Librairie
Rechercher
Accueil / Romance / Bred for Betrayal / Chapter 24

Share

Chapter 24

Auteur: Josh OA
last update Date de publication: 2026-03-26 18:12:06

POV: Nora

The new apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with two separate exits, a doorman who worked twenty-four hours, and a camera covering every corridor. Elias had it ready within three hours of leaving the last place, which told me he'd had it prepared before the situation required it.

That was the first thing I filed away.

The second was the man he posted outside. Not obviously, not in a uniform. Just someone who was always in the lobby when I came and went, reading a newspa
Continuez à lire ce livre gratuitement
Scanner le code pour télécharger l'application
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Chapitre verrouillé

Latest chapter

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 79: The Letter

    POV: Nora Roland's call lasted forty minutes. What he told me about Elias's funding required two days of sitting with it before I could hold it without it shifting shape every time I tried to look at it directly. It was not what I had been told. It was not what Elias had believed either, which was the part that complicated everything. I put it aside after those two days because I had learned over the past year that some information needed a specific moment to be acted on and that moment had not arrived yet. Marcus's letter came on a Thursday. It had been processed through the facility the same way all his letters were, stamped and handled, the envelope a little worn by the time it reached me. I had been receiving letters from him every six weeks or so since the sentencing, always thoughtful, always asking nothing, and I had gotten used to the particular feeling of seeing his handwriting on an envelope. Not comfortable exactly. Familiar. This one was different from the first line.

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 78: One Year

    POV: Nora The design firm was called Ashford Studio. Sera had suggested keeping my father's name in it and I had resisted for about a week before understanding that she was right. Not as a memorial, not as sentiment, but because the name was mine too and I had spent long enough letting other people define what it meant. Putting it on a studio door was a small act of reclamation that turned out to feel significant every time I unlocked that door in the morning. We had four clients in the first month. Eleven by the third. By the time a year had passed from the custody determination we had a team of six and a waiting list and a reputation for the kind of work that came from someone who actually looked at what a client needed rather than what was easiest to produce. I was good at it. I had always been good at it. The difference now was that I knew I was good at it and built accordingly. Aria was two years and three months old. She had opinions about everything and expressed them wit

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 77: Primary

    POV: Nora I didn't respond to Roland Vance's message that night. I forwarded it to Marsh and to Chen and then I put my phone face down and sat with Aria until she fell asleep and then I sat in the quiet of her room for a while longer. Roland Vance reaching out directly meant something had shifted in his calculation. A man who had stepped out of a treeline on a private island and then disappeared for months did not text from an unknown number without a reason. Whatever the reason was, it could wait until after Friday. Friday came with the particular weight of days that contain things you cannot control. The determination hearing was scheduled for ten. I arrived at nine forty with Marsh's associate and we sat at our table and I kept my hands flat on the surface in front of me and looked at the room and let myself feel the full weight of what was about to happen without managing it away. Aria was with Sera. I had kissed her head before I left and she had grabbed my collar and held i

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 76: The Stand

    POV: Nora The unknown number called three times and left no message and I didn't answer any of them. I had learned over the past year that unknown numbers carrying urgent things eventually identified themselves, and unknown numbers that didn't were either wrong numbers or the kind of contact that required me to be in a safer position before engaging. I was standing in a courthouse corridor after three days of testimony and I was not in a safer position. I went home to Aria and the number didn't call again that night. Day four was Elias on the stand. His lawyers had advised against it. Marsh's associate had told me that, through the information channels that existed between legal teams in family proceedings, which were more porous than either side pretended. His lawyers had wanted to rest on the submitted evidence and the expert testimony they had lined up about his therapy progress and his financial stability and his legitimate business transformation. Elias had overruled them.

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 75

    POV: Nora Elias answered the judge's question himself. He said he had made a decision driven by obsession and had dressed it as protection and that both of those things were true simultaneously. He said he had been in therapy for four months working specifically on the pattern of control that had defined his relationships and his decision making for most of his adult life. He said he could not undo what he had done at the clinic but he could demonstrate through consistent action that it was not the whole of who he was. His lawyer looked like a man watching a chess piece move itself off the board. The judge listened without expression and made a note and said they would proceed with character witnesses the following morning. I drove home and sat with Aria on the floor of her room and read to her twice through the same book because she kept bringing it back and I let her and thought about Elias answering that question without his lawyer and what it had cost him and what it meant.

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 74

    POV: Nora Vincent's message had been about surveillance footage. Elias's lawyers had pulled security camera recordings from the co-parenting period showing me leaving the penthouse late on three separate occasions without informing Elias of my destination. Two of those occasions had been meetings with Marsh. One had been the bar where I had run into Marcus. His lawyers intended to present all three as evidence of deceptive behavior and poor judgment. That was the evidence. Not as damaging as I had feared. More damaging than I had hoped. The hearing started at nine on a Tuesday. Same courthouse, different courtroom, different judge. This one was a man in his fifties named Judge Calloway who had a reputation for patience and a low tolerance for theatrics, which Marsh's associate had said was good for us because Elias's legal team had a reputation for exactly that. Elias was at the respondent's table with two lawyers I hadn't seen before. He was in a dark suit and his face was the

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 27

    POV: Nora I sat with what she'd said about Elias for a long moment. Twice as a witness. Once as a suspect. I didn't let it show on my face because I had been practicing not letting things show on my face for months and I was getting competent at it. But underneath the practiced neutrality I was

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 31

    POV: Nora I found out about the PI on a Wednesday. Elias told me over the kitchen table with the same tone he used for everything operational, level and direct, no softening around the edges. He'd identified the tail three days earlier, a man who had been appearing in the same radius as my moveme

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 13

    POV: Nora He talked for forty minutes straight. I didn't interrupt. I sat with my hands wrapped around a cup of tea someone had brought without me asking, and I listened to Elias lay out twelve years of my father's life in a way that made me feel like I'd never known him at all. The network had

  • Bred for Betrayal    Chapter 11

    POV: Nora Kellerman's was closed. Of course it was. The lights were off, chairs flipped onto tables, a hand-written sign on the door that said BACK FRIDAY. I stood on the sidewalk staring at it, rain soaking through my jacket, the photograph still folded in my fist. I heard footsteps behind m

Plus de chapitres

Vous vous intéresseriez aussi à

Découvrez et lisez de bons romans gratuitement
Accédez gratuitement à un grand nombre de bons romans sur GoodNovel. Téléchargez les livres que vous aimez et lisez où et quand vous voulez.
Lisez des livres gratuitement sur l'APP
Scanner le code pour lire sur l'application
DMCA.com Protection Status