The Billionaire's Contract Wife

Chapter 6: The Devil You Know

The apartment building looked exactly as Adeline remembered.

Three stories of aging brick. A entrance that stuck in humid weather. The smell of Mrs. Patterson's cooking drifting down from 3B. Home for five years—first alone, then with Marcus.

Now it felt like enemy territory.

"Two men in the lobby," Damian said, studying his phone. His security team had arrived twenty minutes ahead of them, blending into the neighborhood like shadows. "One more in the stairwell. Amateur positioning. They're watching, not guarding."

"Marcus wants to know when I come back. Not stop me."

"Which means he wants to talk." Damian looked at her. "You don't have to do this. My team can retrieve the key."

"No." She shook her head. "If Marcus is waiting, I need to face him. I need to understand how deep this goes."

"Adeline—"

"You promised me partnership. This is what partnership looks like." She met his eyes steadily. "I won't break. I won't fold. But I need to see him. I need to look at the man who destroyed my family and understand exactly what I'm fighting."

A muscle ticked in Damian's jaw.

"I'll be in your earpiece the entire time. Any sign of danger—"

"Cardinal. I remember."

She didn't wait for his response. She stepped out of the car and walked toward the building entrance.

The men in the lobby barely glanced at her—confirming Damian's assessment. Watchers, not fighters. She climbed the familiar stairs, her heart pounding harder with each step.

Her apartment door was unlocked.

She pushed it open.

Marcus sat on her couch like he still belonged there. He wore a charcoal suit she'd helped him pick out, his posture relaxed, his expression carefully arranged into something approaching remorse.

Victoria was nowhere in sight.

"Addy." He stood, spreading his hands in a gesture of openness. "I was hoping you'd come."

"Don't call me that." She stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her. Escape route. "You don't get to call me that anymore."

"Fair enough." He nodded slowly, as if accepting a reasonable boundary. "Adeline. I deserve your anger. What you saw at the gala—"

"Was exactly who you are." She cut him off. "Michael Warren. That's your real name, isn't it? The name you used when you first started working for my mother."

Something flickered behind his eyes. Surprise, quickly concealed.

"You've been busy."

"I've been awake." She moved further into the apartment, putting the kitchen island between them. Her jewelry box was in the bedroom. Twenty feet away. "Eight years, Marcus. Eight years you've been lying to everyone I love."

"Not lying. Working." He remained by the couch, giving her space. A calculated choice. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"I did what I had to do. Ashford recruited me when I was nineteen—broke, desperate, drowning in debt from my father's mistakes. He offered me a way out. All I had to do was get close to your family."

"And seduce me? Was that part of the original plan?"

"No." His voice softened. The mask slipping—or another layer of mask appearing. "You were never supposed to be part of this. When I met you at that auction, I was already planning my exit. Three more months and I would have disappeared. But then—"

"Then what?"

"Then I fell in love with you."

The words hung in the air. Adeline felt nothing. No warmth, no flutter, no painful echo of what she'd once felt. Just cold clarity.

"You're lying."

"I'm not." He stepped closer, and she tensed. He stopped immediately, respecting the boundary. "Adeline, what I feel for you is real. Yes, I was sent here. Yes, I did terrible things. But loving you was never an assignment. It was the one true thing in my entire manufactured life."

"And Victoria? Was sleeping with her true?"

Pain crossed his face. Genuine or performed—she couldn't tell anymore.

"Victoria is... complicated. She's Ashford's blood. She does what he tells her. When he ordered her to create distance between us, to make you question me—"

"She's been my friend for six years, Marcus."

"She's been your handler for six years." His voice hardened. "Everything she did was designed to keep you isolated. Dependent. Easy to control. The friendship was real to you. To her, it was an operation."

Adeline's stomach turned.

She'd shared everything with Victoria. Every fear, every dream, every vulnerable moment. And all of it had been cataloged and reported back to Ashford.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "Why confess?"

"Because I want out." Marcus moved toward the window, his back to her. Calculating or genuine? "Ashford is getting reckless. This plan to take Carter Industries—it's accelerating because he's scared. Your mother's evidence is still out there. He can feel it hanging over him. And now you've married Damian Blackwood, which means Ashford's most dangerous enemy has access to everything he's been hiding."

"Get to the point."

"I can help you." He turned back to face her. "I know where Ashford keeps his files. I know his security protocols, his meeting schedules, his blackmail material on half the politicians in this city. I can give you everything you need to destroy him."

"In exchange for what?"

"Protection. Money. A new identity somewhere far away from here." He paused. "And you."

Adeline went still.

"Excuse me?"

"Come with me." His voice dropped, intimate and urgent. "Leave Blackwood. Leave this whole war behind. We can disappear together—start over somewhere clean. I have enough saved to give us a good life."

"You're insane."

"I'm in love with you." He moved closer again. This time he didn't stop. "Everything I said three years ago—the proposal, the promises, the future I wanted to build—that was real. The rest was just noise. We can still have what I promised you, Adeline. We just have to walk away."

He was close enough to touch now. Close enough that she could see the desperation beneath his careful mask.

In her ear, Damian's voice was tight: "Say the word and I'll end this."

She didn't respond. Not to Damian. Not to Marcus.

Instead, she studied the man in front of her. The face she'd loved. The hands she'd held. The future she'd imagined.

None of it had been real.

"Three years ago," she said quietly, "I would have followed you anywhere."

Hope flickered in his eyes.

"But three years ago, I didn't know who you really were." She stepped back. "You killed my mother."

"I didn't—"

"Maybe you didn't push her off that cliff. But you fed Ashford the information that made her dangerous. You helped Victoria deliver the evidence to him. You stood beside me at her funeral knowing exactly why she was dead." Her voice hardened. "That's not love, Marcus. That's ownership."

His expression changed. The mask crumbled, and underneath—finally—she saw the truth.

Cold calculation. Wounded pride. The frustration of a predator whose prey had slipped free.

"You're making a mistake," he said flatly. "Blackwood doesn't care about you. You're a tool to him, same as you were to me."

"Maybe. But at least he's honest about what he wants." She moved toward the bedroom door. "I'm getting my things. You're going to leave. And the next time you come near me or my family, I won't be the one you have to worry about."

"Adeline—"

"We're done, Marcus."

She entered the bedroom and closed the door.

Her hands were shaking now—the adrenaline finally hitting. She crossed to the dresser, opened her jewelry box, and found the small brass key hidden beneath her grandmother's pearls.

*You'll know when to use it, sweetheart.*

She did. Finally, she did.

When she returned to the living room, Marcus was gone. The apartment door stood open, revealing the empty hallway.

Her phone buzzed. Damian.

*He's gone. My team is following. Are you okay?*

She looked around the apartment—at the couch where Marcus had proposed, the kitchen where Victoria had helped her cook birthday dinners, the life she'd built on a foundation of lies.

*I'm okay,* she typed back. *I have the key.*

A pause. Then:

*Come home.*

Home. Blackwood Manor. The fortress of a man she'd married five days ago.

Strange that it felt safer than the apartment she'd lived in for years.

She pocketed the key and walked out without looking back.