| Broken Wrists, Billionaire's Kiss

Xander lost his leg saving Genevieve. After that, I moved into his estate and spent five years playing his devoted caretaker. It all shattered over a block of rare mahogany.

I wanted the wood to carve him a custom wheelchair. Genevieve wanted it for herself. We fought. I accidentally left a shallow scratch on the back of her hand.

Xander's security detail shoved me to the marble floor. My kneecaps cracked against the stone.

He stared down at me. "If anyone else had dared to lay a finger on Genevieve, I'd have fed them to the dogs." Terrified of offending the city's most powerful man, my own parents dragged me away.

To appease him, they took a blade and severed the tendons in my wrists. The pain was a whitehot flash that burned away the loud, spirited girl I used to be. I learned my place.

I never took another step into his orbit. Then came the night before my wedding. The sky broke open in a torrential downpour. Xander stood on my porch.

Rain plastered his clothes to his skin.

He dragged his ruined leg, his chest heaving with a desperate, pathetic kind of restraint. "Where is it?" His voice barely cut through the storm. "The wheelchair you promised me." My knees hit the floorboards on pure instinct.

I painted a perfectly hollow smile across my face. "You must be joking, sir." I kept my eyes locked on his soaking wet shoes. "I'm just a simple girl.

I wouldn't know the first thing about building a wheelchair." Chapter 1 The usually bustling woodshop was dead silent. My face was pressed against the rough floorboards.

Xander's voice cut through the quiet, cold and flat. "Since you lack basic manners and injured someone, you will kneel and apologize." A heavy lump formed in my throat.

I swallowed hard, the words spilling out clumsy and desperate. "You always call me reckless, fine. But there's a reason this happened today.

You didn't even ask me—" "And?" He stood over me, his face an impenetrable mask. "If anyone else had dared to lay a finger on Genevieve, I'd have fed them to the dogs." The air punched out of my lungs.

My mind blanked. Just for Genevieve? "But…" My voice shook. "She scratched her own hand trying to snatch the mahogany from me.

And I'm the one who has to apologize?" He didn't even blink. "Then it's still your fault." He adjusted his cuffs, his tone devoid of any warmth. "If you hadn't fought her for the wood, she wouldn't be hurt." My gaze drifted to the heavy block of mahogany lying in the sawdust.

I had planned to carve that into a custom wheelchair for him. Rare wood didn't just fall out of the sky.

I spent six months begging the suppliers to track this piece down, burning the midnight oil drafting the perfect blueprints. I wanted to give him his mobility back.

I wanted to surprise him. Now, the whole thing felt like a sick, twisted joke. Xander's brow furrowed. His gaze flicked to my bloodshot eyes before he turned away.

He gestured to his head of security. "Teach her how to show respect." The guard stepped forward. His jaw tightened. "Sorry, Miss," he muttered under his breath.

Then his massive hand clamped down on the back of my neck and slammed my head downward. Bone connected with stone with a sickening, hollow thud. The floor was rough, unforgiving.

After a few forced bows, warm liquid dripped into my eyes. Dark red splattered across the gray tiles. The room spun wildly.

I collapsed sideways, my scalp burning where the guard had gripped my hair. Genevieve tilted her chin up.

A sickeningly sweet smile played on her lips as she watched me bleed out on the floor. "Poor Maeve," she sighed, her voice dripping with fake pity. "I suppose it's normal for someone from such a humble background to get a little greedy when they see something nice." She lightly touched Xander's arm. "Still, she's been chasing you for years.

Don't ruin your long friendship over my little scratch." The elite crowd gathered around us didn't miss a beat.

Whispers rippled through the onlookers. [Rumor has it Xander has been hopelessly in love with Genevieve for years. Looks like it's true.

He's wrecking his own fiancée.] [Even a stray dog wouldn't be humiliated like this…] [Fiancée? Please. That was just a joke the old matriarch made.

