The CEO's Contract Bride: Marriage On Paper
She lost her job, her love, and her home until the man who fired her offered her a lifeline... in the form of a contract marriage.When loyal secretary Natasha Hills is wrongly accused of corporate betrayal, she's cast out by billionaire CEO Bruce Stamford and left broken by the sudden disappearance of her scheming boyfriend. But everything changes when Bruce, desperate to fulfill his dying grandmother's last wish, proposes a marriage of convenience.Their deal is strictly business... until emotions blur, secrets unravel, and enemies close in. In a world of power, lies, and betrayal, can fake vows turn into real love before everything crashes down?
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Chapter 4
Natasha
Having been Bruce's secretary for two years, I knew how rare it was for him to get drunk. He drank like every other person but never enough to get drunk. He loved to be clear headed every time.
Whenever he got drunk, it meant something really bad had happened. Maybe it was because of Mac Group stealing our project? I doubt it, it wasn't enough for Bruce to get drunk.
Anyway, I arrived at the Royal bar and rushed towards Bruce's usual seat. He was there and he looked wasted. The barman was a new one.
He winked at me. "Your boyfriend?" The barman asked.
"No," I replied. "How much did he drink?"
"Not enough to get drunk. He is bad at holding his alcohol, it seems," The barman retorted. "I'm a great drinker. Are you free this weekend? Let's have a drink!"
"Boss?" I called Bruce, paying no attention to the barman.
I checked his pocket and found his car key. I tapped him gently, hoping to rouse him.
"Why are you ignoring me?" The barman asked.
I turned towards him and he seemed taken aback by my sudden gaze.
"Focus on your job, lad. I'm not interested in having a drink with you!" I told him plainly.
Bruce woke up so I didn't need to engage the barman further.
"You are here, cutie!" Bruce said as he smiled at me. He was totally drunk.
I heaved a sigh and helped him up. I wondered if he had forgiven me and would accept me back as his secretary or if he was only acting this way because he was drunk.
I helped Bruce into his car and drove him.
All through, he either stayed quiet or said incomprehensible things. The security guard at his house knew me so I was allowed entrance without question.
"We are here!" I told Bruce. He didn't answer but he opened the door and staggered outside.
I held him and helped him into his room. I tucked him in and while doing this, I wondered if he was my kid.
As I was about to leave, he held onto me. I turned around. "Don't go," He said in a voice that sounded more like a whisper.
"I have to go, boss. It's late," I muttered. However, he wasn't listening.
He dragged me to bed with him and held onto me. My first instinct was to push him away but it dawned on me that he wasn't a predator. He was more like a kid in dire need of love.
He wrapped his hands around me and held onto me as if I was his last hope. I recognized that move and I pat him gently, soothing him. I will leave after he falls asleep, I told myself.
** "What the fuck!"
Bruce's voice woke me up from my deep slumber. He had jumped off the bed and I did the same right after opening my eyes. I had fallen asleep while soothing Bruce.
"What happened? Why are you here?" Bruce asked. He looked in dire need of answers.
"Yesterday, you called me. I picked you from the bar and brought you home," I explained.
"I called you?" Bruce asked and began to laugh. "How would I call someone who betrayed me for another company? That's impossible!"
Fuck! I closed my eyes and reopened them.
Bruce found his phone and he seemed to be going through his call logs. His countenance changed when he found out he had truly called me.
"I was drunk! You should tell me why you spent the night here in the same bed with me? Is this your new plan with Baldwin? You want to ruin my image with a scandal now!" Bruce retorted angrily.
"No, you held onto me," I told him. "I wanted to leave but you refused to let go of me."
"Impossible!" Bruce exclaimed. "How come I have no memories of that? Just tell the truth. Your new plan is to blackmail me, huh! Did you take pictures? You didn't rape me, did you?"
"Stop being dramatic and listen up!" I shouted in frustration. I got his attention, alright.
"Everything happened coincidentally. My boyfriend, Michael, stole the documents without my knowledge. I have no ties with Baldwin or Mac Group. That is the only truth!"
"Why should I believe you? Do I look like a fool that can be played?" Bruce asked, showing no emotion.
"I worked for you for two years, boss. Did you have no trust in me?" I asked him plainly.
"I did..." He replied. "Not until the first place you entered after I fired you was the head office of Mac Group. You tell me you have no connections to Mac Group? Stop being shameless and get out already!"
I took a deep breath. "I didn't go there for the reason you think! I went there for..." I was saying when he interrupted.
"I have no interest in your lies," Bruce said while acting nonchalant.
"However, there will be an issue if you overstep your bounds. A scandal about me and you won't be appreciated. We never had sex, I can tell that. Don't push your luck!" He moved towards the door and opened it.
I knew better than to stay behind. I left on foot, more discouraged than I was yesterday.
** "It didn't go well," I told Marie simply. She sighed on hearing this news. I put on a fake smile, assuring her that everything would be fine.
"I will get us a new house with my savings. It will be smaller than this place though."
"Yeah," Marie muttered. She looked nervous. I didn't think much of this and proceeded to look for houses.
