Page 65 of The Billionaire’s Contract Bride

The enemy’s house looked disappointingly normal. Aria had expected menace to announce itself in damp stone corridors and armed guards posted at every turn. Instead, there were fresh flowers in porcelain vases, framed family photographs, and the rich aroma of dark roast coffee. It reminded her that truly dangerous people rarely lived inside their own villainy. They ate breakfast. They loved someone. They justified themselves with smooth rhetoric over fine china.

That realization sharpened her instincts. She stopped waiting for evil to look grotesque and began watching for inconsistencies instead: the answer offered a fraction of a second too quickly, the name no one wanted repeated, the reinforced door everyone claimed was unimportant.

The windows did not open.

Her black diamond ring was gone.

Victor Blackthorne sat near the fireplace, casually pouring tea from a silver pot.

“You are surprisingly difficult to collect,” he said without looking up.

“You drugged me in the middle of a city street,” Aria replied, her voice hoarse as she sat up on the bed.

“Only after you broke one man’s nose and nearly removed another’s finger with your teeth.”

Aria hoped that was true. She touched the soreness pulsing at the base of her neck. “Where are my things?”

“Being examined.” Victor set his teacup down. “Sentiment is safe. Secrets are not.”

He lifted a clear evidence bag from the coffee table. Inside lay the shattered porcelain fragments of her childhood ceramic bird.

The hollow center was entirely empty.

“Whatever was hidden inside was lost on the sidewalk,” Victor said, watching her face for a reaction. “Unless Damien’s security team recovered it first.”

Aria kept her expression frozen. She had seen the small metallic cylinder roll beneath the chassis of a parked car before the sedatives took hold. Victor had not.

“Damien will kill you for this,” she said quietly.

“Probably.” Victor added a sugar cube to his cup. “The interesting question is how many people he will tear through first.”

“What do you want?”

“What your father stole.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Damien believed that for five years. Then he married you.”

“He married me to secure the trust.”

Victor smiled thin and cold. “That is what he told the board.”

He walked over to a flat display mounted beside the fireplace and activated a secure line. Aria took the time to inspect the room, a small vanity next to the bed where she lay, the desk where Victor was setting up the screen, and a dresser near the fireplace. Nothing she saw could really be used as a weapon, but she had some ideas by the time Victor got the monitor gong.

Damien appeared on the screen, his background blurred enough that she couldn’t tell where he was. Which meant Victor couldn’t either. He was speaking directly into the lens.

“Proof of life,” Damien demanded. His voice was unnaturally calm. His eyes were not. “Now.”

Victor angled the camera toward Aria. “Your husband requires reassurance.”

Aria looked straight into the screen. “I’m alive, Damien.”

Damien’s gaze moved instantly over her face, locking onto the dark bruise forming near her hairline. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Show me your hands.”