Xander never claimed her.] [If Xander hadn't been deathly ill, Maeve never would have wormed her way into his estate to play nurse.

She doesn't have the pedigree to stand beside him.] [Pathetic. A decent girl throwing away five years of her life for nothing.] Pity. Disgust. Mockery. The stares suffocated me.

I was the punchline to a brutal joke, stripped of every ounce of my dignity under the glaring lights. Xander tuned out the noise.

He gently cradled Genevieve's right hand, blowing softly on her barely visible scratch. "Does it still hurt?" he murmured.

The tenderness in his voice felt like physical glass shards grinding into my chest. I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasting copper, forcing the tears back.

And then, the fog finally cleared. Xander wasn't cold. He wasn't incapable of warmth. He just reserved every drop of his affection and grace for Genevieve.

I had spent five years bleeding for him, and in the end, I was the only one keeping score.

Chapter 2 "You stupid bitch!" The backhand caught me squarely across the jaw the second I walked through the front door. I hit the hardwood floor, a sharp ringing piercing my ears.

My father stood over me, his face purple with rage. He gripped his heavy oak walking cane. "What kind of humiliating stunt did you pull this time?" Crack.

The cane bit savagely into my spine. "Do you have any idea how hard I've worked?" He swung again, the wood whistling through the air. "I only got my seat on the city council because of Xander's backing!

I thought you playing his little lapdog might actually be useful.

But you actually had the nerve to cross him!" He paced, his breathing ragged. "Now the entire upper east side is laughing at me.

You're nothing but a desperate stalker who couldn't even keep a crippled man happy. You're going to ruin my career over your pathetic jealousy!" Every strike left a burning welt.

I curled into a tight ball, my jaw locked so hard my teeth ached, swallowing down the groans. When his arm finally tired, he dropped the cane. He snapped his fingers.

Two of our private security guards stepped out of the shadows and pinned my shoulders to the floor. "Xander sent his people over.

Said I needed to teach you boundaries," my father sneered, pulling a sleek hunting knife from his desk drawer. "You're clearly too obsessed to stop yourself.

The only way to save my position is to make sure you physically can't go near him ever again." He knelt beside me.

He didn't even blink as he pressed the cold steel to my wrist, dug the blade in, and yanked. A raw, ragged scream tore out of my throat. Whitehot agony exploded up my arms.

Crimson instantly soaked through my sleeves, pooling thick and warm onto the floorboards. Black spots danced across my vision. My entire body convulsed.

My father dropped the bloody knife onto the rug. He turned to Xander's head of security standing by the door, his spine curving into a pathetic, groveling bow. "Please tell Mr.

Xander the problem has been handled. I hope this appeases him and Miss Genevieve…" I lay paralyzed in my own blood.

My severed tendons throbbed with a blinding, rhythmic pulse, but my chest felt hollowed out. Did Xander really despise me this much?

In all those stupid romance novels I used to read, there was always that one tragically devoted guy who only had eyes for the girl.

He'd give her everything, then quietly step aside to die alone when she chose someone else. But Xander wasn't a character in a book. He was flesh and blood.

I remembered the night he pulled me out of that alleyway, shielding me from the men who had cornered me. "You're safe now," he had told me, his voice a steady anchor in my panic. "I've instructed my detail to tell the press you just took a wrong turn.

Your reputation is spotless." I drowned in that cold, quiet protection. I couldn't stand the thought of a man like that ending up broken and alone.

So, when Genevieve announced her engagement to Ezra—the golden boy, the untouchable heir apparent of the family—I made my choice.

Xander had taken the hit for Genevieve in a brutal car wreck. The top surgeons in the country said he might never walk again. The family matriarch was desperate to save face.

She invited half the city's socialites to the estate, promising that whoever nursed Xander back to health would get the ring and the title of his wife.

No one wanted to throw their life away on a broken man who had just lost the corporate succession war. No one except me. I practically ran to his side. Five years.

