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Chapter 179: A Man Who Vanished On Purpose
publish date:
2026-09-17 19:21:39
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Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 188: What He Said That Couldn't Be Unsaid
Xena.The front door had barely closed behind Foster before I turned on Dante. Through the front window I watched his sedan pull away from the curb, slow at first, then faster, like he'd been holding himself back from running the whole walk to it."You don't get to say no for me," I said, my voice shaking with the effort of keeping it level. "Not to him. Not to anyone.""I wasn't saying no for you." Dante stood on the other side of the folding table, arms crossed, some of the earlier steadiness cracking at the edges now that we were alone. "I was saying no to watching you agree to something before you'd even weighed what it would cost.""You don't know what it would cost. You weren't in that vault with Cassandra. You didn't sit in a courtroom and watch Herald take a name I handed him because nobody else would. You don't get to decide what I owe that family.""I'm not deciding what you owe them." His voice climbed, not shouting, but cl
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 187: What Foster Wants
Xena.Nobody moved for a long moment. Foster stood at the edge of the driveway with his hands still shaking at his sides. Behind me, Dante's breathing had gone slow and deliberate, each one drawn out longer than it needed to be."You should leave," Dante said, stepping half in front of me without quite making it look deliberate."I know how this looks." Foster's hands were still shaking, and he made no move to hide it. "I'm not here to cause trouble. I just needed to say something in person instead of hiding behind a phone I bought so nobody could trace it back to me.""So the texts were you.""Both of them." He said it plainly, like the confession cost him less than the drive over had. "The first one from my own number, and when you didn't respond the way I'd hoped, I bought a second phone and sent it again, thinking maybe you'd answer a stranger before you'd answer me."I felt Dante's hand tighten slightly where it rested against my back, a silent question I didn't have a fast answe
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 186: The Second Name
Xena.The number rang four times and dropped into a generic voicemail, no name attached, a robotic woman's voice reciting digits back to me like they belonged to no one at all."Nothing," I said, setting my phone face down on the kitchen counter, the one wall in the house that still had a working counter. "Straight to a machine."Dante looked up from the coffee he was making, two mugs instead of one, which had become its own quiet apology since last night."Try the other number," he said, watching me over the rim of his mug."I already did. Same thing."He slid a mug across to me, close enough that our fingers brushed on the handle, and neither of us made anything of it out loud."We could go see Okafor," he said, the offer coming out careful, like he was still testing whether it would be welcome. "Together. Before you spend another day chasing ghosts by yourself."I looked at him for a second, surprised by the offer more than I probably should have been."You want to come.""I want t
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 185: A Message Being Relayed
Xena.Tell him thank you.I read it four more times before I set the phone down on the plastic sheeting, like putting distance between us would make it mean something different."Who was that?" Dante asked, not looking up from the outlet he was rewiring, wire strippers balanced between his teeth for a second before he set them down."I don't know." I picked the phone back up despite myself. "Unknown number. Three words. Tell him thank you.""Tell who thank you?""That's the part I don't know either."He straightened, giving me his full attention now, the kind he saved for things that weren't actually about outlets or wiring."Delete it," he said, easy, like it cost him nothing. "Wrong number. People text strangers by accident all the time.""It's not a wrong number." I turned the screen toward him, like he could read something in it I couldn't. "Nobody texts a stranger 'tell him thank you.' That's a message for someone specific, sent to me on purpose."I ran through the short list of
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 184: What He Said To Adrian
Xena."Don't let him see you flinch."Okafor caught us on the courthouse steps before the doors opened, coffee in one hand and a folder wedged under his arm, already talking before he'd finished crossing the plaza."Cheng's read the motion twice," he said, weighing each word like it cost him something to hand over. "Twice is either very good or very bad, and I genuinely don't know which.""That's reassuring," Dante said, dry enough that it barely qualified as a joke."I don't do reassuring. I do accurate." Okafor looked past us at Adrian, who'd gone still in the way he did before anything hard, spine straight, jaw set. "You don't have to be in the room for this part.""I'm in the room," Adrian said, flat and final, closing the subject before it could open any further.Okafor nodded once, like that was the answer he'd expected and hadn't needed to hear out loud, and went in ahead of us to find our seats.Hannah was already inside, three rows back, having driven up separately after a sh
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 183: This Wall Has To Come Down
Xena."You're holding it wrong.""I'm holding it exactly how you told me to hold it."Dante set his own sledgehammer down against the exposed studs and crossed the room, sawdust caught in his hair, one sleeve of his shirt rolled higher than the other. He put his hands over mine instead of taking the tool away, adjusting my grip an inch lower on the handle."Choke up on it," he said, patience worn thin at the edges but still holding. "Swing with your hips, not your shoulders."I swung.The sledgehammer connected somewhere below where I'd aimed, and a chunk of plaster the size of a dinner plate came away, dust blooming out in a pale cloud that caught the light from the bare bulb overhead."There," Dante said, and there was real warmth in it, a kind of pride he didn't try to talk himself out of. "That's the swing."I stepped back and looked at what I'd done. It wasn't much. A hole the size of a fist in a wall that had sixty more years of plaster left to give.But it was mine. The house w
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 5: I Had Married A Dead Man
Xena.The ceiling in Dante's room was different from the one in the guest room.I noticed that first, which probably said something about the state of my brain. I stared at it and waited for regret to arrive.It didn't.What arrived instead was a very thorough physical awareness of every decision
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 4: Will You Satisfy Me?
Xena.The night air hit me the moment we stepped outside and I realized it was the first clean breath I'd taken in hours.Dante's car was already waiting. The long black car didn't need a logo to tell one it cost fortunes. A driver stood at the rear door without being summoned and I got in without
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 3: Where Do I Sign?
Xena.I have had some strange experiences in my lifetime.Being born illegitimate into a family that kept me like a footnote. Being sent to a wedding that wasn't mine with twenty minutes of notice. And spending three years married to a man who looked through me at dinner every night.But none of th
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 2: I Have A Deal For You
Xena. Was Hannah drunk?I stood there waiting for the punchline. April Fools was months away but maybe someone had lost track of the calendar. Maybe this was some elaborate Yale family bit that I hadn't been briefed on. Maybe —Adrian crossed the room to stand beside her."It's true." He turned to
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