THE HEIRESS BEHIND THE MADNESS
To the world, Wren Ashford is a fallen golden girl.Once a brilliant corporate heiress destined to inherit one of Britain’s most powerful dynasties, she is now the unstable wife hidden away in her husband’s isolated Cotswolds estate. Julian Vance claims he is protecting her, while her younger sister, Lyra, plays the devoted sister. Together, they have convinced everyone that Wren has lost her mind.But Wren isn’t crazy.Six months ago, she discovered Julian had been secretly drugging her. Instead of confronting him, she switched her medication for harmless placebos and began pretending the drugs were still affecting her. While everyone watched the “mad heiress,” Wren quietly watched them back.Then Julian brings in Dr. Kaelen Thorne-Vane, a brilliant psychiatrist meant to keep Wren under control. Instead, Kael is the first person to realize her madness is an act. Rather than expose her, he secretly helps her regain access to the outside world.Their alliance soon becomes a dangerous attraction one Wren decides to use against Julian. As his jealousy grows, she exploits his mistakes to dismantle the empire he built by exploiting her.But Kael has secrets of his own. His father was destroyed by the Ashford family, and Kael came to Ashford Manor seeking revenge. Wren was never meant to be part of it.Then she discovers Julian and Lyra were never the real masterminds.Someone much closer has been pulling the strings all along.Now Wren must decide whether Kael is her greatest ally or simply another enemy wearing a beautiful disguise.
Baca
Chapter: Chapter 63: The Trap ClosesKaelI read my own name on that glowing screen and felt the floor go out from under me.Wren hadn't moved. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hair loose and her hands in her lap, looking at me the way you look at a door you've been told is locked. I'd seen that look once before, on the night she'd first asked me for the truth. I had given it to her then, and it had nearly cost me everything."Wren." My voice came out scraped raw. "That isn't mine.""I know.""I signed three blank pages. I told you—""I know what you told me." She stood. She crossed the carpet in her bare feet and stopped so close I could smell lavender and sleep. "Oswin says two doctors signed. Pryce and you. And I asked myself, in the ten seconds before you came through that door, whether I believed him or whether I believed the man who stood on a balcony for five minutes because he was afraid to climb over to me.""And?""And I'd rather be wrong about you, Kael. I told you that already. I meant it."I couldn't
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 62: The Secret SignalWrenThe tea smelled wrong.Chamomile on top, sweet and ordinary. But underneath it, faint as a bruise, something chemical and bitter that crawled to the back of my tongue before I'd even lifted the cup. I knew that smell. I had spent six months teaching my body to recognise it."Drink up, darling," Lyra said.She sat on the edge of my bed with her ankles crossed, hands folded in her lap like a girl in a Sunday school photograph. The tray balanced on my knees. My phone, the cheap hidden one Kael had smuggled in, lay under the pillow, and it had been silent for four minutes. I'd sent my question and heard nothing back, and every second of that nothing pressed on my ribs.I rocked. I hummed. I let my eyes slide off her face and settle on the cup."You always drank first," I said, in the soft, wandering voice I'd built for her. "When we were small. You said if it was poisoned, you'd rather go first."Lyra's smile held. Barely. "Did I?""You were seven. You were so brave." I lifted the cu
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 61: Passing Beatrix's TrialKaelI set the cup down very slowly, because if I didn't, it would have rattled.Beatrix watched me do it. She had the patience of a woman who'd spent sixty years waiting for other people to blink first. The clock ticked. A lily in the vase by the window dropped one white petal onto the polished wood."You're not going to deny it," she said."Would it change anything?""No.""Then no." I leaned back in my father's chair and made myself look bored. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. "Thorne-Vane is on my certificates. I assumed Julian's people had read them. I assumed you had, too.""I didn't hire you, Doctor. Julian did, because a bored fool signs what he's handed." Her mouth thinned. "I've spent the last month reading your life instead. Hampstead. The scholarship. The little flat above the chemist where your mother died of her grief. It took me longer than it should have, to put the eyes with the name."My mother's name hung in the room like smoke. I didn't let it touch my fa
