Contract Marriage With The Genius Heiress

The operating room was freezing.

The chill didn't come from the air conditioning, but from the clear liquid pushing through the IV line into the back of Alysia's hand.

She stared at the blinding surgical lights above.

The anesthesiologist tapped her vein, his voice a dull hum behind his mask.

"Count backward from ten, Miss Kent."

Ten.

Nine.

A violent, electric shock tore through the center of her brain.

The heart rate monitor beside her spiked, emitting a sharp, frantic beep.

Alysia's spine arched off the sterile table.

Her lungs seized.

A tsunami of memories crashed into her skull, heavy and suffocating.

She saw the damp, rotting walls of a Brooklyn basement.

She felt the phantom agony of a festering surgical wound, the exact spot where her kidney had been harvested.

She tasted her own blood from a thousand different deaths across a thousand different lifetimes.

The anesthesiologist cursed under his breath, his gloved hand reaching for the dial to increase the dosage.

Alysia's eyes snapped open.

The resignation that had clouded her pupils seconds ago was gone, replaced by the absolute, zero-degree cold of a glacier.

She lifted her right arm.

Her muscles were heavy, fighting the initial wave of the drug, but she forced them to obey.

She shoved the anesthesiologist's hand away from the dial.

"What are you doing?" the man stammered, stumbling back a half-step. "The procedure has started. You can't stop now."

Alysia didn't speak.

She reached for the medical tape securing the IV to her hand and ripped it off in one brutal motion.

She yanked the plastic catheter out of her vein.

Dark red blood splattered across the sterile blue surgical drapes.

The heavy doors swung open, and the lead surgeon marched in.

"What the hell is going on here?" he barked, glaring at Alysia. "Restrain her! This is a severe violation of protocol!"

Alysia sat up, her bare feet hitting the icy floor.

She looked at the surgeon, her chest rising and falling in a slow, calculated rhythm.

"Account ending in 8492," she said, her voice raspy but steady. "A wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars from the Holloway family. Two weeks ago."

The surgeon's face drained of all color.

His jaw went slack, and his feet rooted to the floor.

He didn't dare take another step toward her.

Alysia ripped the thin hospital gown off her shoulders.

She grabbed a sterile surgical coat from a nearby tray and pulled it over her arms.

She took a step forward and her knee buckled slightly, the residual anesthesia messing with her equilibrium.

She nearly crashed into a metal instrument cart.

She closed her eyes, forcing her breathing into the precise, rhythmic pattern of a master martial artist she had been three lifetimes ago.

Her muscles tightened, aligning her spine perfectly.

She opened her eyes, completely steady, and walked to the automatic doors.

She slammed her palm against the release button.

The doors slid apart, and the blinding flash of camera bulbs hit her face.

Out in the hallway, her brother, Kaden Kent, was standing in front of a pack of tabloid reporters.

Tears streamed down his face as he spoke into the microphones.

"My sister's sacrifice is the purest act of love. She is giving Crystal a second chance at life."

Kaden heard the doors open.

He turned around.

His fake, sorrowful expression froze when he saw Alysia standing there, wearing a surgical coat, her right hand dripping blood onto the linoleum floor.

The reporters shifted their lenses instantly, shutters clicking like machine-gun fire to capture the emotional pre-surgery farewell.

Kaden's jaw twitched-his telltale sign of rising panic.

He forced a sickeningly sweet smile and stepped forward, opening his arms.

"Alysia, honey, what are you doing out here?" he hissed through his teeth, his voice low enough for only her to hear. "Get back on that table right now."

Alysia sidestepped his embrace.

She raised her uninjured left hand and slapped him across the face.

The crack of her palm against his cheek echoed down the corridor, silencing the entire crowd.

Kaden's head snapped to the side.

A drop of blood welled at the corner of his mouth.

He stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief.

This was the sister who had always kept her head down, who had always taken the blame.

The door to the adjacent VIP suite opened.

Crystal, Kaden's fiancée, rolled out in a wheelchair.

She immediately clutched the fabric at her throat, her fingers spasming as she feigned a look of sheer terror.

"Alysia?" Crystal's voice trembled. "Are you backing out? After you promised?"

Two reporters in the front row, clearly paid off by Kaden, started shouting.

"How can you be so selfish?"

"You're going to let your future sister-in-law die?"

Alysia reached into the pocket of the surgical coat.

Her fingers wrapped around the small plastic recording pen she had swiped from the nurses' station on her way in. On her way to be prepped, she had feigned a dizzy spell, 'accidentally' dropping it under a table in the VIP waiting room where Kaden and Crystal were celebrating, only to retrieve it moments later.

She pulled it out and pressed play.

The audio was crisp.

Kaden's voice filled the hallway, followed by Crystal's giggles.

"As soon as they take her kidney, we'll declare her mentally unfit during the recovery. The trust fund will default entirely to me."

"You're terrible, Kaden. But I love it."

The reporters gasped collectively.

The camera flashes intensified, blinding Kaden and Crystal, whose faces had turned the color of ash.

