TOP UP

Reading History

Sign out

Get the APP

The Billionaire's Contract: Protecting My Secret Son

Chapter 2 No.2

Word Count: 839 | Released on: 06/02/2026

apartment in Queens. Her lungs burned. She fumbled

also the dining room, which was also the play area. Toys were

she cal

our years old. He had his mother's eyes. Big, brown

, forcing her voice to smoo

med it onto the coffee table. She smoothed it

ed. It was a hars

her hair back. She put on a smile t

ened t

Sharp nose, sharp chin, sharp clipboard. She stepped insi

behind her legs, buryin

e table. She looked

barely dry,"

e," Addie lied. "We just... ma

. "Where is Mr. Bartlett? The

ed against her ribs.

Addie said. "You know

walked to the bathroom. The do

eld her

inted to

hbrush,"

hat followed

electric one. He keeps it in h

ak. Mille

nd sat on the edge of the sofa. She ope

a single-parent household. The state needs stability. This

arge, red X

e blood drain

d. "Give me a week. He's

on't see evidence of a husband-clothes in the closet, shoes b

out. The doo

sofa. She pulled Leo into

you," she whispered int

e Bartlett To

ing down at the city. It looked l

," Marcus said. "The we

ed in. She was in a wheelchair, but she looked like a queen on a throne

k of photos onto

urger. Addie walking into a run-down apartm

Queens," Hortense said. Her voice was low, dangerous. "And my sources t

at was the deal. The document was flawed;

snapped. "Not a separation scandal before the honeymoon i

a manicured

move in

, humorless sound. "Absolutel

ze the trust. You know the clause. 'Moral turpitude and

. He felt the familiar tightening in his chest

aid through

" Hortens

r chair aro

e grabbed his phone. He needed to yell at s

's phone buzzed.

il Ba

was he calling? She needed him

pick

Chapter End

Claim Your Bonus at the APP

Open

The Billionaire's Contract: Protecting My Secret Son

Afrodite LesFolies Modern

“I sat in a Louis XV-style chair that cost more than my entire education, picking at the peeling leather of my thrift-store handbag. Across the mahogany table, Council Bartlett didn't even look at me; he just checked his watch, treating our marriage like a corporate merger that needed to be finalized before the market closed. To the world, I was a gold digger hitting the lottery, but I was actually a woman with a secret I guarded more fiercely than a state secret. I had one week to show a social worker a stable home with a husband, or they would take my four-year-old nephew, Leo, and put him back into the system forever. The ink was barely dry on our marriage certificate when my world started to fracture. My aunt called, screaming for help as her drunk husband broke into her house, forcing me to leave my new "billionaire husband" in my cramped Queens apartment to handle a domestic nightmare with a baseball bat and pepper spray. When I returned, smelling of cheap whiskey and sweat, I found Council's mother-the ice-cold Hortense-waiting on a video call. She didn't just want a business arrangement; she wanted an heir, and she'd already sent a box of fertility drugs to my kitchen counter to prove it. I was living a lie in a tenement building, caught between a man who treated me like a line item and a social worker who viewed my life as a "phantom." Council was sleeping on my lumpy sofa, his expensive legs dangling off the end, while I locked the bedroom door every night. I didn't want his money; I just wanted my boy. But how could I survive a war where the enemy lived in a penthouse and the casualties were measured in custody hearings? Just as Council saw me holding Leo and the "Ice King" finally began to thaw, his phone buzzed with an anonymous threat. "I know you're faking it. Pay me 100k or the press gets the story." The blackmailer was someone inside the Bartlett estate, and the "shield" I had built for Leo was about to become our cage.”