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Chapter 10
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-08-08 07:13:57Audrey's POV
"Tell your husband what you know, and Reid Calloway dies first."
Those words were the last thing I heard before I disappeared.
I changed my name, my hair, the way I dressed.
I stopped answering calls from everyone I loved.
And most importantly, I stayed away from Reid.
For months, I had lived as Claire, convincing myself that staying away from my husband was the only way to keep him alive.
Until tonight.
I noticed the black SUV before I reached my apartment.
Parked across the street.
Engine running.
Lights off.
My steps slowed.
I had seen that vehicle before.
Not this exact SUV, perhaps, but the same kind. The same blacked-out windows. The same silent presence that had followed me from a distance whenever I thought I was finally safe.
Tonight, it was waiting outside my home.
I kept walking.
Don't look back.
I looked anyway.
The driver's face was hidden behind tinted glass.
My pulse jumped.
The engine growled.
I turned the corner.
The SUV followed.
My stomach dropped.
I walked faster.
So did the vehicle.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag.
They had found me.
A door opened behind me.
"Claire!"
I ran.
My heels slapped against the pavement as I cut through a narrow alley.
"Stop!"
A gunshot cracked through the night.
I screamed and ducked.
Another shot struck the wall beside me.
Ahead, an unfinished building stood like a dark skeleton against the night.
I pushed through the entrance and ran inside.
Concrete.
Dust.
Exposed wires.
Darkness.
I climbed the first flight of stairs, then crouched behind a half-built wall, pressing both hands over my mouth.
Footsteps entered the building.
"She's inside!"
"Search every floor!"
My entire body trembled.
Not again.
I had escaped them once.
I couldn't let them take me now.
Then I heard another set of footsteps.
Fast.
Heavy.
Someone running toward the building.
"Don't let him get away!"
My breath caught.
A shadow rushed through the entrance.
A man stumbled into the darkness, shirt torn, blood staining his sleeve.
I knew that walk.
That voice.
That presence.
Even after months apart, I could have recognized him anywhere.
Reid.
My husband.
The man I had abandoned to save his life.
He stopped near the staircase, breathing hard.
He glanced behind him, then toward the entrance.
He was being chased.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
A black SUV had followed him.
I could hear its engine somewhere outside before the sound suddenly disappeared.
Reid pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen, and swore.
"Damn it."
The men were getting closer.
He had nowhere to go.
Before I could think, I stepped out of hiding and grabbed his arm.
He spun around instantly, his hand catching my wrist.
"Who are you?"
The question shattered something inside me.
He was looking directly at me.
And he had no idea who I was.
"Quiet," I whispered. "They're coming."
His eyes narrowed.
"Who?"
I pulled him behind the wall just as the entrance filled with shadows.
Three men rushed inside.
One raised his gun.
"Find Reid Calloway."
My pulse spiked.
Reid looked at me, a question in his eyes.
I pressed one finger to my lips.
"Forget the woman," another man said. "Find Calloway first."
A third man checked the entrance.
"The SUV is waiting outside. He can't get far."
Reid's expression hardened.
They had been tracking him.
Just like they had tracked me.
Then one of the men spoke again.
"After Cam took the bait, Calloway came exactly where we expected."
Reid went completely still.
Cam.
His fingers curled into a fist.
"What did they do to Cam?" he whispered.
"I don't know."
"They took him."
I shook my head.
"Not necessarily."
His eyes snapped toward me.
"What does that mean?"
Before I could answer, a voice echoed through the building.
"Check the back. He may try to escape through the construction yard."
Reid stared at me.
"They knew I'd come."
I nodded.
"They wanted you to chase him."
His jaw tightened.
"Cam."
A terrible realization crossed his face.
"The crash..."
I didn't understand everything yet, but the pieces were beginning to fit.
Cam hadn't simply disappeared.
The chase.
The SUV.
The crash.
The men waiting for Reid.
