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Chapter 11: The Woman Who Watched
publish date:
2026-07-04 21:41:54
Latest chapter
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 12: What Eleanor Built
Jeremy's POVMy mother talked for forty minutes without stopping.I stood against the wall, and I let her, because sitting felt like a comfort I had not earned yet, and because I needed to hear every word of it without interrupting, without letting my own reaction swallow what she was saying before it fully landed.She told us about my father's investments. The property deals that had looked solid on paper and turned out to be leveraged against assets that were never actually owned. The loans he had taken in the company's name without board approval. The shortfall she had discovered fourteen months after his funeral when the auditors began asking questions she realized she had no clean answers to.She told us how she had gone to Graham Pierce, because Graham Pierce was the man her husband had trusted with everything, and she had no one else left.She told us what Graham advised."He didn't suggest using Madeline's credentials initially," she said, her voice flat now, stripped of its u
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 11: The Woman Who Watched
Madeline's POVEvery head in that room turned toward me.Eleanor's face went white, then immediately arranged itself back into composure, the way a pool of water closes over a stone. Jeremy stood frozen between the desk and the window, his expression caught somewhere between relief and dread. And behind me, in the hallway, Mrs. Pak, Eleanor's housekeeper of thirty years, stood with her hands folded in front of her and her eyes fixed on the floor."Mrs. Pak," I said quietly. "Would you like to come in."Eleanor pushed to her feet. "This is my home. You do not invite people into my study.""I think Mrs. Pak has been waiting a very long time to be invited somewhere," I said, and I stepped aside to let her through the doorway.She was a small woman, in her late sixties, with the kind of stillness that comes from decades of making yourself invisible in other people's spaces. She walked into the study and stood just inside the door, and she did not look at Eleanor once."It was you," Jeremy
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 10: What Eleanor Confessed
Jeremy's POVThe house on Birch Hill had not changed in thirty years. Same ivy on the brick, same circular drive, same housekeeper who had worked for my mother since before I was born and who let me in without a word, her eyes carrying the particular sympathy of someone who knew more than she was allowed to say.My mother was waiting in the study, a glass of sherry untouched on the table beside her, her posture rigid in the way it only got when she was bracing for something."Sit down, Jeremy.""I'd rather stand.""Sit down." It was not a request. I sat."I know about the wire transfers," I said, before she could control the direction of the conversation the way she controlled every conversation she had ever had with me. "I know Vivienne handled them personally. I know about the document with your handwriting on it. Burn the originals, mother. Did you really write that?"Her face did not change, which told me everything."Sit there and judge me if you want," she said. "But understand
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 9: The House on Birch Hill
Madeline's POVI did not tell Nathan about the document.I told myself it was strategy, that I needed to verify its authenticity before bringing it to anyone, and that moving carefully was the only way to ensure it could not be discredited later. Some of that was true. The rest of it was that I did not yet know whether I trusted him with it, and that not knowing scared me more than I wanted to admit.I brought it to Dara instead."It's real," she said, after running it through three different verification processes, comparing signatures, checking metadata, cross-referencing the letterhead against authenticated company documents from that period. "Or it's the best forgery I've ever seen, which would require resources neither of us has any reason to think the sender has.""So it's real.""It's real."I sat back in my chair, the weight of it settling into my chest. Five years of believing one woman's jealousy had destroyed me, and the truth was so much larger, so much colder. A financial
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 8: The Story They Printed
Jeremy's POVThe headline ran on a Thursday morning, on the front page of the city's largest business publication, the kind of placement that does not happen by accident.FORMER CONVICT TURNED CORPORATE SPY: INSIDE MADELINE CRAWFORD'S RETURN TO HAVENPORT.I read it standing in my kitchen with my coffee going cold, and by the third paragraph, my hands were shaking with an anger I had not felt in years. The article painted Madeline as a woman using Cross Industries as a vehicle for personal vendetta, citing anonymous sources within Whitman Corporation who claimed she had been seen accessing confidential information during her time as my assistant, information that conveniently lined up with the very accusations that had sent her to prison in the first place.It was a hit piece. A well constructed one, with just enough plausible detail to make readers who did not know better assume there was fire beneath the smoke.I found Vivienne in her office an hour later, the printed article in my h
IF YOU LOVE ME, DIE FOR ME Chapter 7: What Nathan Did Not Say
Madeline's POVI should have told Nathan about the meeting with Jeremy. I told myself I would, the next morning, over coffee, the way I told him everything.I did not get the chance, because Dara found me first, in the kitchen, with a face that meant she had not slept."We have a problem," she said."What kind?""The kind where I found out something I wish I hadn't." She sat down across from me, pushing her tablet across the island. "I was running a deeper background check on the Eleanor accounts last night. Standard work, cross-referencing every name connected to the holding companies. And I found something that doesn't have anything to do with Eleanor at all.""Dara.""Nathan's sister was engaged to Jeremy. Before you."I stared at her."Before me," I repeated.Eleven years ago. Camille Cross. The engagement lasted eight months. It ended right around the time Eleanor started making calls to a law firm that specializes in, and I'm quoting the firm's own marketing materials here, repu
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