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Chapter 10
publish date:
2026-07-10 03:18:07
Latest chapter
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 132
Eleanor's soup reached me at the gate, and my stomach turned over once, slowly, as if checking its own papers."It's the bones," I said.Caiden's hand found the small of my back. "It's always been the bones.""Don't.""I'm not saying anything.""You're saying it with your hand."He took it away. Put it back. We went in.They'd moved her into the front room for good, the bed turned to face the south window, the roses beyond it showing red knuckles at the tips of the canes. She lay propped on three pillows with a diary open on her knees, blue cloth, a gift from Catherine. She didn't look up from it."Hands," she said. "Dr. Osei's rule. I've a chest the size of a thimble and everyone I love brings the Underground in with them."We washed at the cloakroom basin. Cold tap, the green soap she bought in blocks. When we came back, a carrier bag of yellow wool sat on the visitor's chair, one ball escaping."Dana," Eleanor said, without being asked. "Came at nine. Said it was for no purpose wha
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 131
The leaflet said three minutes, and had been translated by someone who had never been frightened. *Allow the result to develop. Do not read after ten.*I sat on the closed lid of a hotel toilet at ten to six, knees pressed together, the stick face-down on the soap dish, and did the one thing I'd have told any customer at my counter not to do. I watched the door.Orange-blossom soap, in a paper wrapper like a boiled sweet. Cold tile under my bare feet. The towel rail ticked as it warmed. Through the wall Catherine's kettle began its tinny rattle, and some quiet part of me noted that she drank tea at this hour, and that three weeks ago I wouldn't have known.First-morning urine, the leaflet said. I'd have said it myself, kindly, to a stranger, with the little card.Three minutes. I turned the stick over.A pencil stroke on tracing paper. The second line was so faint I carried it to the window and tilted it against the grey, the way you'd check a banknote. It wasn't the light.I didn't c
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 130
"Fourteen," Caiden said, from the top of the stairs."I told you," said Catherine, in the doorway below.The girl on the hostel's front desk hadn't asked many questions. Nineteen, a ring through one eyebrow, a chewed biro. Caiden had said, "My mother lived here in 2001," and she'd said, "I've lived here since Tuesday," and waved us through.He hadn't asked Catherine to stay. In the garden on Monday he'd held out the green book and said, "Saturday. Come to York with me." She'd looked at the suitcase for forty seconds. Then she'd carried it back up the studio steps herself.The stairwell smelled of wet plaster, floor polish, somebody's toast. A skylight dripped onto the fourth tread. Caiden sat down on the top step with the sketchbook on his knee. I climbed after him and took the step two below, level with his shoes.He drew. Graphite, a small dry scratch. He bit the inside of his cheek, the way he did when a line wouldn't behave. Fourteen treads seen from the top, falling away into a s
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 129
"Ask me," Caiden said.Past midnight, Sunday. He sat on the bedroom carpet with his back against the mattress and his knees drawn up, a man built like a doorway, folded into a corner. I'd carried the notebook in out of habit. I put it face down on the rug."Ask you what?""What you ask them."So I sat across from him, wool pile prickling under my palms, and used the sentence I'd used on forty strangers and one dying woman."Tell me about the last room that got it wrong.""The stairs."He'd been waiting three days to be asked. "Third from the bottom. A brass rod holds the runner down and it's loose on the left, so it clicks if you put weight there. I knew that. I stood in the dark for ten minutes with everything on my right foot." His eyes weren't on me. "From the third stair you can see the whole hall. Letterbox, coats, front door. The banister hides you. It's the best room in the house." His hand turned over on his knee. "I stood in it for twenty-five years.""What would the right ro
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 128
Thirty yards. That was the distance I settled on, somewhere between obeying him and not.He walked fast, hands in his pockets, past the allotments and a shuttered pub and an underpass that smelled of wet concrete and old chip fat. I stayed behind. He never looked back once, which meant he knew precisely where I was.The bakery sat on the corner before the station, window steamed white from inside, doughnuts in rows like a small sugared army. A bell rang over the door when he went in. Of course it did.He paid with a note and left the change. The woman behind the counter handed over a paper bag and he held it a second longer than the weight justified.Then he sat on the low wall outside and opened it, and the smell reached me across the pavement: hot oil, burnt sugar, cheap jam. It went straight through my stomach."Thirty yards," he said, not looking up. "I counted.""You said don't follow.""I said don't follow *me*." He bit into a doughnut. Jam welled out, orange-gold, and ran over
Married to the Wrong Billionaire Chapter 127
"You did ask," Eleanor said. "I said yes. Then a girl sat on my floor with a notebook, and I heard what I'd been doing to every one of you for fifty years."Catherine's hands pressed flatter against the cloth.Eleanor turned her chair a quarter-turn, soup forgotten, until she faced her grandson across the corner of the table. "Caiden. I'm asking, not telling. You may say no. I'll take it with me, which is convenient, since I'm going."Nobody laughed. Steam still lifted from five bowls, tomato and garlic and the something underneath. When Victor breathed, Arthur's jacket gave off cedar.Caiden looked at me instead of her."You know.""Since Monday.""And you waited.""You told me not to be gentle." My voice came out steadier than my knee under his hand. "I didn't know another way to wait."He held that a moment. Then, to Victor, without turning his head: "Do you want me to know?""Yes.""Say it," Caiden told his grandmother.She said it the way she'd set down plates."April, 2001. A Tu
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