One Year with the Billionaire.
Pastry chef Olivia Chen is drowning in debt when billionaire Ashton Blackwell makes her an offer: marry him for one year to secure his inheritance, and he'll pay off everything plus give her a million dollars. No love, just business.
But fake vows become real feelings, and when Ashton's vengeful ex returns with devastating family secrets, Olivia must choose between protecting the man she's fallen for and exposing the truth that could destroy him.
In a world of lies and betrayal, their contract marriage might be the only real thing worth fighting for.
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Chapter 5
Olivia's Pov
Marcus was waiting on the porch when Ashton dropped me off. His arms were crossed, his expression dark.
"Who's the guy in the Bentley?"
"We need to talk." I climbed out, waving to Ashton. He pulled away slowly, watching us in his rearview mirror.
"Liv, what's going on? You've been weird all week." Marcus followed me inside. "And is that an engagement ring?"
I held up my hand, the diamond catching the porch light. "I'm getting married."
"To who? You haven't dated anyone in two years." He grabbed my hand, examining the ring. "This is real. This is insane. Who is he?"
"Ashton Blackwell. We met at the investor event." I went to the kitchen, needing something to do with my hands. "It happened fast."
"Fast? Liv, you met him three days ago when he fired you." Marcus's voice rose. "What the hell is happening?"
I couldn't tell him the truth. The NDA was ironclad. But I couldn't lie to my baby brother either.
"He apologized for how he treated me. We talked. We connected." The words felt like ash. "I know it sounds crazy-"
"It sounds like a scam. Or like you've lost your mind." Marcus paced the small kitchen. "You don't even believe in marriage. You said it was a patriarchal trap after Mom died."
"I changed my mind."
"In three days? After one conversation with a billionaire?" He stopped pacing. "Oh my God. This is about money, isn't it? The foreclosure notice."
My silence answered him.
"Liv, no. Tell me you didn't sell yourself to some rich asshole to save the house." His voice cracked. "I'll drop out. I'll work. We'll figure it out together."
"You're not dropping out. Mom died making sure you could finish school." I grabbed his shoulders. "This is my choice. Ashton is good to me. This is real."
"You're lying. I can always tell when you're lying. Your left eye twitches." He pulled away. "I can't believe you'd do this."
"Marcus-"
"I need air." He headed for the door. "Don't wait up."
The door slammed. I stood alone in our mother's kitchen, wearing a stranger's ring, and wondered if Ashton was right about everyone being transactional.
My phone buzzed.
"How did it go? - AB"
*He knows something's wrong. Just not what."
" He'll adjust. People always do when money's involved."
I threw my phone on the counter. Ashton's cynicism was exhausting.
Another buzz. Sophie this time.
" Emergency bestie meeting. My place. Now. Wine required."
******************
Sophie shoved a wine glass in my hand the second I walked in.
"Talk. Now. Why is my Google alert blowing up with photos of you and Ashton Blackwell?"
"Google alert?"
"I set one up after you met him. I don't trust billionaires." She pulled up her laptop. "Look. 'Tech Mogul Ashton Blackwell Engaged to Mystery Woman.' There's a photo of you two leaving his grandmother's mansion. You look miserable."
"I was miserable. His father is a nightmare."
"Liv, what is happening?" Sophie sat beside me. "Please tell me you didn't sign that contract."
I held up my left hand.
"Oh my God. You married him already?"
"Engaged. Wedding's in three weeks." I drank half the wine in one gulp. "I signed this afternoon. Had dinner with his family tonight. His grandmother knows it's fake and approves. His father hates me. Marcus suspects and isn't speaking to me. So yeah, it's going great."
Sophie refilled my glass. "Okay. Deep breath. Tell me everything."
I told her about the contract, the money, the terms. When I finished, Sophie was quiet for a long moment.
"Three and a half million dollars."
"Plus Marcus's tuition and expenses."
"For one year of playing house with an emotionally unavailable billionaire." She set down her glass. "Liv, this is either the smartest or stupidest thing you've ever done."
"I don't know which one yet."
"What's he like? Really like, when you're alone?"
I thought about Ashton's face when he told me about his mother. The way his hands clenched. The vulnerability he hid behind ice.
"Damaged. Brilliant. Cold on the surface but there's something underneath. Something hurt." I stared at my ring. "His grandmother thinks I can fix him. I can't. I'm barely holding myself together."
"Maybe you just have to survive him for twelve months."
"He said the same thing about catching feelings. If it happens, suffer quietly until the contract expires." I laughed bitterly. "Very romantic."
"Do you think you could? Catch feelings?"
"For a man who views me as a business transaction? No." But even as I said it, I remembered the way Ashton had defended me to his father. "I don't know. Maybe. Which would be disaster."
