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Chapter 74: The Condition
publish date:
2026-07-16 15:40:38
Latest chapter
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 78: Not a Claim
(Draxler POV) The last person I expected to find was Leo. He was tucked beneath the desk in the small side room off the east corridor, hidden well enough that I might've walked past if the room hadn't felt just a little too quiet. Leo sat with his back against one of the desk legs, knees pulled close to his chest. The tips of his little velcro shoes peeked out beneath the desk, the only part of him that wasn't trying very hard to disappear. I'd been looking for Keyla. Finding Leo here instead stopped me in the doorway before I even realized I'd stopped walking. The corridor had been almost unnaturally still. It wasn't complete silence that drew me here. It was the kind of quiet people made when they were trying very hard not to be noticed. I rested my knuckles lightly against the wooden frame. The door was already open, but somehow knocking still felt like the right thing to do. Two curious eyes appeared beneath the edge of the desk. Leo looked at me without blinking, watchi
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 77: The Missing Floor
(Draxler POV) Marcus didn't sit down. He laid the printed frames across the desk one by one, making sure every image was visible before he finally broke the silence. "For forty-three minutes..."His fingertip rested lightly on the blank section. "That floor simply doesn't exist." The photographs ran in sequence across the desk. Images before the gap. Images after it. Then, right in the middle, a dull grey rectangle where the footage should have been, the timestamp advancing second by second while the screen remained stubbornly empty. It looked less like missing video and more like someone had cut a piece out of the story and stitched the edges back together. Eleanor remained standing instead of taking the empty chair Marcus had left for her. She'd come because Marcus had asked, and I'd agreed. Whatever this review uncovered, I'd rather have her hear it here than receive a carefully edited version hours later. I hadn't explained my real reason for agreeing. There wasn't any point.
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 76: Begin with the Wedding Night
(POV Keyla) The room stayed quiet long enough that Holt turned the page, checked his place, and waited. Eleanor was the one who finally broke the silence. She didn't lean forward or raise her voice. If anything, she sounded almost thoughtful. "Why the wedding night?" It wasn't an accusation. She asked it carefully, each word measured, as though she already suspected the answer might be worse than the question itself.Holt glanced back at the document before answering, almost as if he wanted Augustus's words in front of him rather than relying on memory. "Mr. Churchill attached a timeline review to the clause." He found the paragraph he wanted, let his eyes scan it once, then continued. "According to his written reasoning, the hotel records from that evening represent the clearest available record of movement and circumstance." Holt looked up briefly.b"He believed they would become relevant if Leo's connection to the family was ever formally challenged." My eyes dropped to the poli
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 75: The Will Names the Boy
(POV Keyla) I'd expected numbers first. Estate values. Property. The usual language lawyers hid behind. Instead, the very first name Holt spoke belonged to my son. For a second I wondered if I'd misheard him. Priscilla had walked me through how these things usually went, and none of it started with the name of a four-year-old boy. Yet that was exactly where Holt chose to begin. He opened the formal document, adjusted his reading glasses, and read: *"To Leon Tamara, as described in the attached sealed clause—"* Across the table, Eleanor's fingers drifted almost absently to the string of pearls at her throat. It was the first movement she'd made since Holt started reading, and somehow that tiny gesture caught my attention more than anything else in the room. Blackthorn's formal dining room barely looked like a dining room anymore. The table had been stripped down for legal files instead of silverware, and the emptiness somehow made the room feel even larger than usual.. Leo wasn't
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 74: The Condition
(Keyla POV) Holt placed the letter between us, then lingered for half a heartbeat, as though deciding whether either of us might change our minds before we opened it. Through the glass panel I could still see him in the adjoining room, coffee untouched, deliberately looking everywhere except at us. The envelope sat between us exactly where Holt had left it. I'd been staring at it long enough to know I was avoiding it.He didn't reach for the envelope. Didn't even glance at it. Only at me. "You don't have to read it with me here," Draxler said.I let out a breath that almost became a laugh. "Trust Augustus to keep managing people after he was dead." I tapped the edge of the envelope. "He wanted you here, If he insisted on this..."I looked from the envelope to Draxler. "...then he expected both of us to hear the same thing." A tiny shake of my head. "Amazing." I couldn't help it. "He's managed to annoy me from the grave."He accepted that without trying to defend Augustus. For once,
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 73: The Private Review
(Keyla POV) "Mr. Augustus," Holt said, setting the sealed folder on the table between us, "anticipated resistance from both of you." He said it without irony, which somehow made it worse — the image of an eighty-one-year-old man lying in his bed, planning for the specific probability that his grandson and his grandson's unacknowledged child's mother would need to be maneuvered into the same room before they'd cooperate with each other. Draxler was already in the chair to my left when I came in. He'd gotten there first, which I was choosing not to interpret. Nora was outside with Leo, in the waiting area, and I'd made her promise not to let anyone from the Churchill family speak to either of them without me present. Holt opened the folder with a quiet rustle of paper. "The sealed file contains three elements," he said, adjusting his glasses. "The first is a protection clause, already disclosed in the preliminary review — Leo named as a minor under Augustus's protection, pendi
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 3: The Brother I Should Have Feared
(Keyla POV)The phone lit up again at 11:47 p.m. Adrian. Again. I’d stopped counting after the sixth call but apparently he hadn’t stopped trying. I looked at the notification without picking it up, and then the message came through underneath it. Come downstairs. Don’t embarrass me.I read it twic
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 5: The Bride Who Disappeared
(Keyla POV) The other side of the bed had already gone cold. I noticed it before I was fully awake, before I understood why the room felt wrong — that specific absence, the kind you register in your body before your brain catches up. I sat up. The space beside me was empty. Near the door, somethi
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 4: Before He Woke Up
(Keyla POV) Voices. That’s what pulled me out of sleep — low, somewhere in the corridor outside, two people talking in the muffled way hotel staff do when they’re trying not to wake guests. I was awake before I understood why I was panicking, and then I remembered, and the panic made complete sen
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 2: Floor 27
(Keyla POV) The door opened before I could decide whether to knock. Draxler Churchill stood in the frame, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a glass of whiskey in one hand that he hadn’t touched recently enough for the ice to melt. He looked at me the way people look at things they were half
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