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Chapter 25

Author: Ray Olly
last update publish date: 2026-02-12 20:42:56

ELARA'S POV

I didn't sleep after Damien left. Just sat on my couch replaying the conversation, wondering if I'd been too harsh.

Maya came over at seven in the morning with coffee and bagels.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thanks."

"What happened? The show was perfect and then you disappeared."

I told her everything. Victoria's attempted murder, Damien hiding it, our fight.

"Jesus," Maya said. "That woman is actually insane."

"And Damien was protecting her. Again."

"Was he? Or was he just scare
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  • Chasing His Divorced Wife   Chapter 69

    ELARA'S POVThe fourteenth day was Korčula. A walled town on an island that looked like someone had designed it to be exactly what it was, stone streets, a harbor, medieval architecture that had survived because the island was small enough to be overlooked by history's more destructive moments.We arrived on the morning ferry and had no plan beyond walking.The town was compact enough to cover on foot and we did, the old streets narrow and cool even in the May heat, the stone worn smooth in the middle where centuries of people had walked the same path. Elara stopped at a small gallery near the town gate, the kind of place that existed to sell paintings to tourists but occasionally had something real among the landscape reproductions.She found something real.A small watercolor, eight inches by six, coastal rocks and water, unsigned. The price was written in pencil on a small sticker and was cheap enough to be suspicious.She held it for a long time."Buy it," I said."I don't know wh

  • Chasing His Divorced Wife   Chapter 68

    DAMIEN'S POVMay fifteenth we flew to Split.The flight was long and Elara slept for most of it with her head on my shoulder and a novel face down in her lap that she'd been reading in the airport and abandoned within twenty minutes of takeoff. I read through a Cross Industries report that James had sent and then put it away and watched the clouds below and let my mind go quiet.We landed in the early morning, local time, the Croatian coast visible from the descent. Blue that didn't look real until you were in it.The first island was Hvar.We took a ferry from Split harbor, forty minutes, the water already warm for May in a way the Adriatic apparently just was. Elara stood at the ferry railing the whole crossing with the wind doing things to her hair that she didn't bother correcting.The rental house was small, up a narrow stone street, with a terrace that looked directly at the harbor. No hotel lobby, no concierge, no one to manage anything. Just a key and a door and the view.She

  • Chasing His Divorced Wife   Chapter 67

    ELARA'S POVMarch arrived and with it the news that Marcus Webb had started a new company.Damien read about it in the financial press on a Tuesday morning over coffee and mentioned it the way you mention something that has become genuinely irrelevant."Consulting firm," he said. "Focused on distressed assets.""Appropriate.""My thought exactly."He put his phone down and finished his coffee and that was the entirety of the Marcus Webb conversation. Two years ago that name would have required management, strategy, contingency planning. Now it was two sentences over breakfast.That was its own kind of progress.I booked Croatia the same week. Thirteen days in May, starting on the fifteenth. The islands south of Split that we hadn't reached last time, smaller and less visited, the kind of places that required ferries and some tolerance for uncertainty.Damien looked at the itinerary I sent him and said nothing about the ferry portions.Progress there too.The Henry Chen catalogue had i

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    ELARA'S POVThe gallery showing was in two weeks and I was panicking. Not about the art—that was ready. About whether to invite Damien publicly or keep our relationship separate from my professional life.Maya found me stress-organizing frames at midnight."You're spiraling.""I'm fine.""You alpha

    last updateLast Updated : 2026-03-21
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    ELARA'S POVThe dinner with Maya and Sofia was scheduled for Saturday. I was more nervous than I should have been."Why are you so anxious?" Damien asked as we drove to the restaurant. "I've already survived Maya once.""That was when we were just figuring things out. Now we're actually together. T

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  • Chasing His Divorced Wife   Chapter 20

    DAMIEN'S POVThe legal team worked all weekend. By Monday morning, they had an injunction blocking the interview from airing. Victoria's lawyer called, furious."This is censorship. My client has a right to speak.""Your client is making defamatory claims," our lawyer responded. "If the interview a

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