Contracted to the Icy Billionaire

“Miss?! We’ve arrived!” The driver’s loud, angry voice suddenly pulled her out of her daze. When she raised her head, she was met with an irritated driver who seemed to have been calling her for a while. Ariana sighed for the umpteenth time as she sat in the backseat of the taxi taking her home. She had spent her morning jumping from one company to another searching for a job but, as her phone dinged softly, she held her chest, hoping it would be different this time. Starville Enterprise: [Thank you for taking out your time to interview. We will get back to you sometime in the future.] She couldn’t be more wrong. A twisted smile appeared on her lips, failing to hide the tremble in them and the pain in her heart. She didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not yet. She wasn’t getting the job. She had gotten so many rejections to she know what a rejection email looked like. At first, she didn’t think anything of it because, who didn’t get rejected during the early stages of a job hunt? However, it had been almost a year now. Still no job. You would think that a first-class degree in business management from an Ivy League university would get her a good job quickly but, Ariana had come to understand that life worked differently than she thought. In this part of the world, connection and wealth were everything. She had none of that. All she had were her achievements in the university which she got through a fully funded scholarship. “What am I doing wrong?” She wailed, her chest tightening. She was desperate.. Her mother had been hospitalized for months now and needed a huge sum to get her surgery done. She had hoped to get a good job and get a few months' payment in advance to be able to pay part of it. Then, there was the mortgage for her and her fiancé’s house which she still had to pay the remaining balance. At this rate, she would lose both her mother and the house. She quickly offered an apologetic smile and pulled out twenty bucks from her pocket before slipping it into his hands. “I’m sorry. You can keep the change.” She apologized out loud, biting her lips. The driver only sighed angrily and zoomed off, ignoring her apology. She held her handbag tightly and walked towards her house. However, as she got closer, she noticed that Dennis, her fiancé’s car was parked outside which was weird. He was rarely home at noon and after she had told him that she might not return until evening, he told her that he would try to leave the office before 7 pm. “Why is he home already?” She whispered, hoping he wasn’t sick. She hastened her footsteps, walking into the house with a smile on her face. After a strenuous day, a warm embrace from her fiancé was all she needed. They had been together for eight years and were finally ready to settle down. He was her first love, first boyfriend, and in a few months, they would be getting married—just as she had always wanted as a child. The wedding would have taken place much sooner but with her mother’s medical bills piling up, all her savings were being used. She entered the house and noticed that it was awfully quiet, making her heart race with worry once again. “I hope he’s fine.” She whispered, her feet moving hastily to their shared room but, just as she closed in on the room, her steps slowed down. She could hear faint noises from the room. One of which she could recognize as Dennis’s voice and the other as a rhythmic slapping. Her fingers went cold, her throat tightened and her chest felt heavy. ‘It can’t be.’ She thought. The sound increased and for a moment, she heard a high-pitched feminine voice calling Dennis’s name. Without a second thought, she pushed open the door, just enough to see what was going on and she immediately felt a bile rise in her throat at the sight before her. Her lungs seemed to have stopped functioning as she suddenly found it hard to breathe as she watched a real-life pornography happen in her house. “Yes, Dee! Harder!” The woman screamed. “f**k, right there!” Dennis joined in. Her fiancé, the man she loved the most in the world was flat on their bed with a woman whose face she hadn’t seen yet bouncing up and down his d**k. From where she stood, she could see his c**k going in and out of the woman. The sight made Ariana nauseous and dizzy at the same time. “Ari doesn’t make you feel this good, does she?” The woman asked, a hint of mockery in her tone. Ariana paused. That voice. It sounded familiar. Too familiar. “She’s too damn boring to ever make me feel this good! That’s why I have you.” Dennis said with a toothy grin and lifted his head to connect their lips in a sloppy kiss. As the kiss ended, the woman’s head fell back in ecstasy, giving Ariana a full look at her face. Her knees buckled as she finally saw who it was. “Stacy?” She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. Shaking her head in both pain and anger, she opened the door wider and stormed into the room. They were committing a f*****g incest in her house! Dennis had introduced her to Stacy two months after they moved into the house as his cousin who had nowhere to live after she was abruptly moved to Seattle for work. After much consideration, Ariana finally allowed her to stay. After all, they had a free room which they were saving for their first child after marriage. As if it wasn’t already bad that he was cheating on her. It was with his own cousin!? “What the hell is going on here?!” She screamed, her veins popping as suddenly all she could see was red. Dennis’s eyes snapped open, widening in shock as he practically pushed Stacy off his body, making her land on the ground with a loud thud. “Ari— What are you doing here?” He stammered, scrambling for his shorts, his face red with embarrassment. “What am I doing here? Are you f*****g kidding me?” Of all the things she expected him to say, that certainly wasn’t in the list. “Ari, I swear. It’s not—” “It’s not what I think? Is that all you’ve got?” She cut him, her voice more steady than she expected. “How could you, Dennis?! With your cousin!” She screamed painfully and turned to Stacy who didn’t look like she had any regrets or felt any shame. She just stood at the side staring at Ariana with a smirk, almost as if she had planned it all. “And you!” Ariana pointed, her blood boiling. The only thing that was saving them both was that she didn’t have a harmful object next to her. If she did, there would have been blood on the ground already. “Do you have no shame?! He’s your f*****g cousin for crying out loud!” Stacy chuckled. She rolled her eyes and curled her lips further, condescendingly shaking her head at Ariana. “How can you be so stupid?” She mocked. “Dennis told me you were an i***t and would be easy to fool but, I didn’t think it was this bad.” She laughed. Ariana’s eyebrows twitched and her body shook, filled with a mixture of rage and disappointment. “W-what are you talking about?” She asked, genuinely confused. “He’s not my cousin, dumbass! We’ve been fooling you for months and you had no idea!” Stacy confessed with an evil laugh. “Shut up!” Dennis scolded but, Ariana could barely hear him. A piercing sound had just gone off in her head and it was all she could hear. Her chest felt like there was a blunt knife being twisted into it and her head ached from the pain. The one thing she thought she had in life turned out to be fake. The one person she had loved and trusted with everything she had turned out to be a liar who was just fooling her. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely see. Dennis was speaking but all she could see was an outline of his face and she couldn’t hear a word he was saying. With her hand clutched against her chest, she stumbled out of the house, her vision blurred. Her fairytale had been a lie!