I found one that fitted my budget. I was going to show Marie but she wasn't at home. I concluded that she had gone to Bajie, her boyfriend.
I was going to transfer the money in my savings account to my regular bank account when I found out.. Savings balance: $0.00
What the fuck!
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9.8
I married an S-class Alpha to save my family's bankrupt company.
But my husband, Braydon, treated me worse than a stray dog.
When my heat cycle triggered early, the fever was agonizing. I crawled to our master bedroom, crying and begging him for just one temporary bite to save my life.
Instead, he locked the door from the inside.
"Go back to your room. I told you I didn't want to deal with you this weekend."
Through the crack under the door, I smelled the cheap perfume of his mistress. While I was dying in the hallway, forced to inject a toxic black-market suppressant that made me vomit blood, he was sleeping with her in our bed.
Days later, a drunk Braydon pinned me to the floor, trying to violently force a permanent mark on my neck just to assert his dominance.
When I fought him off, he blamed me for provoking him and casually tossed a credit card at me to buy my silence.
"Go buy whatever you want. Just tell the clinic you slipped in the shower."
Staring at the man who was supposed to protect me, my heart went completely cold. Why did I ever think this monster would change? This wasn't a marriage anymore; it was a cage, and the animal inside it was trying to kill me.
I quietly pressed the record button on my phone, capturing every single word of his twisted bribe.
Then, I pulled out a matte black business card and called the terrifying Enigma CEO who had been waiting for me in the shadows.
7.0
On her wedding night, Liora Vale expected passion from her wealthy husband. Instead, she got rejection and humiliation.
When his dangerously seductive best friend, Kael Draven, corners her on the balcony and claims her virgin body with raw, unprotected fury, Liora discovers a pleasure she never knew existed.
Now addicted to Kael's brutal touch and filthy promises, the once-innocent bride becomes his secret slut, sneaking creampies in limos, riding him at galas, and begging to be bred while her husband sleeps nearby.
Kael won't stop until he destroys Silas and fills Liora's womb with his child.
She was supposed to be the perfect wife... now she's the shameless breeding whore who belongs only to him.
7.2
After a one night stand with the woman whose house Jason broke into, his life has never been the same. Like a siren's call, he can't get the nymphomaniac woman off his mind. Weeks later, while getting intel for the crew's next heist, Jason lays eyes upon the woman and follows her into a secret strip club. She appears to lead a double life. One where she's the CEO of a multimillion company and her father's golden child. The other side of her life is that she owns a strip club and is extremely erotic. Can Jason learn to live with her as she is? Will he put his pride aside to be with the woman? ... especially when his crew is hired to kidnap a woman who turns out to be the love of his life.
8.0
My abusive step-family isolated me completely, holding my mother's medical funds hostage to control my every move.
Yesterday, they finalized my sale.
"You will marry Rudy Petrov next month. He is fifty, wealthy, and willing to overlook your lack of pedigree."
Pushed to the absolute edge, I did the insane. I posted an ad online offering my life savings of $50,000 for a contract husband. A stranger named Brennan agreed.
But my family wouldn't let me go. They forced me back for a dinner by threatening my mother's life-saving prescriptions.
At the table, they relentlessly mocked my new "poor IT guy" husband and intentionally burned my hand with boiling tea.
Worse, the housekeeper locked me in a guest room and forced drugs down my throat so Rudy could come in and assault me.
I lay there paralyzed on the floor, bleeding from Rudy's slap, utterly terrified. I couldn't understand why my own family would throw me to the wolves, and I felt a crushing guilt for dragging an innocent, ordinary guy into my nightmare.
Until a pitch-black Maybach smashed through the estate's wrought-iron gates at eighty miles an hour.
My "poor" husband kicked the solid oak doors off their hinges, beat Rudy half to death, and carried me out into the rain.
I didn't know it yet, but the ordinary man I hired to save me was a ruthless billionaire, and he was about to erase my family's entire empire by morning.
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
8.3
I arrived at the mansion with nothing but the clothes on my back, expecting to work off my debt, but I quickly realized I was just inventory.
The air in the hallway was kept at a freezing temperature, a deliberate choice to preserve the art and remind girls like me that we were nothing more than furniture.
Inside the room, the sounds of a Hollywood starlet and a powerful man echoed through the walls, followed by the sight of discarded silk and cold, hard cash scattered across the marble floor.
When I accidentally stood in the way, I was tripped, mocked as trash, and left to bleed on the cold floor while the security guards watched with dead eyes.
Even when I begged for my passport, Chadwich Carey didn't see a human being; he saw a stain on his pristine, expensive reality that needed to be erased.
He crushed my fingers in the door, dragged me into the dark, and eventually used me to satisfy a drug-fueled hunger that no one else could touch, only to discard me back into the rain like garbage.
I sat in the freezing Bronx alley, shivering in his oversized shirt, realizing that he never intended to give me my freedom.
He thought he had broken me, that I was just another nameless girl to be silenced, but he was wrong.
I am not a box to be packed away or a hand to be severed.
He taught me that in this world, money and violence are the only languages that matter.
I will learn them both, and when I return, I won't be begging for my passport; I’ll be taking everything he owns.