It had all been connected.
Cam had been bait.
And Reid had walked straight into the trap.
A gunman started moving toward us.
Reid's hand closed around mine.
For one dangerous second, I forgot he didn't know who I was.
Then the flashlight swept across the wall.
It stopped inches from us.
"Over here."
Reid's eyes met mine.
We didn't need words.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the rear of the building.
We ran.
Footsteps thundered behind us.
"Stop!"
A gunshot tore through the darkness.
We ducked.
Another bullet struck the concrete wall.
The rear exit came into view.
Then my heart sank.
A tall construction fence blocked our path.
"Over," Reid said.
He climbed first, then reached down.
"Give me your hand."
I grabbed it.
He pulled me up.
My foot slipped.
"Hold on!"
Reid caught me around the waist before I fell.
For one second, I was pressed against him.
His arms were exactly where I remembered them.
Strong.
Familiar.
Safe.
That hurt more than anything.
He lifted me over the fence.
The metal caught on something around my neck.
A sharp tug.
The chain snapped.
I landed hard on the other side.
"Go!" Reid shouted.
But he didn't move.
He was staring at something in his palm.
The pendant.
My heart stopped.
He closed his fingers around it slowly.
Then lifted his eyes to mine.
"Where did you get this?"
I couldn't breathe.
He took one step closer.
"I've seen this before."
My lips trembled.
"Reid..."
Recognition flashed across his face.
"No."
The men were getting closer behind us, but Reid didn't look away.
"This belonged to Audrey."
Tears filled my eyes.
He looked at my face.
Then the pendant.
Then back at me.
"Audrey?"
I couldn't lie anymore.
"I'm sorry."
His face went completely still.
"You're alive."
His grip closed around my wrist.
"All this time. You let me believe..."
He didn't finish.
Something broke behind his eyes.
Not anger.
Not yet.
Something rawer.
Relief and betrayal tangled together, fighting for control of his face.
"I had to," I whispered. "They said they'd kill you."
"You should have told me."
"I know."
"Audrey."
My name sounded foreign in his mouth, like something he was afraid to trust.
"I thought you were dead," he said. "I searched everywhere."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't—"
A gunshot exploded behind us.
The moment shattered.
Reid pulled me against him and dragged me into the darkness.
But this time, he wasn't protecting a stranger.
He was protecting his wife.
And somewhere behind us, the black SUVs were closing in.
The people who had hunted me for months had finally found me.
But now they had found something they never expected.
They had brought Reid and Audrey back together.
And neither of us was running alone anymore.
Bab terbaru
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 131
Chapter 131Audrey's POVReid stood there with a photograph of himself at seven, and I watched the color leave his face.I took it out of his hand before he could crush it."Don't," I said. "Not yet."I turned it over again and read the handwriting under the green light. Reid and W.B., August. He says hello."Your grandfather wrote this," I said. "He didn't write 'the caretaker.' He wrote initials. Like they had an understanding.""He's been dead nine years.""Then he kept in touch with a dead man for twenty-seven years." I made myself say it slowly. "Somebody taught him how."Reid said nothing. He took the old brass key out of his pocket and looked at it as if it had gone warm in his hand.I crouched by the back door. The prints in the dust were deep and unhurried, the left heel dragging in a long smear. Whoever left here hadn't been running. He'd been walking away from something finished.I followed them out into the cold.They crossed the grass and ran along the hedge to the gate a
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 130
Chapter 130Reid's POVAudrey had written four words on my mother's notepad, and I was going to follow them if it killed me.Say nothing true.She stood at the sink with her forehead against the glass. I crossed the kitchen without a sound and looked over her shoulder.A green light in the carriage house window. It blinked once, in time with the one on the table.I didn't ask what she saw. I took the pen out of her hand and wrote under her line.Carriage house. Who has the key?Behind us, my father hadn't moved. He sat like a man waiting for a verdict. I held the pad up where only he could see it, and his eyes went to the window, and something in his face gave way."Sterling," my mother said, loud and even. "Do you want tea?"It was the steadiest lie I had ever heard. I could have kissed her."Nobody moves until Daniels gets here," I said to the room, to the clock, to whoever was listening. "We sit. We wait.""Sensible," the box said, pleased.My father reached into his pocket and set