Kaden's jaw twitched violently.

He lunged at Alysia, his hands clawing for the recording pen.

Alysia didn't flinch.

She stepped into his space, grabbed his extended wrist, and twisted it sharply downward.

The sickening snap of bone breaking cut through the noise.

Kaden dropped to his knees, screaming in agony.

Alysia let go of his arm, letting him collapse onto the floor like a discarded rag.

She looked down at him, her eyes devoid of any human warmth.

"I'm keeping my kidney," Alysia said, her voice slicing through the chaos. "And I'm taking back everything that belongs to me."

She stepped over his writhing body and walked straight toward the elevators, leaving the hallway in absolute ruin.

Three days later.

Alysia pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Kent family estate in Long Island.

The warm, joyful chatter of the family dinner died the second she stepped into the dining room.

Sitting at the head of the long mahogany table, her father, Gladstone Kent, slammed his crystal wine glass down.

The red liquid sloshed over the rim, staining the white tablecloth.

Kaden shot up from his chair.

A white gauze pad was taped to his forehead, and his right arm was in a heavy cast.

"You ungrateful bitch!" Kaden roared, pointing his good hand at her.

Crystal sat next to him in her wheelchair.

She immediately started coughing, a harsh, wet sound.

Her fingers dug into Kaden's sleeve, pulling at the fabric.

"Don't fight with her, Kaden," Crystal whimpered, tears spilling over her cheeks. "It's not worth tearing the family apart for me."

An older aunt at the end of the table shook her head in disgust.

"You have no heart, Alysia. You don't deserve the Kent name."

Alysia ignored the noise.

She walked past them, her posture perfectly aligned, and pulled out an empty chair near the center of the table.

She sat down, crossing her legs, looking more like the master of the house than anyone else in the room.

Gladstone slammed his fist on the table.

"Get on your knees and apologize to Crystal right now!" he ordered. "I will call the hospital and reschedule the surgery for tomorrow morning."

Alysia picked up a glass of sparkling water from the table.

She swirled the ice cubes slowly.

"Are you aware, Father, of the felony charges associated with forced organ harvesting in the state of New York?"

Gladstone's face turned purple.

He choked on his words, his chest heaving.

"This is family sacrifice! This has nothing to do with the law!"

Kaden sneered and walked toward her.

He pulled a folded document from his jacket pocket and threw it onto the table in front of her.

"Sign the consent form, or I freeze every single credit card in your name tonight."

Alysia didn't even glance at the paper.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of black titanium credit cards.

They were all cut cleanly in half.

She tossed them into the air.

The heavy plastic and metal pieces rained down, hitting Kaden in the face and chest.

Kaden flinched, his jaw twitching violently.

He raised his left fist, stepping into her space.

Alysia looked up at him.

Her gaze was so hollow, so devoid of fear, that Kaden's fist froze in mid-air.

"The money I've generated for this family's shell companies over the last three years far exceeds the limits on those cards," Alysia said flatly. "You owe me."

Crystal sobbed louder, shifting the attention back to herself.

"I have three months to live without that kidney! How can you watch me die?"

Alysia leaned forward.

She rested her elbows on the table and locked eyes with Crystal.

"Private yacht. Miami. Last month," Alysia whispered, her voice carrying just enough for Crystal to hear.

Crystal stopped crying instantly.

Her breathing hitched, and her fingers spasmed against her chest.

Alysia sat back up and looked at her father.

"Crystal's kidney failure isn't genetic. It's the result of chronic, severe abuse of illicit narcotics."

The dining room erupted in gasps.

Gladstone stared at Crystal, his eyes wide. "Explain this."

Kaden stepped in front of Crystal, shielding her.

"She's lying! She's making it up to save her own skin!"

Alysia reached into her bag one last time.

She pulled out a thick stack of papers bearing the official watermark of Johns Hopkins Hospital. "This isn't a new document. I secured this digital backup during one of my previous loops, long before she could scrub her medical history."

She slapped the printed toxicology report onto the center of the dining table.

The uncle sitting closest to the papers picked them up.

His eyes scanned the highlighted lines, and his face dropped.

He slid the report down the table to Gladstone.

Gladstone read the numbers.

His hands started to shake.

He looked up, glaring at the woman he had been ready to sacrifice his own daughter for.

Crystal slipped out of her wheelchair, collapsing onto the hardwood floor.

She wrapped her arms around Kaden's legs.

"It's fake! Kaden, you have to believe me, she forged it!"

Kaden looked down at Crystal, doubt flashing in his eyes.

But the Holloway family merger depended on this marriage.

He gritted his teeth and glared at Alysia.

"It's a forgery. And if you walk out that door today, you forfeit the Manhattan penthouse in mother's trust fund."

The temperature in Alysia's blood dropped to absolute zero.

She stood up.

Her chair scraped loudly against the floor.

"If you touch one brick of my mother's apartment," Alysia said, her voice a deadly hum, "I will burn this Long Island estate to the ground while you sleep in it."

