The Five-Year Contract's End

The Five-Year Contract's End

HAZEL MARTIN

5.0
Comment(s)
494
View
24
Chapters

My five-year contract marriage to Ethan Cole was finally over. Five years of polite estrangement, a polished cage built on a merger of empires. I had signed the divorce papers, ready to escape to Austin, chasing a desperate echo of what I'd lost. My fiancé, Michael, had died five years ago, and now, a musician named Noah Evans, his spitting image, offered a fragile hope he could bring a piece of him back. But Ethan' s manipulative stepsister, Chloe, had other plans. Consumed by a twisted possessiveness for Ethan, she launched a campaign of terror against me. First, a poison attempt, then a brutal kidnapping, and finally, a chilling plot to throw me off a cliff. Each escalating attack was met with Ethan' s blind indulgence, his desperate attempts to protect Chloe at all costs, leaving me brutally exposed and utterly alone. Why couldn't he see her true nature? Why did he always choose her over basic decency? My life was a constant dance with death, fueled by Chloe' s deranged jealousy and punctuated by Ethan' s hollow apologies. I clung to Noah, an unwitting lifeline in this nightmare. Then, during Chloe's final, explosive act of madness, Noah made a choice. He sacrificed himself, pushing me to safety as the world erupted in flames. As he lay dying, he revealed a truth that shattered my carefully constructed world: "Michael... Michael was my older brother." Suddenly, the desperate echo became a profound connection. My anonymous benefactor for years, the boy I unknowingly sponsored, was Michael' s flesh and blood, a man who loved me not merely as a proxy, but for who he was. With Chloe gone and Ethan finally facing his own devastating regrets, I chose a new path. A path not away from loss, but towards a genuine, healing love with Noah. Ethan, adrift in his remorse, was left with only the bitter taste of everything he' d so carelessly lost.

Introduction

My five-year contract marriage to Ethan Cole was finally over.

Five years of polite estrangement, a polished cage built on a merger of empires.

I had signed the divorce papers, ready to escape to Austin, chasing a desperate echo of what I'd lost.

My fiancé, Michael, had died five years ago, and now, a musician named Noah Evans, his spitting image, offered a fragile hope he could bring a piece of him back.

But Ethan' s manipulative stepsister, Chloe, had other plans.

Consumed by a twisted possessiveness for Ethan, she launched a campaign of terror against me.

First, a poison attempt, then a brutal kidnapping, and finally, a chilling plot to throw me off a cliff.

Each escalating attack was met with Ethan' s blind indulgence, his desperate attempts to protect Chloe at all costs, leaving me brutally exposed and utterly alone.

Why couldn't he see her true nature?

Why did he always choose her over basic decency?

My life was a constant dance with death, fueled by Chloe' s deranged jealousy and punctuated by Ethan' s hollow apologies.

I clung to Noah, an unwitting lifeline in this nightmare.

Then, during Chloe's final, explosive act of madness, Noah made a choice.

He sacrificed himself, pushing me to safety as the world erupted in flames.

As he lay dying, he revealed a truth that shattered my carefully constructed world: "Michael... Michael was my older brother."

Suddenly, the desperate echo became a profound connection.

My anonymous benefactor for years, the boy I unknowingly sponsored, was Michael' s flesh and blood, a man who loved me not merely as a proxy, but for who he was.

With Chloe gone and Ethan finally facing his own devastating regrets, I chose a new path.

A path not away from loss, but towards a genuine, healing love with Noah.

Ethan, adrift in his remorse, was left with only the bitter taste of everything he' d so carelessly lost.

Continue Reading

Other books by HAZEL MARTIN

More
Marrying The Enemy: My Ex's Worst Nightmare

Marrying The Enemy: My Ex's Worst Nightmare

Mafia

5.0

I spent ten years as the ward of Kason Oneal, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family. He saved me when I was a child, raised me, and made me believe I was his queen. But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Dalia, returned, the illusion shattered. Kason demanded I return the jade pendant—the one he had hand-carved for my sixteenth birthday—just so he could hang it around Dalia's neck. To him, I was suddenly nothing more than a placeholder who had kept his bed warm. The cruelty didn't stop there. He stood by and watched as Dalia shredded my clothes with scissors, laughing at my tears. When I collapsed on the floor in agony from acute appendicitis, Kason didn't call an ambulance. Instead, he dragged me to a shady clinic, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. He ordered the doctor to "terminate it" while I was dying of sepsis on the table. He called me trash. He called me property. He stripped away every ounce of dignity I had left, all to please a woman who was lying to his face. I realized then that the hero who saved me when I was ten was dead. I was done begging for scraps of affection from a monster. Trembling, I walked to the phone and dialed the number of the one man Kason feared most—his sworn enemy, Hadley Payne. "Tell him yes," I whispered into the receiver. "I accept the arrangement. I will marry him." Kason thought he could break me. Instead, he was about to watch his "property" become the Queen of the rival family.

You'll also like

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book