Five years of washing him, feeding him, enduring his dark, destructive moods. I genuinely thought I had carved out a space in his chest.

I thought time would eventually wash Genevieve out of his system. I poured every ounce of my soul into him, completely ignoring the brutal reality of our world.

He was a billionaire scion. He could absorb my sacrifices without batting an eye, because to him, what was I? Just another nurse. Just another piece of free labor.

Any scrap of gentleness he ever showed me wasn't affection. It was just a billionaire throwing pennies to a beggar.

Chapter 3 That same night, my father had the staff wrap my bleeding wrists in cheap gauze and shoved me into the back of a black SUV.

He shipped me off to the Thorne Estate upstate, drilling his grand plan into my head the entire drive. "I figured after five years of wiping Xander's drool, the Matriarch would at least force him to keep you around as a mistress," my father spat, glaring at me from the leather seat. "Instead, you're useless.

You pissed him off.

From now on, you stay the hell away from him and Genevieve." He adjusted his perfectly tailored cuffs. "I heard the Matriarch is quietly scouting for a submissive, obedient companion to keep Ezra grounded.

You're going to stay at the estate and keep your head down." "Kiss up to Madame Thorne.

If you can get her to put in a good word for us with the Matriarch, maybe this wasn't a total waste." My mother sat beside him, twisting her silk handkerchief into a tight knot.

She didn't meet my eyes. "Just listen to your father, Maeve." Madame Thorne was the Matriarch's sister.

After her husband passed, she built the Thorne Estate—an austere, freezing compound masked as a "wellness retreat" for disgraced socialites. No one came here voluntarily.

The days were grueling, and the discipline was absolute. I spent half a month confined to the grounds. The skin on my wrists knit together into thick, ugly ridges.

I barely had the grip strength to lift a coffee mug, but Madame Thorne still assigned me to haul the heavy, leatherbound archives out to the courtyard to air them out.

My numb fingers gave out. A heavy encyclopedia slipped from my grasp and slammed onto the stone patio. "I got it, Maeve!" a bright, overly enthusiastic voice chirped.

A tall, strikingly handsome guy bounded over. He grabbed my elbow with surprising gentleness, steering me into the shade of the portico.

He knelt in the dirt, dusted off the book, and placed it squarely on the patio table. "Ezra is being such a good helper today," a housekeeper sweeping the terrace called out with a warm smile.

When I first arrived, I thought the estate was just heavily guarded staff. Then I saw Ezra chasing a stray cat through the rose bushes, tripping over his own expensive loafers.

The housekeeper told me he was Madame Thorne's nephew. A bad accident a few years back had fried his brain, leaving the billionaire heir with the mental capacity of a firstgrader.

In any other story, this was the setup for a grand romance. The broken, beautiful boy who just needed the right girl to heal him.

But I was done playing the patron saint of broken men. I stepped back to the table, keeping my distance. "I can handle it, Ezra.

Thank you." He stared at the angry red scars peaking out from my sleeves. He sniffled, rubbing his nose. "But there are so many books.

And your hands are broken." "It's fine." He tilted his head, flashing a dimpled, perfectly harmless smile. "Do you even have any strength left in those?" My breath caught.

I stared at his face. It might have been my imagination, but the childish haze evaporated. The words didn't sound like a sevenyearold. They were razorsharp.

Probing. "Are you sure you don't need my help, Maeve?" I dropped my gaze to the wood grain of the table. "Did you finish your worksheets?

Madame Thorne is going to come looking for you." Ezra's eyes blew wide. The sharp edge vanished instantly, replaced by frantic, wideeyed panic.

He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Oh no! I forgot!

Auntie is going to be so mad!" He spun on his heel and sprinted back toward the main house, his sneakers kicking up gravel.

I waited until the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind him before I forced my trembling fingers to grip the spine of the next book.