Gladstone stood up, trying to reclaim his authority.

"Guards! Lock her in the guest room upstairs until she agrees to the surgery!"

Two massive bodyguards stepped out from the shadows of the hallway, moving toward Alysia.

Alysia didn't run.

She reached up and pulled the sharp metal hairpin from her updo.

Her hair tumbled down her back.

Before the first bodyguard could grab her arm, she lunged. She didn't aim for a kill shot, but jabbed the hairpin into the nerve cluster behind his ear. The man's arm went numb and dropped, his face a mask of shocked pain. The second guard paused, stunned by the unexpected, vicious attack.

The room gasped in horror.

Alysia pushed the massive man aside with her free hand.

She didn't look back as she walked out the front door, leaving the Kent family choking on their own ruin.

The next morning.

Alysia sat in a glass-walled conference room on the sixtieth floor of a Wall Street law firm.

Across from her sat Mr. Sterling, the trust attorney.

He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, a smug, patronizing smile on his face.

"Your brother filed the injunction this morning, Alysia. He intends to freeze the transfer of the penthouse."

Alysia opened the heavy leather-bound trust document on the table.

She flipped directly to page thirty.

She tapped her manicured fingernail against a specific paragraph.

"Read the contingency clause out loud, Mr. Sterling."

Sterling sighed, annoyed.

"The beneficiary must enter into a legally binding marriage before her twenty-fourth birthday to secure absolute ownership of the property."

Alysia glanced at the digital clock on the wall.

"I turn twenty-four in exactly forty-six hours."

Sterling leaned back in his chair.

"Which means you are out of time. Take the cash settlement your father offered. It's better than walking away with nothing."

Alysia studied the way Sterling's eyes darted toward the door.

"You played golf with Kaden on Tuesday at Shinnecock Hills," she stated.

Sterling's smile vanished.

"I maintain professional relationships with all members of the Kent family."

Alysia reached into her trench coat pocket.

She pulled out a single sheet of paper and slid it across the polished mahogany table.

It was a transaction log she had pulled from the dark web at 3:00 AM.

Sterling looked down.

Sweat instantly beaded on his forehead.

The red highlighted lines detailed exactly how much client money he had embezzled into an offshore account in the Caymans.

Alysia leaned forward, invading his space.

"You will reject Kaden's injunction immediately. You will have the title transfer documents ready."

Sterling swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Even if I stall him, Alysia, the board will seize the property if you don't produce a marriage certificate. I can't fake a legal marriage."

Alysia stood up.

She smoothed the front of her coat.

"Have the paperwork on your desk. You'll have the certificate in forty-six hours."

She walked out of the law firm and onto the freezing streets of lower Manhattan.

The wind whipped her hair across her face.

She pulled out her phone and opened an encrypted messaging app.

She typed a quick message to an underground information broker she used in her past lives.

I need a list of single men in Manhattan. Desperate for capital. Willing to sign an extreme ironclad prenup. Two hours.

Thirty minutes later, Alysia sat in a dimly lit, overpriced coffee shop in Tribeca.

She scrolled through the encrypted file on her iPad.

Candidate one: A bankrupt hedge fund manager.

She looked at his photo. His eyes were greedy. She swiped left.

Candidate two: A C-list actor looking for a PR stunt.

She grimaced, feeling bile rise in her throat at the thought of dealing with paparazzi. Swiped left.

She rejected fifteen men in ten minutes.

Frustration tightened her chest.

She picked up her black coffee and took a scalding sip.

She glanced up at the muted television mounted above the barista station.

The ticker at the bottom read: CANTRELL GROUP CEO FACES BOARD OUSTER OVER REFUSAL TO MARRY.

The screen flashed to a photograph of Jude Cantrell.

His face was a study in sharp angles and absolute cruelty.

His slate-gray eyes stared out from the screen, devoid of any warmth.

Alysia's brain immediately accessed the data from her previous simulations.

Jude Cantrell.

Ruthless. Cold. Currently fighting a massive internal war for control of his company's core AI division.

He was the ultimate shield against the Kent family.

Alysia set her coffee down.

She pulled up a terminal window on her iPad and began typing lines of code.

She bypassed the firewall of the New York City Hall appointment registry.

She searched for any activity related to the Cantrell name.

A hit popped up.

Alex Vance, Jude's chief of staff, had just canceled a lunch reservation at a restaurant two blocks from City Hall.

Jude was down there.

He was either signing compliance documents or hiding from his grandfather's arranged marriage prospects.

Alysia closed the iPad and shoved it into her bag.

She threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table and ran out the door.

She flagged down a yellow cab.

"City Hall. Step on it."

The cab jerked forward, weaving violently through the midday traffic.

Alysia stared at her watch.

The minutes bled away.

When the cab finally screeched to a halt outside City Hall, Alysia saw them.

Three black, bulletproof SUVs were parked illegally by the curb.

The air around the vehicles felt heavy, dangerous.

Alysia took a deep breath, aligning her spine.

She pushed through the revolving doors, walking straight into the fire.