Se connecterPartager
Chapter 76 - Protection or Deception?
Date de publication:
2026-08-05 06:08:29
Dernier chapitre
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 79 — The Door She Was Never Meant to Find
Julian's POV"She hasn't stopped asking since dinner."Weiss looked up from her tablet, unsurprised. "That's what a name does, Julian. It's not a door that closes gently once it's been opened.""I need it to close."The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them, and I watched her face register what I'd actually meant, the way a person registers a sound a half-second before they understand it was an alarm."Say that again," she said. "Slowly. So I'm certain I heard it correctly.""The Sydney lead. The surgical signature. I need it to have been a mistake."She set the tablet down. "It wasn't a mistake.""I know it wasn't a mistake. I'm asking you to make it look like one."The room went very quiet. Somewhere down the hall, faintly, I could hear Elara's footsteps — pacing, the particular restless rhythm of a woman with new information and nowhere yet to put it."You want me to tell a patient with a documented traumatic brain injury and memory loss that a legitimate diagnostic l
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 78 - A Scar Hiding the Truth
Elara's POV"You're doing the thing again."Dr. Weiss said it without looking up from the monitor, her English precise. "Frowning like you're trying to remember something. It won't work like that. I've told you this before.""You've told me a lot of things before. I don't remember most of them.""Fair." She smiled, and kept working. "Hold still. Two more minutes."I held still. The machine hummed around my head, a sound I'd learned to associate. Julian sat in the corner of the room, where he always sat during these appointments, close enough to be present, far enough to not crowd the doctor's work."Done," Dr. Weiss said, and the machine's hum wound down into silence. "Sit up slowly. There's always a moment where the room disagrees with you."The room disagreed with me. I sat with my eyes closed until it stopped."Well?" I said, once it had."Give me a few minutes to look properly. I don't like guessing out loud." She was already moving to her workstation, already pulling images onto
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 77 - Hope Has a New Destination
Ian's POV "You shouldn't be standing that long." "I've been sitting for eleven weeks, Danvers. I'll stand as long as I like." She didn't argue further, which I was starting to understand was her version of picking her battles. My kitchen table — Elara's kitchen table — had become a case room again, the same board Danvers had built for Claire now sharing wall space with a second one, newer, thinner, pinned with far less than the first had ever managed. "This is everything," Sullivan said, gesturing at it from his chair. He'd aged in the months I'd lost. Not dramatically. Just the particular tiredness that settles into a man who has spent a season hoping and finding nothing to justify it. "Eleven weeks. This is the entire case." I looked at it properly for the first time. A photograph of Elara from the day of the press conference, the last confirmed image anyone had. A map with a single red pin at the hospital, another at her house, a thin dotted line between them representing
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 76 - Protection or Deception?
Elara's POV"Anke."I still hadn't gotten used to turning toward it.Julian said it again, gentler this time, and I realized I'd been staring out the window instead of answering, the way I did most mornings now, watching a garden that wasn't mine slowly learn a new season without me."Sorry," I said. "What?""Nothing important. You looked far away.""I feel far away most of the time." I turned from the window. Three months now, or close to it — long enough that the staff no longer flinched when I forgot which door led to which room, long enough that Julian had stopped correcting me gently when I called the housekeeper by the wrong name and started simply telling me the right one without comment."Better today?" he asked."Better than yesterday. Worse than the day before that." I sat across from him at the breakfast table, the one with the view of the garden, the one he always chose. "Is that a real answer or does everyone just say that.""I don't know. I've never lost my memory.""Luc
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 75 - Awakening to an Unfamiliar World
Ian's POVWhite. Then a ceiling. Then a sound I didn't have a name for yet, rhythmic, patient, counting something I couldn't place."Mr. Vance?"A woman's voice. Not Elara's. I turned my head — it cost more than turning a head should cost — and found a nurse leaning over the rail, her hand already reaching for a call button."Where," I said. My voice came out wrong. Old, somehow. Unused."You're in the hospital. Sydney. You've been asleep a while." She said asleep carefully, like a word chosen to be gentler than the true one. "Do you know your name?""Ian Vance.""Good. Do you know what year it is?"I told her. She wrote something down, relief moving across her face in increments."Elara," I said, before she could ask another question. "Where is she?"The nurse's face did something I didn't like. "I'll get the doctor.""Where is she?""Mr. Vance—""Where is Elara Rhodes?"She left instead of answering, which told me more than any sentence could have, and I lay there with a body that d
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 74 - A Past Filled with Blood and Power
Julian's POV"I have a name."Klaus set a single sheet of paper on my desk instead of handing it to me, the way he did when he wanted me to reach for something rather than have it given.I didn't reach for it yet. "Say it.""Elara Rhodes." He watched my face for the reaction he clearly expected and didn't get, because the name meant nothing to me yet, which told him something too. "You don't know it.""Should I?""If you read business papers instead of only the parts about your own companies, yes." He tapped the sheet. "CEO. Spectra Minds Group. Sydney, mostly, though she's been all over the financial press the last two months — a fashion gala scandal, an ex-husband, a wedding she rode into on a horse with a gun. There's a video. It has forty million views.""A gun.""A toy gun. Bubbles. It's — you should just watch it."I didn't watch it. Not yet. I picked up the sheet instead, and there she was, a photograph from some boardroom or another, dressed the way a woman dresses when she's
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 2 - Shattered
Elara's POV The streetlight above me flickered, throwing broken shadows across the driveway as I stood there, gripping the divorce papers like they were the only thing keeping me from falling apart. My hands were shaking so badly the pages rustled in the night air. I don’t even remember the dri
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 1 - The Anniversary Gift
Elara's POV Where the fuck is he? I muttered to myself as I searched the Grand Hall for Ian, my diamond stilettos clicking sharply against the marble floor. Tonight was supposed to be special—our third anniversary and my twenty-fifth birthday. Ian had promised to make it a night I’d never forget
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 5 - The Game Begins
Elara's POV I followed Ian out of the fashion show and kept my distance, slipping behind a marble pillar in the corridor. My pulse was steady, trained to hide itself; my breath slow. From my hiding place I could hear him—low, flat—answering a call.“You need to hurry up with Camila,” his mother’s
Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn Chapter 4 - The Rules of Love and War
Elara's POV “What are you thinking about, Mum?” Noah’s small voice pulled me from my thoughts.“Nothing much, dear,” I said softly, smiling at him. “I was just remembering the day I gave birth to my lovely triplets. I love you, my children.”“Mum,” Emily said, her eyes sparkling with mischief, “we
Vous vous intéresseriez aussi à
The Day I Kissed An Older Man
Cher the Cherished1.0M VuesSir Ares, Goodnight!
Yan An1.1M VuesMr. Ford Is Jealous
Boat of Peaches776.8K VuesCold Showers
Symplyayisha840.8K VuesSEVEN MONTHS TO MAKE HIM BEG
Destiny 104 VuesHis Dark Covenant
EL20 VuesThe Girl They Betrayed
Ashi1912105 VuesSigned In Silence
Tessa Marlowe24 Vues