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 129
Chapter 129Audrey's POVI knew that laugh.My body knew it before I did. My stomach dropped the way it had at my own wedding, in a ballroom full of candlelight, when a man at the service door laughed once during my father's toast and I turned and found nobody there.Same laugh. Soft. Pleased. In no hurry at all.Reid's hand found my back. I didn't look at him. I was watching my father, who had pressed both palms flat against the table as if the wood might tilt."Sterling," Elena said. She was still holding the dish towel like a rope. "Who is it?"I had seen Sterling Calloway face boardrooms and lawyers and, once, a hurricane. I had never seen him look like this. He looked like a man hearing a door open in a house he had sold years ago."Walter Brandt," he said.Nobody spoke."The caretaker. He had keys to everything. The gym, the boiler room, the main switch." He swallowed. "He caught me at the gym door at half past one and told me the party was over. Told me there was nobody inside.
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 128
Reid's POVI had spent six years building a speech for this man.I rehearsed it in boardrooms, in the car, in the shower. Every version began with Thane Whitlock sitting exactly where he was sitting now, unable to look at me. None of them had a green light in it, or my mother beside Sterling holding a dish towel like a rope."Go on, Thane," the voice said again from behind the clock. Soft, patient, wearing Thane's own warmth. "Tell them why."Thane flinched. It was small, but I saw it travel through his whole body, and I understood something I hadn't wanted to. Hearing his own voice come out of that box was the cruelest thing the man had done all night. He knew exactly where to press."That isn't me," Thane said.Nobody answered."It has my voice. It doesn't have me." He spoke toward the clock but looked at Sterling. "I'm not telling this to you, whoever you are. I'm telling it to him."The light stayed green and steady."Good," Audrey whispered beside me. I hadn't noticed her move so
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 127
Audrey's POVReid opened the envelope standing at the kitchen counter, with his back to the room.I watched his shoulders. He was a man who spent every day deciding what his face would do, and he had trained that discipline into his whole body. His shoulders gave him away, as they always did. They dropped half an inch and stayed there."What is it?" Elena said.He didn't answer. He turned and laid it on the table, face up, between the untouched cups.A photograph. Glossy, a little grainy, the kind of print made from a small sensor in poor light. It showed this kitchen from above and slightly behind. It showed the table. Thane sat with his hands flat on the wood and his head half turned. Sterling had his chin on his chest. Elena's hand lay over his, and her face was turned away.I was in the corner of the frame, a pale shape on the left with my eyes on my father.A line of white digits ran along the bottom edge. 05:38."That's when Sterling told us about the grass," I said."Yes," Reid
My Husband Married Me For Revenge Chapter 126
Reid's POVI was in the hall before the third ring ended.I don't remember deciding to move. Behind me a chair scraped, and Audrey said my name, and my father said something I didn't catch. I kept walking. The study door stood open, and the black phone sat on the desk with its cord on the carpet, dead as a stone.It rang a fourth time.It wasn't the phone. The sound came from behind the bookcase, small and tinny, a ring trying very hard to be the one I'd grown up with. My father had owned that telephone since before I could read. I used to lie on this floor and listen to it ring.I knelt and looked.The black box was still taped to the junction, but a red light the size of a pinhead had come on in its corner. A speaker grille no bigger than a thumbnail was ringing at me."It's not connected to anything," Sterling said from the doorway. He had followed me, and Audrey was behind him with her hand on his arm. "Reid. It's a recording.""I know.""Then don't touch it."I didn't touch the b
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