor wasn’t just owned by Lucien. It was owned by a trust, a nesting doll of legal entities that traced back to something called The Aethelred Foundation. Founding date: 1894. The same year the first “Mrs. Blackwood” in the portrait gallery, Catherine had died.

A chill that had nothing to do with my apartment’s heating skittered down my spine. Coincidence? Maybe.

But journalism 101: there are no coincidences, only connections you haven’t made yet.

I dug deeper into newspaper archives, filtering for “Blackwood”. The society pages showed the occasional gala. But then I hit a paywall-protected archive for the local county paper near the manor. My press creds got me in. The search results were a sparse, grim timeline.

1994: Obituary for Catherine Blackwood, 24. “Died suddenly at the family estate.”

2004: Brief notice on the “accidental drowning” of Seraphina Blackwood, 26, at Blackwood Manor.

2014: A slightly longer piece. “Woman missing, presumed dead.” Violet Blackwood, 28. Nobody ever found it. The case went cold.

Every ten years. Like clockwork.

My heart beat fast against my ribs. Elara was 26. The math was monstrous and perfect. I grabbed my phone, my thumbs hovering over the screen. I needed to call her, to scream at her to run. But what would I say? “Hey, I think your new husband’s last three wives died in decade intervals, and you’re right on schedule!” She’d think I’d lost it. Or worse, the cold, controlled Lucien would find out she knew.

A new alert popped up on my screen. A deeper, more obscure database I’d set a tracer on had pinged. It was a scanned police report from 2014, a supplemental interview. The subject was a groundskeeper at Blackwood Manor. The name was redacted. The relevant line was not:

“The witness stated he heard a woman arguing with Mr. Blackwood near the garden wall on the night of the disappearance. He described hearing the woman say, ‘I won’t be like the others.’ Before he could approach, he claims a ‘thick fog’ rolled in from the woods, and when it cleared, they were gone.”

The report concluded the groundskeeper was unreliable, prone to “fanciful thinking.”

I sat back, the room swimming. A thick fog. Elara’s texts: “mist” “cold” “silent.” This wasn’t just a rich guy with a pattern of dead wives. This was something else. Something that lived in the fog.

My phone buzzed, making me jump. A text from Elara.

Elara: Found something. An old watch. It has a date engraved. One year from now.

The blood drained from my face. I looked at my wall, at the dates. 1994. 2004. 2014. A ten-year cycle. But if the watch was counting down one year… that meant the pattern had changed. Or she had changed it.

The next text came through.

Elara: And Isobel… the whispers are actually saying my name.

Outside my window, the city lights blurred. The cozy horror of my research vanished, replaced by a real, chilling dread. My best friend wasn’t just in a creepy house. She was in a countdown. And I was the only one on the outside who could see the clock.