Flash Marriage To My Mysterious Bodyguard

BANG—

"Aurelia! Oh my god, are you in there?"

The urgent pounding and the shouts ripped Aurelia awake, still dazed.

Her skull throbbed with a dull, hammering pain. Her body was dead weight, refusing to move. The air in the room was wrong—someone else's cologne, musk and something sharper beneath it, clinging to the sheets.

Fragments surfaced—dark eyes, a palm pressing the small of her back, her own voice catching on words she didn't want to retrieve. She pushed them back down.

She'd been drugged.

Not the first time. Her half-sister Celeste had spent a decade perfecting the art—leaked itineraries, doctored board documents, something slipped into her drink when she wasn't looking. But this time, Celeste had clearly set the stage for something bigger.

"Aurelia, please! Don't do anything stupid! The reporters are here, just open the door!"

Celeste's voice pitched high, manicured panic dripping from every syllable. Aurelia registered the noise beyond the door—more than one person. Celeste had brought an audience. Her plan was obvious: let everyone see the eldest Beaumont daughter's disgrace and torch her reputation in a single stroke.

Aurelia forced her eyes open. In the armchair by the window sat a man, tall and motionless, a block of shadow against the pale morning light bleeding through the curtains.

Hart. The bodyguard she'd hired three months ago. She knew he was more than a bodyguard.

He was already on his feet, moving soundlessly toward the door. He glanced back at her. His gaze was dark, unreadable. He wasn't surprised, she realized. He knew exactly who was on the other side.

She didn't have time to question him. Her silk slip dress lay torn on the floor. Her heels had been kicked into opposite corners. At the foot of the bed sat a man's white button-down, neatly folded—not hers, but placed deliberately within reach.

She grabbed it and pulled it on, her fingers unsteady on the buttons.

Beyond the door, the noise swelled into a low, tangled murmur. Voices overlapping. The shuffle of feet. The unmistakable hum of a crowd scenting blood.

Aurelia ignored all of it. Her eyes had landed on the bathroom door. Half open.

She crossed the room and pushed it wide.

Harrison Finch—a hedge fund predator with a wife, three children, and a reputation for destroying anything he couldn't sleep with—was curled on the cold marble floor. His own tie had been used to bind his hands behind his back. Another strip of fabric gagged his mouth, knotted tight at the back of his head, a trail of saliva running down his chin. Early autumn chill had seeped through the tiles overnight, and he was shivering violently.

He saw her and began thrashing, muffled grunts choking in his throat.

"You did this." Aurelia turned to Hart. "On whose authority?"

"Your safety required it."

His tone was flat as glass. No explanation. No hint of pride. As if binding a sixty-year-old man and leaving him in a bathroom overnight was a matter of routine.

She opened her mouth to press him, but a wave of dizziness hit—the drug still working its way out of her system. She caught the doorframe. From the hall, the voices threaded through the wood again. She caught the word scandal.

The whole setup snapped into focus. She'd come back from work late the night before. Celeste had insisted on drinks. A few glasses in, a strange heat had curled low in her stomach and her thoughts had started to blur. She'd felt the warning signs and tried to head upstairs. When she opened the door, someone lunged at her—and then Hart was there, intercepting him. After that, she had fragments. She didn't want the rest.

Now Celeste was at her door with reporters.

Celeste was gambling on her reputation, her board seat, everything their father had left her. Aurelia had always treated her like a real sister. The feeling, apparently, wasn't mutual.

"Sister, please! Whatever is happening, we can handle it as a family!"

Aurelia drew a slow breath and walked toward the door, her spine straight.

Her hand closed around the cold brass doorknob.

Hart's palm covered hers. "I'll handle this."

She pulled free and looked up at him. "This is my battlefield."

Then she yanked the door open.

The world detonated into a blinding salvo of flashbulbs. The shutters clattered like a swarm of furious insects.

"Aurelia!" Celeste lunged forward, her face arranged into a flawless mask of sisterly concern, trying to peer past her into the room.

Aurelia raised one arm and planted her palm flat against Celeste's shoulder, stopping her cold. The force was precise. Unyielding.

Microphones thrust into her face.

"Ms. Beaumont, is it true you were with Harrison Finch last night?"

"Were you aware he's a married man?"

"Is this why your engagement to Preston Vance ended?"

Aurelia said nothing. She swept her gaze across the pack of reporters with the cold composure of someone who had long stopped caring what people thought. The silence stretched, and one by one the shouted questions faltered, thinned, and died.

A faint smirk touched the corner of her mouth.

Then she took a deliberate step sideways.

The reporters craned their necks. They had expected rumpled sheets and a half-dressed man. Instead they saw Hart—tall and silent, standing in the shadows, suit pressed, face unreadable.

The smile on Celeste's face froze. "Where… where is Mr. Finch?"

Aurelia lifted her hand and snapped her fingers.

The sound cut through the murmuring crowd. Hart disappeared into the bathroom and reemerged a beat later, dragging Finch out by the collar of his thousand-dollar suit. Finch tumbled onto the hallway carpet in a pathetic heap, the tie still stuffed in his mouth, his eyes wide with terror.

A collective gasp swept through the crowd. Every camera swiveled toward him.

Celeste stumbled backward, the color draining from her face.

"Is this the surprise you had planned for me?" Aurelia's voice was soft as a blade sliding across skin.

"No! I—I don't know what this is!" Celeste shook her head frantically, tears springing to her eyes right on cue. "I was just worried about you!"

Aurelia didn't bother watching the performance. She was already tired of the game.

She turned and walked back into the room. Hart moved to her side, his gaze sweeping over the reporters—silent, cold, carrying a threat that required no words. They lowered their cameras. They stepped back.

She slammed the door shut.

The heavy thud echoed down the hallway. Outside, the noise rose one last time—voices, footsteps, the scrape of someone stumbling backward—and then fell away, swallowed by the thick wood. She had shut them out. Every last one of them. The vultures who had come to watch her fall, the sister who had led them to her door, all of it sealed on the other side.

Inside the room, silence gathered like deep water.

And it was absolute.