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Chapter 11: Narrow Escape
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2025-09-12 16:33:27
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She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 100: The Fall
Adrian's POVThe room came apart in stages.First the noise. Voices rising from every corner, overlapping questions and urgent phone calls and the rapid-fire conversation of people who understood they were witnessing something significant and were already calculating how to position themselves relative to it. Board members on their feet. Shareholders demanding explanations. The PR director typing so fast I could hear the staccato rhythm of her fingers on the tablet from across the room.Then the movement. People pushing back from the table, clustering in small groups, documents passing from hand to hand as people compared what they were reading to what they'd just heard. The journalists with their phones raised, filming everything, speaking into recorders with the clipped urgency of people racing to be first to file.And through all of it, I stood at the head of the table and didn't move.I couldn't move.My body had stopped responding to the commands my brain was sending it. Stand st
She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 99: The Unraveling
Sheila's POVThe noise in the room was rising but I wasn't finished yet.Security had paused when I lifted my skirt to show the birthmark. Even trained professionals hesitated in the face of something they hadn't been briefed on how to handle. A woman revealing a physical mark to prove her identity in the middle of a corporate boardroom had no protocol attached to it.I used that pause.I turned back to the table and let my voice cut through the chaos with the kind of clarity that came from knowing exactly what needed to be said and exactly how much time I had left to say it."Adrian Drake told his investors and his board that he needed a kidney transplant three years ago," I said. "I donated mine. I was his wife. I loved him. I believed the surgery would save his life."The room was still noisy but people were listening now, straining to hear over their own conversations with each other."The kidney was never transplanted into Adrian Drake," I continued, speaking faster now, hitting
She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 98: The Room Goes Still
Sheila's POVI felt every eye in the room find me.Not all at once. It happened in a wave, starting from the people nearest the back doors and rolling forward as I walked, each person catching the shift in the room's attention and turning to follow it until by the time I was halfway down the center aisle, every face was pointed in my direction.I didn't rush.I had learned patience in Adrian's house. Six months of moving slowly through rooms, of being invisible on purpose, of controlling every gesture and expression so precisely that nothing leaked through unless I wanted it to. That discipline lived in my body now. It didn't leave just because the game had changed.I walked like I belonged there.Because I did.The security director reached me before I made it to the front. He was a broad man with the particular stillness of someone trained to handle disruptions without creating scenes. He stepped into my path and said something low and professional about my credentials needing verif
She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 97: The Board Meeting Begins
Adrian's POVI arrived forty minutes early.Not because I wasn't ready. I had been preparing long before I left the hotel. I went over my statement in the shower. I refined it in the car. By the time I walked through the building doors, I was calm and focused in the way that only came from knowing exactly what you were going to say and how you were going to say it.I arrived early because the room needed to feel like mine before anyone else walked into it.I learned that lesson years ago when the company was still small and the stakes were lower. The person who was already in the room when everyone else arrived always had the upper hand. It was hard to explain exactly why, but it worked every time. People walked in and naturally arranged themselves around you. Your position at the head of the table stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like the way things were supposed to be.I stood at the window on the forty-second floor and looked out over the city and felt myself settl
She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 96: The Preparation
Sheila's POVI woke up not knowing where I was.That moment of disorientation, the ceiling unfamiliar, the light wrong, the sounds outside belonging to a different street than any I'd recently known, lasted about four seconds before everything returned. The safe house. Sebastian's colleague's apartment. The drive here in the early morning, my head against the window, the city sliding past in gray silence.The last thing I remembered before sleep was Sebastian pressing a glass of water into my hands and telling me to drink all of it.I had apparently done that and then collapsed onto the narrow couch and slept for eleven hours without dreaming.I lay still for a moment, taking stock of my body the way I'd learned to do after the fire. Checking each part methodically for what still worked and what had been compromised. The answer this time was better than it had been in days. Still painful. Still damaged. But coherent. Functional.Ready.I sat up.Sebastian was asleep in the armchair ac
She died a wife, Returned a flame Chapter 95: The Questioning
Adrian's POVThe interrogation room was designed to make people uncomfortable.I recognized the technique immediately. The table slightly too small, the chairs slightly too hard, the lighting calibrated to flatten features and emphasize fatigue. The temperature kept just cool enough to prevent relaxation. Everything engineered to create the subtle, cumulative impression of vulnerability.I'd used similar environments in business negotiations for years.I sat down, placed my hands flat on the table, and looked at the two detectives with the expression of a man who had voluntarily come in, had nothing to conceal, and was mildly inconvenienced by the necessity of explaining that to people who should already understand it.Micheal sat beside me, his own face arranged in the carefully neutral expression of a lawyer who charged enough per hour that his presence alone communicated serious intent.The lead detective was a woman. Mid-forties, sharp eyes, the unhurried manner of someone who had
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