"Because men like Ashton Blackwell don't fall in love with women like me. We're too different." I finished my wine. "This is temporary. I need to remember that."
Sophie hugged me. "For what it's worth, I think you're brave. Stupid, but brave."
My phone rang. Ashton.
"I should take this."
Sophie nodded, retreating to her bedroom.
"Hello?"
"We have a problem." Ashton's voice was tight. "Victoria Sterling is back in San Francisco. She knows about our engagement."
My stomach dropped. "Your ex-fiancée? You didn't mention her."
"Because she's been in Europe for five years. I didn't think she'd matter." He exhaled sharply. "She just called. She wants to meet you. Tomorrow. Lunch at her club."
"Why?"
"To assess the threat. Victoria views me as unfinished business." He paused. "This is going to get complicated."
"More complicated than lying to my brother and being insulted by your father?"
"Yes. Victoria is dangerous. She's smart, connected, and she knows exactly how to manipulate people." His voice dropped. "She's the reason I don't believe in love anymore."
"What did she do to you?"
"That's not important. What's important is that you understand she will try to break us up. She'll dig into your past, find your weaknesses, exploit them." He sounded tired. "If you're going to back out of this contract, now's the time."
I thought about Marcus, about the debt, about working three jobs until I died. "I'm not backing out."
"Good. Because the story just hit the society pages. We're officially news." He sent me a link. "Check your email. My publicist prepared a statement. Memorize it. You'll be giving interviews by Monday."
The article headline read: "Silicon Valley's Most Eligible Bachelor Off the Market: Ashton Blackwell's Whirlwind Romance with Unknown Chef."
Unknown chef. That stung more than it should.
"They make me sound like nobody."
"You are nobody to them. That's the point. Cinderella story sells." He was typing in the background. "I'm sending a stylist to your house tomorrow morning. You need a new wardrobe for lunch with Victoria. Nothing you own will work for her club."
"What's wrong with my clothes?"
"They're fine for your life. Not for mine." He said it matter-of-factly, no malice. Somehow that made it worse. "The stylist's name is Patricia. She's discreet and efficient. Let her do her job."
"Anything else you want to change about me?"
"Your attitude could use work, but we'll save that for later." He almost sounded amused. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be brutal."
"Ashton, wait. What am I supposed to say to Victoria?"
"The truth. That you love me, we're getting married, and she's too late." He paused. "Can you lie convincingly?"
"I've been lying to Marcus all night. I'm getting good at it."
"That's what concerns me." His voice softened slightly. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your brother. This arrangement has costs for both of us."
"What costs do you have? You're getting exactly what you want."
"Am I?" He was quiet for a moment. "Goodnight, Olivia. Don't let the wine make you do anything stupid."
He hung up before I could respond.
Sophie emerged from her bedroom. "Wine's not strong enough. I'm breaking out the tequila."
"I have to meet his ex-fiancée tomorrow. The one who broke his heart."
"Of course you do. Because this situation wasn't messy enough." She grabbed the tequila and poured two shots. "To faking it and making it."
We clinked glasses. The tequila burned going down.
My phone buzzed one more time. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
" Welcome to the family, dear. Ashton chose well. Don't let Victoria intimidate you. She's all bark and expensive shoes. - Eleanor"
I showed Sophie.
"I like the grandmother."
"Me too. Which makes this whole thing harder." I took another shot. "What if I actually start caring about these people?"
"Then you're screwed. But at least you'll be rich and screwed."
We laughed, but it sounded hollow.
Marcus's bedroom light was still off. He hadn't come home.
I texted him: *I love you. I'm sorry. This is the right choice even if you don't understand yet.*
He didn't respond.
I stared at my engagement ring, this beautiful prison I'd locked myself into, and wondered if Ashton was right.
Maybe everyone really was just transactions and survival.
"Maybe love was the lie we told ourselves to make it hurt less."
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7.1
Belle Triston, a pediatrician with a brilliant career faked her relationship with a billionaire. She didn't like Gabrielle Rolland's arrogance at all, but she had to become a surrogate mother to give birth to Gabrielle's offspring in order to fulfill her mother's last wishes before she died.
Their relationship was complicated because Gabrielle was married to a famous actress, Fleura Delacour. Belle and Gabrielle made an agreement that their relationship would only be professional. But unexpected things happened. Fleura's affair with her co-star left a deep wound in Gabrielle's heart. When his heart was wounded and bleeding, Belle was there to heal his wounds. Their relationship was no longer as simple as they thought when hearts started playing in it. When Gabrielle realized that he loved Belle and wanted to be with her, Fleura came and begged him for a second chance. Gabrielle had to choose, while his heart couldn't choose. Belle knew Fleura's biggest secret and she wouldn't just keep quiet. She would fight for her baby and her love for Gabrielle.