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 60: Whispers of the PastKaelBlue light slid across the ceiling, and I stepped in front of Wren before I'd decided to."Julian." I kept my voice level. "Whatever you think that photograph proves, it won't get a woman committed in this country. A section needs two doctors and a reason. I'm one doctor. I'm not signing.""Then Dr. Pryce will." Julian stood, smoothing his jacket with hands that wouldn't stay still. "He's in the lobby with two paramedics. He doesn't ask questions. That's why I pay him."Behind me, Wren rocked and hummed. I felt every note of it through my spine. If she broke the act now, we were finished. If she didn't, they'd carry her down eleven floors in a restraint sheet, and I would have to watch."Then he can explain to the tribunal why he certified a patient he's never examined," I said. "At two in the morning. On the strength of an anonymous photograph. I'll make sure they ask."Julian stared at me. For one second I saw the scared boy under all that polish, and I almost pitied him.His p
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 59: The Jealous HusbandWrenI heard everything.That was the cruelty of those little silver studs. I sat cross-legged on my bed with the receiver pressed into my ear and the tablet glowing in my lap, eleven floors above Mayfair, and every word from the corner table at Aldermere came to me as clearly as if I stood beside it. I held the door. The scrape of a chair. A stranger's cane tapping away across the floorboards. Then Reeve's voice, warm as brandy: Dr. Vane. How wonderful.My nails went into my palms. I wanted to scream Kael's name into the dark. I couldn't, so I listened to him breathe."Ah, there he is!" Julian's laugh bounced off the walls, too bright and too late. "Vane! We'd quite given you up. Come, sit.""Mr. Vance." Kael's voice was low, steady, perfect. If I hadn't known him, I'd have thought he'd never been afraid in his life. "I didn't want to intrude.""Intrude? Nonsense."The chair across from Julian was empty again. I could hear it in the silence around the words, the long-coated man gone
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 58: A Night at the Elite ClubKaelI had never held my breath for so long in my life.Behind the curtain, pressed against the cold glass of the balcony door, I watched a thread of violet light crawl across Wren's carpet and stop an inch from her bare toes. Lyra stood in the doorway with a tea tray in one hand and the black light in the other, smiling like a girl bringing soup to a sick friend."You're up," Lyra said softly. "Poor darling. Did the voices wake you?"Wren didn't answer. She rocked in the chair, humming that broken lullaby, her hair hanging over her face. I knew her well enough by now to see what it cost her. Her knuckles had gone white on the armrest."Drink your tea, Wren.""It's purple," Wren whispered.Lyra's smile flickered. "What is?""Everything. The floor. Your hands." Wren lifted her head, and her eyes were enormous and unfocused, a child's eyes, a frightened child's. "It's crawling up your arms, Lyra. Why is it crawling?"Lyra looked down.The dye she'd meant for Wren's cup had leaked from t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-27
Chapter: Chapter 63: Shoreline WarmthRayénI didn't take his hand.I looked at Osvaldo's thick, tired fingers, the same fingers that had once tied my shoes when I was four, and I felt Lautaro's weight dragging at my arms, his blood warm against my wrist in the cold. Then I did the only thing I could think of. I let go of the crossbeam.The tide took us. It was going out, slow and black, and it slid us along the pilings and out under the far edge of the pier, into the fog."Niña!" Osvaldo's voice cracked across the water. "Rayén!"The first shot came a heartbeat later. It splashed wide and left. The second was wider. I kicked with everything I had, one arm hooked under Lautaro's chin to keep his face up, and the dock lamp swung toward us, and I waited for the bullet that would finish it.It never came.The lantern went out. I heard a rifle butt hit wood, and Osvaldo's voice roared over the harbor, hoarse and furious."Gone! The sea took them! Hold your fire, you fools, you can't hit a ghost!"I didn't understand. I still
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-30
Chapter: Chapter 62: Trapped on DeckRayén"I signed it."Three words. He said them like a man setting down something he had carried up a mountain.The paper shook in my hand. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to put my face in his chest and scream. Mostly I wanted him to say something else, anything, a lie even, so that I could stop feeling the floor tilt under me in a way that had nothing to do with the ship."Not for the reason that says," Lautaro said, low and fast. "Your father put the pen in my hand, Rayén. I was twenty-three, and he was dying, and I thought I was..."The alarm went off.It was a siren, a flat, howling shriek that came up through the deck plates and rattled my teeth. Red light flooded the cabin in slow pulses. Mateo yelped and slid off the cot."They know we're out," he gasped. "The shaft. Somebody found the open grate.""Later." Lautaro grabbed my wrist. "Tell me you'll hear all of it later. Please.""I don't know if I will.""Then hate me from the water. Move."I didn't have time to decide. I stuffed
