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CHAPTER 11: RACE TO THE ALTAR
Data de publicação:
2026-09-19 16:03:27
Último capítulo
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 66: FIT TO PROTECT
The Surrogate's Court sat on the sixth floor of a gray municipal building that smelled of floor wax and old radiators, and it was smaller than any courtroom Temi had seen yet.There was no gallery to speak of, only four rows of wooden benches. No jury box. Just a high bench of dark oak, a flag, and a tired clerk who looked as if she had seen every kind of family tear itself apart over every kind of estate. Elias had asked to wear his best suit, the navy one with the silver pinstripe, and he sat in his wheelchair at the front table with a lap blanket pulled up over his knees and his spine as straight as a ruler.Vivian sat on his left. Adrian sat on his right, still in yesterday's shirt, a day of stubble darkening his jaw. Temi sat behind them with Pri on one side and Naomi on the other, her coat buttoned to her chin, one hand pressed flat against her stomach where it had been all night.Across the aisle, Kessler arranged a stack of files with fussy precision. Beside him sat a narrow,
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 65: UNDER THE BEES
Elias would not be left behind.They had woken him gently, Adrian crouching beside the wheelchair in the pale green light of the ICU corridor, saying the words Marcus had whispered one at a time. The old man listened without moving. When Adrian finished, Elias lifted his head, and his eyes were suddenly clear and terribly sharp."Ruth's hives," he said. "The gatehouse. Of course. Of course he'd hide it there.""You don't have to come," Temi said. "Ortiz can search it. You've had no sleep. You've had no rest in days.""I will rest when I am dead." He gripped the arm of the chair. "That is my brother's grave we are about to open, Temperance. If he left me anything at all, I intend to be the one who finds it."They left the city at three forty, Ortiz in the lead car with two agents, Theo driving the second with Temi and Adrian and Elias wrapped in blankets in the back. The highway was black and slick with rain. Nobody spoke. Temi sat with one hand resting on her stomach and watched the m
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 64: THE CLIP
For three full seconds nobody in the boardroom moved.Temi watched the room the way she would study a building after an earthquake, looking for the cracks, the load bearing walls still standing. Margaret Hale sat rigid at the end of the table. Simon Whitfield stared at his hands. Kessler, Sallow's old lawyer, lounged against the wall by the windows with the satisfied half smile of a man watching his client's rival burn."I'd like to see the minutes," Adrian said.His voice was perfectly level. It frightened Temi more than shouting would have."Of course." Graham slid a folder across the table. "Though I think you'll find everything in order.""I'm sure I will." Adrian did not touch the folder. "I'd like Vivian to see it first.""Vivian Okafor is counsel to the Voss family, not to this body.""Then I'm sorry to have to tell you," a voice said from the doorway, "that I'm both."Vivian stood in the glass doors, breathing hard, her coat half off one shoulder and a sheet of paper crushed i
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 63: THE GLUE
Adrian would not go."I won't sit across a table from him," he said at seven the next morning, standing beside his father's hospital bed with his arms folded so tightly Temi could see the tendons in his wrists. "He put a bullet in my father. He poisoned my grandfather for three years. I'd put my hands around his throat before I'd let him say a single word.""Then stay," Elias said from his wheelchair in the corner. He looked as though he hadn't slept at all, and his voice was gentle. "Stay with Marcus. That is exactly where you belong. But I have a conversation that is forty four years overdue, and I intend to have it.""Grandfather.""Adrian. Please."Adrian's jaw worked. He looked at Temi."I'll go with him," she said. "I'll keep him safe. And I'll tell you every word."It took Castillo two hours and three phone calls to arrange a supervised visit at the federal detention center. By ten, Temi was walking through a series of heavy steel doors beside Elias's wheelchair, Ortiz a pace b
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 62: THE SEALED LETTER
The surgeon did not come out for three hours and eleven minutes.Temi knew the number because she counted it, one minute at a time, on the wall clock above the nurses' station. Adrian sat beside her in a borrowed gray scrub top, his own shirt wadded in a plastic bag at his feet, his forearms still faintly pink where he had scrubbed them raw. He hadn't said a word since the ambulance doors closed. His knee jittered in a tight, continuous motion.Elias sat across from them in his wheelchair, his nurse's hand on his shoulder, his face the color of candle wax. He had asked only one question, and he had asked it every ten minutes. Is there news. The answer never changed.Camille arrived at eight, Theo behind her carrying a paper bag of sandwiches nobody would eat. Pri came soon after, still in her cardigan, and sat on Temi's other side without saying anything, and took her hand. For a long time the only sounds in the waiting room were the muffled intercom, the squeak of a gurney in the hal
NOT THE BRIDE HE WANTED CHAPTER 61: THE CHAPEL
The Hudson Valley sky turned the color of old brass an hour before sunset.Ortiz's team had been in place since noon. Two agents lay in the long grass beyond the family cemetery, binoculars trained on the stone chapel's single door. Another sat in a van behind the stable with a laptop and a thermos. A fourth, a quiet woman named Park, wore a groundskeeper's jacket and had been raking leaves outside the lych gate for three hours."If he sees one of us, he walks," Ortiz said, pressing a wire into Temi's ear. "If he walks, he vanishes. I need him inside, talking, and I need him close to the door. After that, my people do the rest.""And if he asks us to leave our phones?" Adrian said."Then leave them. The wire sends to my receiver. He'll find it, probably. I'm counting on his vanity to keep him talking even if he does."Elias rode in his wheelchair at the center of their small procession, a plaid blanket tucked around his knees, his nurse a few steps behind. Marcus drove them up the win
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