The Billionaire's Contract Lover
Ruby and Leo were never meant to fall in love. Their relationship began as a simple contract two strangers with broken pasts agreeing to play the perfect couple for their own reasons. Rules were clear, no emotions, no complications, no crossing the line. And for a while, it worked. Stolen glances were ignored, lingering touches dismissed, and the quiet comfort between them carefully denied.
But somewhere between late night conversations and shared silences, the lines blurred.
Just when everything began to feel real, she returned.
Leo's ex, beautiful, confident, and carrying a past that refused to stay buried walked back into his life as if she had never left. With her came secrets, unresolved feelings, and a truth that threatened to shatter everything Ruby thought she understood.
Suddenly, the contract didn't feel like protection anymore it felt like a lie.
Caught between what was fake and what had become painfully real, Ruby must decide if she's willing to fight for a love that was never supposed to exist. And Leo must face the past he never truly let go of.
Because sometimes, the hardest part isn't pretending to love it's admitting that you already do.
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Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
Don't dare talk about her.
He didn't look up immediately.
That was Richard's way of reminding Leo of his place-second to business, always.
Leo waited silently.
Finally, Richard lifted his gaze, sharp and calculating, the same gaze that intimidated boardrooms full of executives.
"You're late."
Leo didn't flinch. "Traffic."
Richard scoffed. "You own half the cars that create traffic."
Leo didn't entertain the remark. Instead, he sat down across from his father, maintaining the calm, professional composure he had mastered over the years.
Richard folded his hands. "You've been avoiding me."
"You haven't called."
Richard's eyes narrowed. "I shouldn't have to call. You know your responsibilities."
Leo leaned back. "I've been handling everything at the company."
"Business is not the issue." Richard's voice was firm. "You know what the issue is."
Leo's jaw tensed.
He knew the real reason he had been summoned.
Richard stood from his chair and walked toward the window overlooking the massive Carter estate. He clasped his hands behind his back.
"You're twenty six, Leo."
"And?"
"And it's time."
"For what?" Leo asked sharply, even though he knew.
Richard turned, giving him a knowing look.
"For you to get married."
Leo's muscles tightened. He had known this conversation would happen eventually, but he had hoped he still had time-time to breathe, time to live his own life, time to avoid the prison his father was building for him.
"Dad," Leo said slowly, "I'm not interested in an arranged marriage."
Richard raised an eyebrow. "Who says it must be arranged? Find someone on your own, then. I don't care how it happens. What matters is that it happens soon."
Leo laughed under his breath, though nothing about this conversation was funny.
"I don't have time for a relationship."
"You make time," Richard snapped.
Leo clenched his fists. "Why are you pushing this so hard?"
Richard moved back to his desk, picked up a thick file, and tossed it in front of Leo.
Leo looked down, a company projection report, Shareholder conditions, public relations strategies.
Then he saw the highlighted line,
"Long term succession stability depends on their projection within five years."
Leo felt his stomach drop.
"You're joking," he said.
Richard shook his head. "I'm not. The board wants assurance. Investors want security. The media wants a story that stabilizes our stock. Everything is tied to legacy now."
"And you think marriage will solve that?" Leo demanded.
"It will solve many things," Richard replied. "A stable image, secured line of leadership, continuity."
Leo stared at him in disbelief.
"You want me to get married for a corporate image?"
Richard's voice was cold.
"I want you to protect what you will inherit."
Leo pushed the file away.
"I don't need a wife to run Carter Holdings."
"You do," Richard answered calmly. "If you want to keep your position."
Silence slammed into the room.
Leo felt like the air had been sucked out of his lungs.
"Dad," he whispered, "are you threatening to take the company away from me?"
"Not threatening," Richard corrected.
"Warning."
Leo stood abruptly. His chair screeched against the floor.
"This is ridiculous."
Richard didn't look fazed. "Sit down."
Leo stood still.
Richard sighed, showing the first hint of emotion-a controlled frustration.
"Leo, listen," he began again, more softly this time. "Your mother wanted-"
"Don't," Leo snapped, his voice sharp as broken glass. "Don't bring her into this."
Richard fell silent.
Leo rarely raised his voice, but the moment his mother was mentioned, something inside him hardened.
Richard exhaled.
"She wanted you to be happy."
Leo's chest tightened painfully.
"My happiness is my decision."
Richard nodded slowly. "Then make a decision, soon. Before someone else makes it for you."
