CONTRACTED TO HATE

Ruby's POV

Three years. Three long, exhausting years into this contract marriage, and the deepest desire in my heart was still to stab my husband with a tiny, silver salad fork. A small fork, of course. I'm not a monster; I just appreciate a well-scaled revenge.

The whole thing was a cumbersome, suffocating costume I was forced to wear every morning. I was twenty-four, married to a man whose face I'd been planning vengeance plots against since our knees were still scuffed from the playground. The worst part? My life was built on the foundation of a business pact I had zero memory of signing. I was likely six years old when the ink dried, too young to know I was being traded like a piece of silk.

And the hatred? Oh, it was the only thing in our marriage that didn't feel like a stage prop. The air between us wasn't "romantic tension"; it was a high-voltage short circuit, a jagged wire humming between two poles. You could probably fry a dozen eggs on the passive-aggressive heat radiating from Josh White at any given moment.

You're asking the obvious question: Why marry him?

Bless your sweet heart. My life has always been a chaotic rollercoaster fueled by my parents' sky-high, suffocating expectations. I was the good, obedient daughter, raised on the ancient, dusty wisdom that children should be mirrors for their parents' pride, and wives should be silent ornaments, pretty, polished, and perfectly still.

I achieved the "married" part. The "submissive" part? That's where I filed for divorce in the secret courtroom of my brain.

My parents, the Andres, were the power couple who essentially owned the skyline of Ork Lanas, their fingers dipped into the pockets of every lucrative continent. They were famous, powerful, and the world assumed my sister and I were the luckiest children on Earth.

Everyone was wrong. The world had expectations. My parents had expectations. Hell, even my mother's garden club had expectations that felt like invisible leashes. The short version? When I was sixteen, I was already a property deed, engaged to the son of the Whites Group of Companies' CEO.

And naturally, he was my nemesis, Joshua White.

He was my biggest childhood bully, a boy who saw my freckles and decided they were a personal insult to his sense of aesthetic superiority. In middle school, his favorite pastime was yanking off my hoodie and announcing to the hallway: "The only contest you can win, Freckle Girl, is the one for Bald Humans."

Don't you just hate him? The universe certainly did, because I later discovered via my mother's spa gossip that Josh was actually the CEO's inconvenient secret, a bastard son.

Sweet karma, meet sweet revenge.

I might have mentioned this juicy little tidbit to my best friends. And maybe they mentioned it to their friends. And maybe the whole school discovered the gilded scandal. I had to change schools after the White family went full nuclear and my dad lost a lucrative deal, but honestly, it was the best money I ever spent. It was worth every penny of the fallout. I figured that was the end of Joshua White.

Spoiler alert: it was only the appetizer.

Fast-forward to my sweet sixteen engagement party. I walked in expecting a generic rich boy I could ignore, but instead, I was greeted by Josh. Freaking. White. The parents dropped the bomb like a heavy curtain: a business pact. We were the corporate seal, the human handshake between two empires. My entire future was officially an asset, traded while I watched from the sidelines.

The twist was, puberty had been kind, like a vengeful fairy godmother. My freckles were still there, but everything else had leveled up. Josh knew I was beautiful. I knew I was beautiful. It changed nothing, though. I still hated his perfect, smug face with the fire of a thousand suns.

Six years later, the parents got their merger. I was twenty-one when I married the man I was still mentally compiling a comprehensive list of flaws for. I became the good girl again, groomed by Christian nannies for wifely submission and by my parents for ruthless domination. I was the Virgin Seal on a business deal. (Except, technically, I wasn't a virgin, but hey, some lies are necessary for survival.)

Josh had his flings plastered all over the blogs. I had mine tucked away discreetly, like secrets in a locked drawer. We both lived separately until the parents decided it was time to "unite the families" with a wedding so lavish it felt like an act of financial aggression.

The kiss was the longest, most disgusting ten seconds of my life. I had to focus on the flower arrangement behind him just to keep the champagne from coming back up. Everyone bought the miracle, the lie that we'd somehow made peace.

________________________________________

Three years later, we were masters of the facade. We occupied a luxury mansion far east of Ork Lanas that was less a home and more a divided map. North Wing: him, his lovers, and his secrets. West Wing: me, my lovers, and my disdain. We had a simple, non-negotiable agreement: stay out of each other's territory and never, ever care.

Everything was fine until the call came.

"I'll be at your house in thirty minutes, dear." Mother's voice, calm, dangerous, like a velvet-wrapped brick.

Thirty minutes. Enough time to panic, but barely enough time to execute the emergency evacuation of Rivers, my current weekend distraction. He grabbed his tailored jacket, delivered a hasty goodbye kiss, and peeled out of the driveway just as Mother's pristine black sedan glided through the gate like a shadow.

She stepped out, radiating judgment and a class so cold the air temperature definitely dropped ten degrees.

"Welcome, Mother," I greeted, pasting on the good-girl smile that felt like rigor mortis setting into my cheeks.

She returned the smile, the one that translated perfectly to: You're about to be miserable. We sat by the pool, her assistant hovering like a silent, expensive vulture.

"Rumors are spreading, my dear Ruby," she said, sipping her chilled juice. Ah, "dear", her favorite weapon. Trouble had officially arrived.

"And we're very unhappy about it," she continued, her voice dangerously calm. "As the heir to a family like ours, you should be worried. Three years, Ruby. Three years, and no heir."

"Mother, "

"I'm still talking."

I shut up. The reflex was decades deep, a ghost in my muscles.

"You will announce your pregnancy at your father's birthday party next month."

I blinked, the world tilting. "Excuse me? What?"

She ignored my gasp. "Dr. Michaels will be here in two weeks to test you. Don't play games. Look at me."

I did.

"Got anything to say?"

"No, Mother."

"Good girl." That damned phrase. It short-circuited every piece of rebellion in my DNA. "Ruby," she added, switching to that sickeningly pious tone. "I understand you and Joshua never got along, but the Bible commands us to forgive and forget. I raised a good Christian girl who obeys God's word."

She weaponized the scriptures like they were clauses in a contract. Then, without missing a beat, she delivered the final blow.

"By the way, how's sex with Joshua?"

"Mother! Are you serious?"

"What? You're a married woman. It's no news that people have sex; that's how babies are conceived. They don't fall from the sky, dear."

I wanted to melt through the expensive Italian tile and drown myself in the pool. She stared at me, her eyes reading the truth on my face.

"So, there's no sex. I see." I said nothing. "In that case," she sighed, standing up with the authority of a judge delivering a life sentence, "I'll be spending the night here. I'll leave tomorrow morning."

And that, my dear audience, is the exact moment my perfect, separate life was officially nuked from orbit