CHAPTER 6
Ariana’s POV
Two years.
The words blurred on the page as my hand trembled around the pen. The contract in front of me might as well have been a death sentence. Two years of my life, bound to a man who had dragged me into this mess with cold precision.
I blinked hard, trying to stop the flood of tears smearing the ink. But no matter how much I tried to hold back, the dam broke again. My chest rose and fell in uneven gasps as the paper before me darkened with teardrops.
“Get on with it already!” Ethan’s sharp voice cut through the silence, harsh and commanding. His words cracked like a whip against my skin. “You’re going to ruin the entire contract with your tears.”
My head snapped up at him, rage clashing with grief. “Alright!” I shot back impulsively. My throat burned as I forced the words out. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just… I’m having a moment.”
He didn’t even flinch. His jaw was set, his eyes hard, his stance rooted like he’d already won. “We don’t have all day. We have a wedding to prepare for. And we have your comeback to plan.” His voice dropped lower, more controlled, more dangerous. “This is happening whether you cry through it or not.”
Every part of me screamed to throw the pen across the room. To shred the papers. To claw my way out of the trap I had let him weave around me. But I knew the videos existed. I knew Ethan Vale had the power to end me completely.
So with shaking hands, I pressed the pen down and scribbled my signature across the line. Each stroke carved away at my pride. My stomach churned with shame, and when I slid the contract toward him, I wiped at my cheeks quickly, desperate not to let him see me so broken.
He snatched the contract from me, lips curling in a grim smile. “Wipe your tears, sweetheart,” he mocked, his tone dripping with satisfaction. “We have just two years to go.”
The cruelty in his voice stung sharper than a slap. Two years sounded like a lifetime in his cage. Two years of walking on glass, of being at the mercy of one of my biggest haters.
I swallowed hard. My voice cracked as I asked the one question that haunted me more than anything. “But what about my career? How do you intend to… fix that?”
Ethan’s gaze hardened further, as if I’d overstepped by even asking. “That’s up to me now,” he said coldly. “I call the shots. You follow. Welcome to the real world, Ariana. A world where everything doesn’t bend to your terms.”
He turned toward the door, dismissing me like I was an employee he’d grown tired of.
“You bastard,” I yelled, rage replacing the despair for just a moment.
But the slam of the door cut me off. A click followed, and I realized with horror that he had locked it from the outside.
I lunged at the handle, twisting and banging with my fists until the skin on my knuckles turned red. “Ethan!” I shouted. “Open this door!”
No answer.
The silence pressed in, suffocating. My chest tightened, and my knees buckled beneath me until I collapsed on the floor. The weight of it all crushed me in that moment. The humiliation of my public breakup. I had signed the contract with trembling hands. The fact that no one out there would know the truth. To the world, Ariana Cruz had simply disappeared.
Tears blurred my vision again as I whispered into the emptiness, “This is the end. This is really the end.”
My legacy was ashes. My name, once celebrated, was now chained to Ethan Vale’s agenda. No one would ever know how hard I had fought, how much I had bled for the empire I built. It was gone.
And so I cried, my sobs swallowed by the walls, unheard, unacknowledged.
Ethan’s POV
“Easy as cake,” I muttered, leaning back into my chair with a satisfaction I rarely allowed myself to feel.
The contract sat in my hand like a trophy. Ariana Cruz, the woman who had once publicly locked me without knowing the destruction her advice had left in my life, which was now mine to control. The irony was delicious.
Every ounce of frustration I had harbored toward her, every bitter taste left by Sienna Hart walking out of my life after listening to Ariana’s nonsense, all of it fed the satisfaction now surging through me.
And yet… something in how she looked when she signed kept tugging at me. She had been trembling, breaking, barely holding herself upright. For a second, her tears hadn’t looked weak. They had looked human.
I forced the thought out of my head. Sentiment was a poison I couldn’t afford. Ariana was leveraged. Nothing more.
“Could I help you with that, sir?” Ryan Holt, my personal assistant and closest friend, stepped into the room, his eyes flicking to the folder in my hands.
“They’re papers, leveraged, not lead weights,” I snapped, though my tone lacked real anger. “I’ll manage.”
Ryan raised a brow but said nothing. He’d learned long ago when to keep his mouth shut.
“Make sure our guest eats,” I added, standing. “No one outside this house is to know about her. Not a word.”
“Understood.”
I left him to it and carried the contract upstairs, placing it carefully in my safe. Locked away, it was untouchable, undeniable proof that Ariana belonged to this arrangement now.
For the first time in years, I felt ready to call my father.
I dialed Richard Vale’s number. As the line connected, I braced myself for his inevitable lecture.
“Hello, Mr. Vale,” I said evenly, keeping my tone clipped and professional. It was easier than letting him think he had any access to the son he’d raised.
“For goodness’ sake, Ethan,” Richard sighed from the other end. “When are you going to stop with this charade and just talk to me like your father?”
I ignored him. “I’m assuming you’re well.”
“Hopeless,” Richard muttered, and I could picture him shaking his head with that weary half-smile. “What do you want this time? I know you didn’t call to check on me.”
“You’ve been pressuring me to settle down,” I said, pacing across my room, the words heavy on my tongue. “Consider it handled. I’m about to get married.”
There was silence, then a sharp intake of breath. “You’re… what?”
Before I could elaborate, the door to my study burst open. Ryan stood there, his face pale, his chest heaving.
“What is it?” I barked, anger flaring at the interruption.
“It’s Ariana,” he said, his voice tight with urgency. “She tried to hurt herself.”
The blood drained from my face.
“What?”
“She” Ryan hesitated, but the panic in his eyes told me enough. “She tried to kill herself.”
My phone slipped from my hand, clattering against the desk.
In an instant, I was moving, shoving past him, my heart pounding harder than it had in years. The thought of Ariana broken, bleeding, gone it hit me in a way I hadn’t prepared for.