Leo felt like a storm had been building inside him.
He turned away, staring at the window-at the life he never really chose, at the empire built on expectations, demands, and sacrifices.
He spoke quietly but firmly.
"I won't marry for the company."
Richard leaned forward.
"Then marry for yourself."
Leo turned back, eyes cold.
"And what if I don't want marriage at all?"
Richard straightened, his expression turning to stone.
"Then you're not ready to lead Carter Holdings."
Leo inhaled sharply.
Leo sank back into the chair, his hands rubbing his temples.
"You think this is easy for me," he muttered.
Richard didn't respond.
Leo continued, voice low and bitter.
"You think I don't understand the weight of the family name? I do. I have carried it my entire life. Every movement I make is a headline. Every mistake is a scandal. Every decision is judged by thousands of strangers."
He looked up, meeting his father's eyes.
"But you never cared about my life outside business. Not once."
Richard didn't deny it.
Leo continued.
"You pushed me into leadership before I even knew who I was. You drove me into maturity at an age when kids were playing outside. You trained me like a soldier, not a son."
Richard's jaw tightened. "I did what I had to do."
"No," Leo corrected. "You did what you wanted for the company, for the Carter legacy."
Richard spoke through clenched teeth. "And now you will do what you must do."
Leo fell silent.
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7.7
For three years, Avery Woods lived a lie. Trapped in a high-stakes psychological "simulation" designed by her own father, she was forced to endure the life of a discarded trophy wife, scrubbing floors and suffering in silence to temper her mind into a weapon.
When the simulation shattered, Avery emerged as the Sovereign-the most experienced CEO in human history, having lived twenty years of strategic warfare in a matter of months. She tore down her father's global conglomerate, erased the world's digital memories, and sought a quiet life in the shadows.
But you cannot delete a god.
Now, a year after the "Great Erasure," the world has gone dark, but the connection remains. Four hundred million people are syncing up through a biological "Chorus," using their own neural pathways to rebuild a decentralized, inescapable Hive Mind. At its center is Mila, a child who is more code than flesh, and the only anchor strong enough to stabilize a new reality.
From the high-tech bunkers of Moscow to the hallucination-filled "Dead Zone" of the Sahara, Avery and her protector-assassin, Julian Vane, must race to stop the Chorus before it rewrites the physical world.
The satellites are dead. The servers are gone. But the Silence is screaming.
8.7
I sat at a mahogany table in River Oaks, clutching the strap of a pilled black dress from a life I’d lost five years ago. I was an exile in a world of old money, just trying to survive a dinner party I didn't belong in.
Then the doors opened, and Baron Lowery walked in. He was no longer the boy I’d loved, but a powerful man with eyes like a storm front. When the host asked if we’d met, Baron didn't even blink.
"I don't know her," he said.
The erasure was a physical blow. His new girlfriend spent the night mocking my "quaint" legal aid work and calling me a washed-up gold digger. Baron didn't defend me; he watched my humiliation with a cold, predatory stillness. During a game of Truth or Dare, he stared me down, waiting for a confession. To protect his career and the secret of my father’s federal crimes, I looked him in the eye and told the ultimate lie: "No regrets."
He retaliated by pinning me against a concrete wall in a dark stairwell, crushing his mouth to mine in a kiss that felt like a punishment. He told me I wasn't worth the effort and left me. I retreated to my real life—a moldy trailer and a blackmailer named Harvey who was forcing me into a marriage to save my father from prison.
I thought I’d hit rock bottom until Baron’s silver Bentley pulled up to my slum. He didn't come to apologize. He flipped open a checkbook, scribbled fifty thousand dollars, and held it out like I was a common streetwalker.
"One night," he demanded. "Do whatever I say, and it's yours."
I looked at the man I’d sacrificed my entire soul for and realized he’d finally become the monster I'd tried to save him from. I shoved the check back in his face and ran into the rain, leaving the billionaire staring at the trailer park, unable to understand why the "gold digger" he hated so much wouldn't take his money.
9.7
Five years ago, I took ten million dollars from my fiancé's grandmother and abandoned him to save my father from dying in federal prison.
Today, working three jobs just to survive, I ran into him while substituting as a music therapist at a VIP clinic.
He is now a powerful Wall Street billionaire, standing beside his beautiful fiancée and their little girl.
