แชร์

Chapter 50: Before

ผู้เขียน: Anthony Wyles
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-09-23 18:25:20

Five years ago, Lydia Moore was twenty-six years old, engaged to Julian Cross, and terrified almost every day of being found out.

Not for anything she'd done. Not yet. Just for what she was — a girl from a small town two hours outside the city, raised by a mother who cleaned houses for families like the one she was about to marry into, sitting in rooms full of people who could tell, somehow, without her saying a word, that she didn't belong there the way they did.

She learned to hide it well. S
อ่านหนังสือเล่มนี้ต่อได้ฟรี
สแกนรหัสเพื่อดาวน์โหลดแอป
บทที่ถูกล็อก

บทล่าสุด

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 67: What Elaine Knew

    Elaine had stopped going to Westbrook the day she noticed the car.It wasn't obvious. Nothing about it should have caught her attention at all, parked two houses down from the leased property, empty most of the time, occupied just often enough to matter. She'd spent six years training herself to notice precisely this kind of nothing, and the habit hadn't softened with time, no matter how quiet her life had become.She drove past it twice before she let herself believe what she already knew.Someone was watching the building.Which meant someone had finally started looking in the right direction.---She sat in her kitchen that evening with the lights on a timer, programmed years ago for exactly this kind of situation, and packed a single bag with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had done this before and hoped never to need the skill again.She didn't go far. A rented room above a bakery forty minutes from her house, paid in cash, under a name that had never once touched anything co

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 66: Dead Ends

    Julian spent two days chasing Marsh through every public record he could legally access, and came away with nothing that held together.There were seventeen Marshes within a hundred miles of the city. Three were the right age. Two had verified alibis the moment he looked closer, lives too documented, too ordinary, too thoroughly accounted for to be a woman who'd spent six years disappearing on purpose. The third had died four years ago, a death certificate on file that Julian stared at for a long time before accepting it meant nothing, just an unfortunate coincidence of a common name."Nothing," he told Daniel, dropping into the chair across from him at the warehouse-turned-office. "Not one of them fits. If she's still using Marsh, she's buried it somewhere I can't reach without more than a search engine and a bit of luck.""So she changed it again.""Probably. If she was careful enough to vanish from Wright Capital without a trace, she was careful enough to make sure Marsh wouldn't l

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 65: A Name, Not Yet an Answer

    Julian held the folder like it might fall apart in his hands, though it was only paper, only ink faded to a ghost of itself."Read it," Daniel said. "Out loud. I want to hear it, not just see it."Julian tilted it toward the weak overhead light."E. Marsh," he read slowly. "Internal audit. Six-month contract. No forwarding address on file. No photograph."Daniel's shoulders dropped slightly, the tension easing out of him in a way that still left room for more."No photo," he repeated. "Of course there isn't.""It fits the job description you'd expect," Julian said, scanning further down the page. "Access to financial records across departments. Limited direct contact with senior staff. Exactly the kind of position where someone could move through the building for months without anyone remembering her face clearly.""That's not proof.""I know.""It's not even a first name. E could be anything.""I know that too." Julian set the folder down carefully, like something that might still di

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 64: What the Florist Knew

    What Lydia hadn't known, sitting in that back room with Daniel, was that he hadn't been guessing when he showed up that day.He'd arranged it with Odalys three days earlier, on his second visit to the shop, back when he'd slipped the florist something far more useful than a card."If a woman comes in asking about the Wright wedding centerpieces," he'd told her, folding a sum of money into her hand that made her eyebrows lift, "and she mentions the lilies specifically, call me. Any hour. I'll come the same day."Odalys had studied him carefully, the way people in her position learned to study men who paid too much for a favor that sounded simple."Is she in some kind of trouble?""I'd rather not say more than I have to. For her sake, not mine.""That's not really an answer.""No," Daniel admitted. "It isn't."Odalys had looked at him a moment longer, then pocketed the money."I lost someone once to a man who controlled every door she walked through," she said quietly. "I'll make the ca

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 63: A New Way

    Daniel sat with the problem for two full days before an answer came to him, and when it did, it arrived in a shape he didn't particularly like.He needed a way to reach Lydia that didn't run through a phone, a shop, or anything with a signal that could be traced. Something old enough that nobody watching for calls or messages would think to look for it.He thought of his grandmother, who used to write to his mother every week of her life, long after phones had made the habit unnecessary, simply because she trusted paper in a way she never trusted a line that someone else owned.A letter.Nobody traced letters anymore. Nobody expected them.---The hard part wasn't writing it. The hard part was getting it to her without going anywhere near the house, where Evan's people would notice a stranger approaching before the car had even stopped.He thought it through carefully, turning it over the way he turned over everything these days, looking for the crack nobody would think to watch.The

  • Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy    Chapter 62: Closing In

    Evan's lawyer laid the papers out on the desk like a man presenting a gift."Three of the shell companies tied to Julian Cross's holdings have a shared weakness," he said. "A clause buried in the original incorporation filings. If we challenge ownership through the right court, we can freeze access to two of his accounts within a week. Maybe less."Evan picked up the top sheet, scanning it slowly."Legally sound?""Legally aggressive. There's a difference. It'll hold up long enough to do damage, even if he eventually fights it off.""That's all I need." Evan set the paper down. "I don't need to win the war. I need him distracted long enough that he stops chasing mine."The lawyer hesitated. "There's a risk. If he realizes what we're doing before the freeze goes through, he could move the funds first.""Then don't give him the chance to realize anything." Evan's voice was flat, certain. "File it quietly. No warning letters. No courtesy calls. I want him finding out from his bank, not f

บทอื่นๆ
สำรวจและอ่านนวนิยายดีๆ ได้ฟรี
เข้าถึงนวนิยายดีๆ จำนวนมากได้ฟรีบนแอป GoodNovel ดาวน์โหลดหนังสือที่คุณชอบและอ่านได้ทุกที่ทุกเวลา
อ่านหนังสือฟรีบนแอป
สแกนรหัสเพื่ออ่านบนแอป
DMCA.com Protection Status