Chapter 7 : Clause Of Collapse

Chapter 7: Clause of Collapse

The paper still sat on the coffee table.

Three lines.

No seals.

No legal weight.

Yet it felt heavier than every contract they had ever signed.

Aria stared at it from across the room, hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea she wasn't drinking. The steam curled upward, disappearing into silence.

Leon sat across from her, silent too.

It had been an hour since he handed it to her.

He hadn't tried to explain. He hadn't pushed.

And she?

She didn't know what to feel.

**No conditions.

No timelines.

Just you.**

It wasn't a vow.

It was a surrender.

"You didn't write your name," she finally said.

Leon's gaze flicked toward her. "I didn't need to."

"That's not how contracts work," she murmured, trying to sound distant and logical when her heart was chaos.

"No," he agreed, "but this one wasn't written with ink. It was written after I bled for too long."

The honesty in his voice startled her.

She set her cup down and looked him in the eye.

"I don't want a new contract," she said gently. "I want something *real.* And real things take time. They bruise. They break. They don't always make sense."

"I know," he said.

"You've punished me for things I never did. Hurt me for wounds you never let heal."

Leon's jaw clenched. "I know."

"But despite everything," she whispered, "I never hated you. I pitied you. Because no matter how many walls you built, some part of you kept wishing someone would climb them."

He looked away.

"You said I wasn't in your blueprint," she added. "But maybe that's why I mattered."

For the first time in days, Leon stepped toward her—not as the man who made her sign her life away, but as someone trying, failing, hurting.

He knelt down in front of her.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"I want to stop surviving this marriage," she replied. "I want to start *living it.*"

His fingers curled into fists.

"I don't know how to be soft," he admitted.

"You don't have to be," she said. "Just be *honest.*"

Leon nodded, and then—hesitantly—reached for her hand.

She let him.

Their fingers laced slowly, cautiously, like two people learning how to be human again.

That night, Aria didn't return to the cold guest house uptown.

She stayed.

Not because he asked her to.

But because it felt like a choice for the first time.

They didn't sleep together.

They didn't even sleep in the same bed.

But she took the couch near the piano, curled in one of Leon's oversized sweaters, listening to the rain tap against the glass again.

And Leon?

He stood at the balcony, watching the city like it might answer the questions in his soul.

By morning, something had changed.

The house staff noticed first.

Leon didn't bark orders.

He asked politely.

Aria joined him for breakfast—not at opposite ends of the table but beside him. They didn't speak much, but the silence wasn't hostile anymore.

It was just... unfamiliar.

Unfolding.

But peace doesn't last in a world built on secrets.

That afternoon, Aria received an unexpected visitor at the gates of Valen Enterprises.

Her name was **Margot Blake**—a sharp-tongued legal consultant known for cleaning up scandals with surgical precision.

Aria didn't know her.

But Margot knew *everything.*

"Mrs. Valen," she said, crossing her legs in the company café, sunglasses still on. "You're glowing. Shame it's temporary."

Aria blinked. "Excuse me?"

Margot slid a folder across the table.

Inside: Photos. Screenshots. A document stamped **CONFIDENTIAL.**

"Leon filed a dissolution clause—two days before your name was cleared."

Aria's heart dropped.

"What… kind of clause?"

"A trigger clause. A safety exit. If anything about your image posed a reputational risk, he reserved the right to annul the marriage. Silently. Without needing your consent."

Aria's breath caught.

No. That couldn't be.

Not *after everything.*

"Why are you showing me this?" she asked.

Margot smiled coldly. "Because I used to work for him. And I *don't* anymore."

Aria pushed the file back, standing. "I don't care what he filed. He didn't go through with it."

"Maybe not," Margot replied, sipping her espresso. "But he kept it in place. *Even after giving you that fake romantic scrap of paper.*"

Her voice sharpened. "He didn't give you freedom, sweetheart. He just delayed the execution."

Aria didn't return to Leon's office.

She didn't return to the mansion.

She walked.

For hours.

Through crowds. Past flashing lights. Rain again.

Her heart had barely started mending—now it was splintering all over again.

He had told her he wanted *her.*

But he hadn't torn up the old contract.

He just rewrote the narrative.

In his world, love came with a trapdoor.

By evening, she was back in the penthouse uptown.

Her phone buzzed.

**Leon:**

> Where are you?

She didn't answer.

He called.

She let it ring.

And ring.

Until finally—

She picked up.

"I trusted you," she said before he could speak.

Leon's voice was urgent. "Aria, listen—"

"You said there were no conditions."

"There aren't anymore—"

"But there *were!*" Her voice broke. "You planned for the possibility of *erasing me,* even while telling me you were ready to try. You had a clause that let you abandon me the second it got hard."

"I never activated it."

"But you *could have.*"

Silence.

"Do you even hear yourself?" she whispered. "Do you realize how hard it is to love someone who always has an escape route?"

His voice came low. Pained. "I didn't know how else to protect myself."

"And now you've lost the one person who never tried to hurt you."

Click.

This time, **she** hung up.

That night, Leon didn't sleep.

He didn't go home.

He stayed in the office, surrounded by glass and guilt.

The dissolution clause stared at him from the folder he had never shredded.

He had never used it.

But he had *kept it.*

Like a lifeboat he didn't need but couldn't throw away.

His phone buzzed.

It was a message from his lawyer.

> *Margot leaked the clause to the press. Prepare for fallout.*

Leon closed his eyes.

He wasn't just losing Aria.

He was about to lose her *twice.*

Once by betrayal.

And now—by truth.

The next morning, Aria opened her front door to chaos.

Reporters. Cameras. Microphones shoved in her face.

"Mrs. Valen, do you have a response to the leaked clause?"

"Did you know your husband had planned to annul the marriage?"

"Are you the victim of a contract scam?"

Aria didn't cry.

She didn't hide.

She stepped into the flash of lights and microphones and said, clearly:

> "My marriage was real to me. Even if the contract wasn't."

She turned and walked back inside—dignified, graceful, *whole.*

Even as her heart burned.

Back at the mansion, Leon watched the press footage in silence.

For the first time in his life, he had no strategy.

No backup.

No clause to fix what he had broken.

He had wanted to control the world around him.

And instead, he lost the only thing he didn't want to lose.

To be continued...