He trapped me, threw a stack of hundred-dollar bills at my face, and mocked me for being a pathetic gold digger who blew through his family's money.
Bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement, I couldn't defend myself and fled in absolute humiliation.
But fate wasn't done torturing me. That same afternoon, my four-year-old daughter—his secret child—was suspected of having severe leukemia.
At the hospital, exhausted and terrified, I briefly leaned on a kind doctor friend's shoulder to cry.
I had no idea my ex-fiancé was inspecting the new medical wing and watching us from the shadows.
Seeing the child's bouncy curls, he mistakenly thought I had jumped into another man's bed and built a perfect family using the money I stole from him.
Driven by insane jealousy and blind rage, he ordered his assistant to completely destroy the innocent doctor.
"I want him to know what happens when you take what belongs to me."
Watching my daughter's pale face, I knew my peaceful life was over. To save her life, I had to walk right back into the devil's den.
9.0
I died on the cold delivery table, bleeding out while the heart monitor flatlined.
Through the blinding surgical lights, I heard my husband Damon's cold, final order to the doctors.
"The child is the priority."
He didn't care about my life. To him, I was just a vessel to produce an heir, a tool to fulfill his prenuptial clause and secure his billionaire empire.
While I took my last agonizing breath, he was already planning his future with his fragile, theatrical mistress, Jasmin.
In my past life, when he first brought her into our home claiming she was a helpless victim, I shattered.
I screamed, threw vases, and played the hysterical wife perfectly.
My desperate pleas for his affection only gave him the exact weapons he needed to ruin my reputation, isolate me, and ultimately force me onto that fatal delivery bed.
Until my very last moment, the suffocating pain in my chest wasn't just physical.
I couldn't understand how the man I loved could treat my death like a simple business transaction.
Why was my absolute devotion rewarded with a carefully calculated execution?
But then, my eyes snapped open.
I was sitting on the edge of my king-sized bed, exactly three years before my death.
From downstairs, I heard Damon's voice echoing in the foyer, bringing Jasmin into our home for the very first time.
This time, the scream building in my chest turned to ice.
I didn't cry or throw a fit.
Instead, I calmly swallowed a secret birth control pill, smiled at his mistress, and dialed the most ruthless divorce lawyer in Manhattan.
8.1
On her eighteenth birthday, Arabella's life was destroyed when thugs attacked her and left her reputation in pieces. Brenton played the hero, sent the men to prison, and married her, becoming the man she trusted most.
For two years, she believed he had saved her, until one overheard confession shattered everything. "If she had pushed a little harder, she might've figured out Brinley was behind the whole thing. That's the only reason I married her. Lucky for me, she's so easy to fool."
He had only married her to protect the woman who truly mattered to him. When that woman came back, Arabella chose divorce without hesitation.
Brenton expected her to come crawling back. "How can she even survive without me?"
Instead, she rose in the tech world, untouchable, brilliant, and far beyond his reach-just in time for another powerful man to claim her heart.
Then Brenton begged, "Baby, I messed up. Just give me one more chance. Please."
But the tycoon pulled her into his arms. "Baby? Please. She's my wife now."
7.5
For three years, I was trapped in a paper marriage to a billionaire I had never met, until my father forced me to finally visit his hotel suite.
But when I walked in, I found my husband, Bryton Lott, heavily drugged by my own father. Stripped of all reason, Bryton violently pinned me down and took my innocence, making me a pawn in my father's sick scheme to force a pregnancy and save his bankrupt company.
After escaping his feral grip, I overheard Bryton call my father. He called me a useless, invisible wife, vowing to hand me divorce papers the second he saw my face. The nightmare didn't end there. When I brought a priceless antique jade bracelet to my mother's birthday, she slapped me across the face in front of the entire elite crowd. My stepsister publicly accused me of selling my body. Hiding in the shadows, I even heard my mother admit she wished I was dead, only keeping me around to exploit my marriage.
I had played the obedient, impoverished daughter for years, enduring their endless abuse just to protect my grandmother's legacy. Why did my own flesh and blood treat me like a sacrificial lamb to be sold and destroyed?
The last thread holding my heart together completely snapped. I left the multi-million dollar bracelet on the cold stone sill and walked out into the freezing night. Snapping my everyday SIM card in half, I pulled out an encrypted satellite phone and activated my true identity as the underground world's top operative, "King."
"Run a full hostile intelligence sweep on Apocalypse Corp."