The stretched skin around my wrists pulled and burned. The phantom memory of my father's hunting knife tearing through my tendons flashed behind my eyelids.

The early spring wind bit through my thin sweater. Across the courtyard, a dead peach tree stood rotting in the damp soil, stripped bare by the overnight rain.

In this compound, obedience was the only currency. Speaking out of turn earned you solitary confinement. I looked down at my ruined hands. I finally accepted it.

I was going to rot right alongside that tree. Stripped bare. Left for dead. Chapter 4 "Maeve?" The voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

Two silhouettes stood on the stone steps a few yards away.

Genevieve leaned lightly against Xander's arm, a sicklysweet smile plastered across her face. "Your father actually locked you up in this miserable place.

I thought he was just bluffing." She tilted her head toward Xander, her laugh tinkling like cheap wind chimes. "I can't believe anyone would dump their own daughter at a punishment retreat." She sighed, looking back at me. "It was just a tiny scratch.

He's being entirely too dramatic." "Maybe I should have Xander make a call.

We could get you sent home early." She was the one who engineered this entire nightmare, and now she was playing the merciful savior. "No—" Before I could get the word out, Xander's freezing voice sliced through the air. "Don't waste your breath." He stared at me, his eyes dead flat. "She still looks clueless.

Let her learn her lesson." Genevieve's smile widened into something sharp. "You're right.

Half a month of etiquette classes, and she still doesn't even know how to greet us properly." What kind of attitude did a billionaire demand? Total, unquestioning submission.

I lowered my gaze, letting my eyelashes shadow my eyes.

I dropped to my knees on the hard stone and pressed my forehead directly into the dirt. "Good afternoon, sir." My posture was flawless. My voice was a flat, dead line.

I was the perfect, hollowedout porcelain doll they wanted me to be. Xander stood at the top of the steps. His jaw locked tightly.

He stared down at my bowed head in absolute silence for what felt like hours. Finally, he turned on his heel. "Let's go, Genevieve," he snapped, his voice tight.

Life at the Thorne Estate was quiet. The manual labor wasn't the problem. My ruined wrists were.

Hands that used to carve intricate woodwork and cook elaborate meals now struggled to button a shirt.

In the dead of night, staring at the dark ceiling, the silence grew suffocating. When we were broke, I worked three jobs to pay the bills.

My parents called me their perfect, responsible girl.

When my five years of playing Xander's nurse secured my father a coveted seat on the city council, I was suddenly a desperate liability.

I had never done a single thing to hurt Xander, and he let them butcher my hands. Bleeding for people didn't mean they wouldn't bleed you dry. I had parents, but I was alone.

You couldn't force a place for yourself in a world that treated you like a disposable pawn. I stayed in the compound. I let the days blur together. Madame Thorne was ruthless.

She forced the entire staff up at 4:00 AM for morning lineup. One of the junior maids, a tenyearold orphan, practically sleepwalked through the courtyard, swaying on her feet.

I caught her shoulders before she walked into a concrete pillar and told her to go back to bed. Her eyes blew wide open. She waved her hands frantically. "I can't!

Madame Thorne told me to gather kindling from the back woods." The archives were finished. I had nothing else to do.

I nudged her toward the dorms and grabbed the heavy canvas collection bag myself. The back woods were a suffocating dead zone.

Only the crunch of my boots over dry leaves broke the silence. Snap. A thick black viper whipped out from the underbrush. I jerked backward. My heel caught a jagged root.

I slammed into the dirt. A sharp, blinding crack echoed from my ankle. The snake coiled. Its forked tongue flicked the air.

Black scales slithered closer, mere inches from my exposed calf. My lungs seized. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the burning strike. A sharp whistle ripped through the air.

I snapped my eyes open. A jagged branch pinned the viper to the dirt, piercing straight through its skull. The snake writhed, then went still. "Maeve?

Are you okay?" My head whipped around. "Ezra?" Chapter 5