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Chapter 46: Collateral Damage
publish date:
2025-07-04 18:51:54
Latest chapter
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 189: Hey, Classmate — That Was the Moment
Adam remembers the exact moment.Not vaguely, not in the blurred way memories tend to blur at the edges when they've been sitting too long. Perfectly. In the way certain things get burned in rather than recorded — like the image was seared directly into the part of him that doesn't forget, that doesn't soften, that holds everything it finds important with both hands until they go numb.It was the third day of freshman orientation training at Ashford.He'd only been back in the country for a week. Four years abroad — London, then Singapore, then two years back in London — had done something to his internal clock that no amount of willpower could override. He was sleeping at four in the morning and awake at noon, running on two hours and something that tasted like exhaustion but hit harder.And then the August heat.Chicago in August is not interested in your problems. The training field radiated it upward from the concrete, pressin
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 188: You've Gone Too Far
The garden goes completely silent.Allie stares at Liam.He just told Adam that the car was her idea — which is true, technically, she did mention it — but the way he said it, the specific weight he placed behind go thank your aunt, was not about gratitude. It was a message with teeth in it, aimed at Adam, wrapped in a sentence about a car.Adam says thank you in a voice that gives nothing away.And Liam looks at him with that composed, unhurried authority and says: "I don't think I've ever heard you call her aunt. Not once. Does Allie not count as family to you, Xiao Han?"Allie's jaw tightens.She understands now — completely, crystallinely — what Liam is doing.He's using her.He's using her to draw a line around Adam. To remind him of distance, hierarchy, boundary. And the worst part — the part that makes the anger surge up from somewhere below her sternum &m
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 187: Your Auntie Chose It — Go Thank Her
She doesn't say a word through dinner.Not one word that matters. She eats and smiles and passes dishes and laughs at the right moments — a performance so clean she almost convinces herself. But underneath it, Liam's words in the car are doing what words do when they're sharp enough: repeating. On a loop. Remember who you are. Have some sense of being a wife.He thinks something happened between her and Adam.He thinks — after everything, after all of it — that she is that person.And the worst part is not the accusation. The worst part is that she can feel it working on her — the way guilt she doesn't deserve starts to feel like guilt she does, when the person doing the accusing is someone she trusts with her whole heart.Who she trusted with her whole heart.After dinner she goes outside.Not a decision. Just — her feet take her out the back door into the garden before
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 186: We're Moving Out Tonight
She leaves the lilies in the car.She doesn't decide to. She just — doesn't reach for them when she gets out. They stay on the passenger seat, paper-wrapped, white, completely innocent of everything that happened in the twelve inches of air between her and Liam on the drive home.She carries the cake.Hart Manor in the evening is the warmest version of itself — every room lit, the smell of Elizabeth's cooking all the way from the foyer, the particular alive quality the house gets when the whole family is under one roof.The butler takes Liam's coat. Reports that Robert, Elizabeth, and Adam are in the dining room. Liam nods and moves toward the stairs without looking back.Allie follows.She is very good at keeping her face neutral. She has been doing it her whole life — in boardrooms, on film sets, in the Ashford cafeteria when the whole campus was talking about her. She knows how to walk into a room and be present w
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 185: Remember Who You Are — She's His Wife, Not Juliet
In the car, she watches him.She tries to be subtle about it — peripheral vision, quick sidelong glances — but she's watching. Cataloguing. The set of his jaw, the line of his shoulders, the particular quality of silence he's wrapped himself in since the arrivals gate. He's tired, she tells herself. Tokyo is a fourteen-hour round trip. He's been in meetings for a week. Any person would be exhausted.She reaches for something light. Something that won't land wrong."Adam was discharged today," she says. "Elizabeth cooked — actually cooked, not catered. She made lamb and pasta and this incredible—""I know." Flat. Eyes forward. Fingers loose on the wheel.She swallows. "I ordered a cake for him. One of those vanilla chiffon ones from the French place on Meridian — he mentioned once that he doesn't like chocolate, so—""Allie."Something in his voice makes her stop talking."We should pick it up
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 184: She Waited at the Airport — He Told Her to Be Proper
Liam doesn't go in.He stands in the doorway long enough to see everything — Allie leaning forward with the spoon, Adam's ears flushed, the ease between them that has grown in this hospital room over the past week like something no one planted but can't stop — and then he turns and walks back down the corridor.He doesn't make a sound.Allie goes straight from the hospital to campus.She's barely through the gate when she catches the current running through the student body — that particular electric murmur that means something has happened and word hasn't finished spreading yet.Two girls near the journalism building. She slows."—did you hear? Felicity Montgomery got expelled.""That can't be right. Her dad is basically city government. The principal has been protecting her for years.""I'm telling you it happened. She's gone. Whatever she did — whoever she crossed &m
Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 129: Under One Roof
Something about Vivian was… off.
Last Updated : 2026-04-05Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 131: Ice and Fire
Did she say something wrong again?The moment the word left her lips, Allie caught it—the subtle twitch in Adam’s brow, the slight narrowing of his eyes.A flicker of irritation, barely there, but sharp enough to slice through her confidence.Adam folded his arms across his chest, his stance as clo
Last Updated : 2026-04-05Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 124: The Edge of Desire
Liam looked stunned for a split second.I could see it—the slight hitch in his breath, the way his gaze lingered on me just a little too long. It was rare to catch him off guard, and I had done it with one kiss. A soft one. Barely there. But enough.My cheeks burned with the aftermath. I turned my
Last Updated : 2026-04-04Secrets of a Hidden Marriage Chapter 125: The Liar in a Suit
Liam’s eyebrows twitched slightly.That was twice today.I had kissed him—completely unprovoked. And now, I couldn’t even look him in the eye.God, what was wrong with me?My cheeks were burning, the heat spreading down my neck like a wildfire. Had I been too forward? Was I misreading him entirely?
Last Updated : 2026-04-04
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