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Chapter 12: RULES OF THE ENGAGEMENT
publish date:
2026-08-27 19:12:34
Latest chapter
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 15: MARCUS VANCE
Lyra, povI met Ethan's brother properly for the first time at a small, informal dinner at the estate, a deliberate departure from the carefully staged public performances that had defined every other moment of my new marriage, and one that left me, if I was honest, unexpectedly nervous.Marcus Vance looked like an easier version of his brother the same dark hair, the same height, but where Ethan's face had settled into the guarded stillness of a man who'd learned young to hide what he was feeling, Marcus's expression moved constantly, openly, warmth and mischief flickering across it in a way that made him instantly, disarmingly likeable."So you're the ghost," he said, by way of greeting, grinning as he pulled out a chair across from me at the estate's smaller, more intimate dining room. "I have to say, you're better looking than the tabloids gave you credit for. They usually don't manage to make dead people look this good.""Marcus," Ethan said, in a tone that carried a warning unde
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 14: DIANE WHITFIELD
Lyra pov:I found Diane the next morning in the small, unremarkable office she kept above a bakery three blocks from Ethan's penthouse the same office where she'd spent two years quietly managing the financial architecture of my resurrection, hidden in plain sight from a family that had never once thought to look for me somewhere so ordinary.She took one look at my face when I walked in and set down the folder she'd been reviewing."Someone was watching you last night," she said. It wasn't a question."How did you already know that?""Because you have the same look on your face you had the night you told me about the mechanic who serviced your car dying four months after your accident," Diane said, gesturing for me to sit across from her desk. "That specific kind of frightened that you're trying very hard not to show."I sat and told her everything the figure on the security feed, the photograph, the vanishing act through corridors only someone with detailed building knowledge could
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 13: THE ENGAGEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT
Lyra Pov:The formal engagement announcement was held at the Vance Global Holdings headquarters, in a ballroom rented out for exactly the kind of spectacle Ethan's PR team had spent a week engineering enough press to guarantee saturation coverage, enough of the city's old-money elite to guarantee the news would travel through every drawing room and boardroom by morning, and enough security, quiet and unobtrusive, to guarantee that whoever had watched Julian walk in and out of that conference room wouldn't have the chance to do it again undetected.I wore ivory. Ethan's stylist had suggested it, deliberately, a color close enough to bridal to make the announcement feel inevitable rather than performative, and standing in the mirror before we left, watching the fabric catch the light, I thought of the red dress I'd worn to Camille's gala weeks earlier and understood, with a strange, vertiginous clarity, how much distance I'd traveled in that short a time. The woman in red had been a gho
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 12: RULES OF THE ENGAGEMENT
Lyra, with Ethan pov:We drew up the real rules the next morning, over coffee in a sunlit kitchen that felt too domestic, too gentle, for the conversation we were about to have."If we're doing this," I said, "if we're actually going to live under the same roof and perform a marriage in front of the entire city, I need to know where the lines are. The real ones. Not the ones the lawyers wrote."Ethan set down his mug, giving me his full attention in the way he did that I was slowly, reluctantly, coming to associate specifically with him nobody else in my life had ever looked at me quite that fully, like the rest of the room simply stopped existing."Ask me anything," he said."Do you expect this to become real? At some point? Is that what last night was the beginning of you trying to make this into something it isn't?"Something shifted behind his eyes, careful and deliberate. "I expect," he said slowly, "to never lie to you about what I want. And what I want is for you to feel safe e
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 11: THE VANCE ESTATE
POV: Lyra**Neither of us slept in Ethan's building that night.He didn't say why, not directly, but I understood without being told. If someone inside his own headquarters had watched Julian walk in and out of that conference room, had known enough to send me three words the exact moment the conversation ended, then his building was no longer a place either of us could trust. By ten o'clock, a car was waiting in the underground garage, and by eleven, we were driving north out of the city in silence so thick I could feel it pressing against my ribs."Where are we going," I asked, somewhere around the second hour, when the skyline had shrunk to a smear of light behind us and the road had narrowed into something quieter, darker, lined with trees instead of buildings."Home," Ethan said. "The real one. Not the penthouse."I hadn't known there was a difference until the car turned through a set of iron gates and the headlights swept across a house that looked less like the residence of a
Marry Me To Destroy Them Chapter 10: JULIAN’S RETURN TO THE PICTURE
**POV: Lyra, with Julian*He came to me three days after the interview aired, which surprised me. I'd expected him to hide, to let his lawyers issue a careful statement while he avoided any direct contact until the shock of my resurrection had settled into something manageable. Instead, he showed up at Ethan's building on a Tuesday evening, alone, no assistant, no lawyer, standing in the lobby with an expression I hadn't seen on his face since the night he proposed to me raw, unguarded, terrified."Five minutes," he said to the security guard who moved to intercept him. "I just need five minutes."I could have refused. Ethan, watching the security feed from his office upstairs, texted me a single line “Say the word and he's gone” and part of me, the part that had spent two years hardening itself against exactly this kind of confrontation, wanted to say yes, wanted to let him be turned away without ever having to look at his face again.But I had questions only he could answer, and I h
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