By day, I'm his flawless secretary. By night, I'm his secret wife in a cold, contract marriage. And after two years of invisible love, I've finally decided to walk away.

CEO Liam Black is a demon in a tailored suit—ruthless, emotionally frozen, and my boss. For four years, I’ve been his most loyal secretary. For two of those, I’ve been his secret wife, bound by a contract to save my family and secure his inheritance.

He sleeps in his bed; I sleep in mine. He parades models on his arm; I schedule their dates. I promised to leave after one year, with no strings attached. But when the contract ended, he tore up the papers. "You're not going anywhere," he growled, his eyes dark with a possession he'd never shown before.

I thought his refusal was the ultimate power play. I was wrong.

The car crash that nearly took his life changed everything. Rushing to the hospital, I declared myself his wife, only to be met with the scorn of his powerful family and his gorgeous, arranged fiancée. They called me a delusional, pathetic secretary.

But then they saw his phone. The locked screen wasn't a business chart or a supermodel. It was a candid, tender photo of me, asleep in our penthouse—a secret he kept from the world, and from me.

That's when I discovered my cold, contract husband had one hidden weakness: his obsession with the wife he pretended didn't exist.

Now, he's woken up with amnesia. He remembers his company, his family, even his fiancée. But he has forgotten our two years of marriage, our secret nights, and the love I so foolishly gave him.

To him, I'm just his secretary again. And he's making me pay for the "sin" of loving him.

He thinks he can erase us. He thinks I'll break.

But the meek secretary he married is gone. In her place is a woman who knows his deepest secret: that his heart, for all its coldness, beats only for her. And I will make him remember—even if it destroys us both.

Three days had passed since her mother's surgery, and Isabella had returned to work with the full weight of Liam's generosity pressing down on her chest like a physical thing.


$180,000. Her mother's life. A debt she could never repay.


And he wouldn't even let her say thank you.


Isabella stared at her computer screen, the words blurring together, her mind replaying that moment in his office over and over. The pain in his voice. The tension in his shoulders. The way he'd almost admitted something before shutting down.


If I admit what it was, I have to face what that means. And I can't. Not yet.


The words haunted her. A promise of something that might never come. A future that required bravery Liam might never find.


Chapter 24 - Chapter 24: The Unspoken Debt