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-30
Chapter: Chapter 61: The Captain's SafeRayénNobody moved while the speakers hissed.Lautaro stood with his gun pointed at the ceiling, as if he could shoot a voice. I watched his face, and it was like watching a house burn from the inside. The windows were still lit. Everything behind them was going."Eleven years," he said, very quietly. "I pulled you out of a burning car.""You did." Carlos's voice crackled through the hold, tired, almost gentle. "And I've hated that for eleven years. A man shouldn't owe his life to someone he's been told to betray. It makes the work harder.""Told by who?"Silence. Then, "The ship sails in twenty minutes. Beltrán wants you alive, patrón, and the señora too. That's more than I could promise anyone else. Please don't make me change my mind."The speakers clicked off. Mateo began to laugh, a thin, cracked sound that turned into a cough."I told you," he rasped. "I told Elías. I said it before they put me in the box. He's not a soldier, he's a leash. Beltrán holds the other end."I knelt a
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-30
Chapter: Chapter 60: The Silent BreachRayén"Take your time," Beltrán said in my ear. "I'm a patient man. You know that."The dot on my throat didn't waver. I could feel it as a faint pressure, a cold coin pressed to the hollow of my neck. I made myself breathe through my nose."What do you want?""For you to go back to your hotel. Take your husband and go. Let the ship leave." His voice softened, almost wounded. "I never wanted this, mija. I taught you chess so you'd never have to play for real.""You signed a paper with my name on it.""I signed many papers." A pause. "Walk away tonight and I'll make sure your mother's people never find you. That is the best offer you will ever get from anyone."I looked at Lautaro. His eyes were fixed on me, and in the red glow on his chest I saw him mouth three words. Don't. Say. Yes.I wasn't going to. But I needed time, and I needed something I couldn't name until I felt it brush my cheek, cold and wet and soft as a hand.Fog.It was rolling in off the water the way it does on that
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 59: Dockside ReconRayénI had the note crushed in my fist before the door finished opening.Lautaro was off the sofa in one movement, gun already up, shoulder against the wall. The dark hall swallowed everything but a thin blade of light and a man's shape."Patrón." Carlos's voice, low and out of breath. "Don't shoot. It's me."Nobody lowered anything."I gave you a keycard for a fire," Lautaro said. "Is the building on fire?""Something worse." Carlos stepped inside and shut the door softly behind him. He was still in the gala valet's uniform, sweat darkening the collar. "I followed Brandt's security out of the terminal. Twelve men, in two vans. They went to the far dock, number nine, and they're loading a ship. Tonight. Right now.""What kind of ship?""No name on the hull." His eyes flicked to me, and then away, too fast. "Someone painted it out."I slid the note into the pocket of my robe. My fingers felt like they belonged to somebody else. I should have said something. I should have pulled it out
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-29
Chapter: Chapter 58: Hotel Suite TensionRayénShe was ten steps away, and I couldn't make my legs work.The white dress moved through the crowd like it had been cut from moonlight. Her hair was shorter than I remembered, silver at the temples now, and she wore my grandmother's pearls. Every few seconds her left heel caught on the marble, a small drag, and each one landed in my chest like a fist on a door.Lautaro's hand tightened at my waist. "Rayén," he said, so softly it was barely breath. "Say the word. I'll put you over my shoulder and carry you out through the glass.""She'd like that.""What?""Us running." I swallowed. My mouth was full of sand. "She built this room for it."Five steps. Four. I could smell her perfume now, jasmine, and the smell took me apart. I was nine years old with a fever and her cool palm on my forehead, and I was twenty-three at a graveside, and I was here, and they were all the same woman.She stopped an arm's length away. Her eyes went over my face, my bare back, the ring on my finger. They
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-27
Masuk