7.2
I am a resident surgeon, secretly married to Dr. Barrett Walters, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. It was a transactional marriage; he paid my mother's mounting medical bills, and I was his secret, obedient wife in the dark.
But at the hospital, he was a cold-blooded tyrant who deliberately made my life a living hell. During a major medical conference, he viciously tore apart my successful surgical repair, looking me dead in the eye as he called me incompetent in front of all my colleagues.
The humiliation didn't stop there. With his tacit approval, the senior residents bullied me, assigning me every brutal night shift. When his beautiful, wealthy heiress "girlfriend" visited the ward, he publicly mocked my background to make her smile.
"Some people get in through the back door. They're not fit for the front lines."
Even when I was forced to work as a secret banquet waitress to cover the medical copays he ignored, he found me, ruined the job out of pure possessive jealousy, and then fined my meager resident salary the very next morning just to show his absolute control.
I endured his punishing kisses and cruel rebukes, sacrificing my dignity just to keep my mother alive. But I couldn't understand why he had to destroy every shred of my peace. If he wanted the perfect heiress, why did he refuse to let me go?
Staring at his cold, controlling eyes in the stairwell, my exhaustion finally overpowered my fear. I was done being his victim, and it was time to tear up this contract.
7.5
To save my dying father, I made a deal with the billionaire Christopher Kirkland. I became his secret, a bird in a gilded cage he paraded around when it suited him.
But I was just a pawn in his twisted game to win back his ex-girlfriend.
He proved it when he publicly outbid me for my own mother's heirloom necklace, only to gift it to her right in front of me.
Then he threw me out of the penthouse. My few cherished belongings-my books, a photo of my parents-were tossed out.
"Chaney doesn't like clutter," he told me, erasing my entire existence for her.
A text on his phone confirmed the brutal truth.
"Our little game is working perfectly," she'd written. "She's completely fooled."
Years later, after she betrayed him and his empire nearly crumbled, he came back begging. He thought he could buy my forgiveness. He was about to learn that my freedom had no price tag.
7.1
I waited a year for my mate, Alpha Justin, to return from the border war. While he was gone, I used my ten-million-dollar dowry to keep his crumbling pack afloat and buy life-saving elixirs for his mother.
But when he finally walked through the door, he reeked of another female's scent.
He brought back Gamma Brenna and a Royal Decree, coldly announcing she would be his "Co-Luna."
His family, who survived entirely on my wealth, immediately turned on me. They mocked me for being a wolfless orphan since my father and brothers were slaughtered defending the kingdom.
"You're just a fragile woman who belongs hidden away," Justin told me.
They demanded I accept this humiliation, step aside for his new warrior mate, and continue funding their luxurious lifestyle. Justin even arrogantly offered to sleep with me just once to give me a pup as a "consolation prize," declaring his heart and body belonged entirely to Brenna.
They thought my ruined pack meant I had no backing. They thought I was a pathetic victim who would cling to their scraps and accept a polluted mate-bond just to avoid being cast out into the woods as a Rogue.
They had no idea I had already visited the Alpha King.
I wasn't going to cry, and I certainly wasn't going to share my mate. I packed up every last cent of my ten million dollars, secured a Royal Severance Decree, and prepared to watch their arrogant pack starve to death.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.
9.2
I spent three years as the perfect, silent wife to billionaire Ezequiel Sanford, enduring a marriage colder than the marble floors of our Manhattan mansion. The day I finally saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test was the same day my world burned down.
I found Ezequiel at the hospital, but he wasn't there for me. He was cradling his ex-girlfriend, Alexa, with a gentleness he had never shown me, while my own father was being rushed into the ICU after a suicide attempt triggered by our family's bankruptcy.
Instead of comfort, Ezequiel handed me divorce papers. He had checked a box that read "No Issue of Marriage," effectively erasing any claim I had to his legacy. He blackmailed me, promising to save my father’s company only if I signed away every cent of alimony and walked away with nothing.
When Alexa called him claiming an emergency, Ezequiel shoved me aside so violently I hit the sharp corner of his glass desk. As I collapsed to the floor, clutching my abdomen in sudden, searing pain, he didn't even look back.
"Stop acting," he sneered, his voice dripping with disgust. "It’s pathetic. I will never love you, Claudia, no matter how many times you fall down."
He walked out to be with her, leaving me bleeding on his office carpet with the secret he had spent years trying to avoid. He thought I was a gold-digger faking a crisis, never realizing I was actually carrying the Sanford heir he claimed didn't exist.
Now, I’m hiding in a private clinic while my husband’s security team scours the city for me. My childhood friend just handed me a one-way ticket to Paris and a chance to restart the medical career I sacrificed for a lie.
The money just hit my father's account. I’m signing the papers and disappearing. By the time Ezequiel realizes what he’s lost, I’ll be a world away, and he’ll never even know my child’s name.