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Chapter 192: What Cassandra Never Said
publish date:
2026-09-26 08:00:00Xena.
Cassandra answered her own door, dressed as if she were expecting company for tea rather than whatever had put that thinness into her voice on the phone.
"You came quickly," she said, stepping back to let me in.
"You sounded like it mattered."
"It does." She led me into the small sitting room I'd only seen once before, the one with the chair angled toward the window instead of the television, and gestured for me to sit across from her. "I didn't
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Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 192: What Cassandra Never Said
Xena.Cassandra answered her own door, dressed as if she were expecting company for tea rather than whatever had put that thinness into her voice on the phone."You came quickly," she said, stepping back to let me in."You sounded like it mattered.""It does." She led me into the small sitting room I'd only seen once before, the one with the chair angled toward the window instead of the television, and gestured for me to sit across from her. "I didn't want you hearing this secondhand, the way I imagine most things eventually reach people in this family."I sat, my coat still on, some instinct telling me not to get comfortable yet. The room smelled faintly of lavender and old paper, the same smell I remembered from the vault, though this space held nothing more dangerous than a stack of unopened mail and a cardigan folded over the arm of her chair.Cassandra lowered herself into the chair across from me slowly, the way people mo
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 191: The Letter I Almost Didn't Write
Xena.The other side of the bed was empty when I woke, sheets still warm where he'd been.Went to meet Marcus's brother. Didn't want to wake you. Coffee's still hot if you get to it before ten.I read the text twice, smiling at the specificity of it, the coffee deadline, the fact that he'd already named the brother by name instead of just calling him "the contractor" the way he had last night. He'd actually gone. Not talked about going. Gone.I lay there another minute looking at the ceiling, at the crack running along one corner we still hadn't gotten around to patching. My shoulders had loosened sometime overnight without my noticing, the tightness I'd been carrying since the driveway finally letting go on its own.I made myself coffee before it went cold, sat at the folding table alone for the first time in days, and let myself have five full minutes of nothing before I picked up the phone and called Okafor."You're up early," he said, papers rustling somewhere on his end."I need
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 190: The Wall We Painted Badly
Xena.The door was unlocked. I let myself in quietly, like the house might still be sleeping even though every light in it was on.Dante turned from the kitchen wall before I'd said a word, trowel still in his hand, a streak of joint compound dried along his forearm. He looked like a man who'd rehearsed a dozen different things to say and abandoned every one of them somewhere around minute forty."You're back," he said, careful, like the words themselves might set something off."I'm back."He wiped his free hand on his jeans and just stood there, waiting to see which way this would go before he risked crossing the room toward me.Neither of us moved for a moment. The kitchen smelled like drywall dust and the cheap coffee he'd clearly made and forgotten to drink. Somewhere under all of it, faintly, sat the wet-plaster smell of the wall he'd spent the night closing up."I shouldn't have said no for you," Dante said, before I could decide how to start. "Not the way I did it. Not in fron
Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 189: The Wall He Rebuilt
Xena.I pulled into the gravel lot of a diner I'd never been to before, somewhere past the county line, with no memory of deciding to stop. The sign out front buzzed and flickered on one corner, half its letters burned out, and through the window I could see a waitress moving between empty booths with a coffee pot she didn't seem to be serving anyone.The engine ticked as it cooled. My hands ached from how long I'd been gripping the wheel, and when I finally let go of it, they trembled in my lap like they belonged to someone else.I sat there for a long minute just breathing, watching my own reflection in the dark windshield glass, not recognizing the shape of my own face in it.I picked up my phone.Not words. A photograph.The kitchen wall, the one we'd sledgehammered apart together in chapter one of this house, now closed up again. Drywall hung clean and taped, corners mudded smooth, ready for paint. No caption at first, jus
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 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
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Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle Chapter 5: I Had Married A Dead Man
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