보관함
검색
홈 / Romance / She died a wife, Returned a flame / Chapter 77: Beneath the Surface

공유

Chapter 77: Beneath the Surface

작가: Comfort Udoh
last update 게시일: 2025-11-10 21:24:11

Sheila’s POV

The dark had stopped feeling like night a long time ago.

Down here, it was just endless.

I didn’t know how many days had passed since Adrian dragged me back and tied me like some wild thing that needed caging. My wrists were raw, burning every time I twisted them, and the ropes had cut so deep I could feel the pulse in my bones.

But pain wasn’t new to me.

Pain meant I was still alive.

I’d learned how to use it,to think through it, breathe through it, survive through it.

At first, I
이 작품을 무료로 읽으실 수 있습니다
QR 코드를 스캔하여 앱을 다운로드하세요
이전 챕터 다음 챕터
잠긴 챕터

최신 챕터

  • She died a wife, Returned a flame   Chapter 102: Vanessa's Flight

    Vanessa's POVI threw clothes into the suitcase without folding them.Dresses. Jeans. Whatever my hands touched first in the hotel closet. Nothing matched. Nothing was organized. I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was getting everything that belonged to me and my son into two bags and getting out of this country before someone decided I was worth investigating more closely.My son slept in his carrier beside the bed, oblivious to the chaos unfolding around him. His tiny chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of infant sleep. Peaceful. Innocent. Completely unaware that his mother was dismantling their entire life and preparing to run.I paused for just a moment to look at him.He was the only good thing I'd done. The only choice I'd made in the past two years that wasn't calculated or manipulative or driven by fear and survival. Even if his father was Kyle. Even if he'd been conceived in deception. He was still mine. Still innocent.I went back to packing.The hotel room w

  • She died a wife, Returned a flame   Chapter 101: The Arrest

    Adrian's POVThe handcuffs closed around my wrists with a sound that seemed louder than it should have been.Metal on metal. A definitive click that carried across the silent boardroom despite the chaos still simmering around us. Every person in that space heard it. Every camera captured it. The moment when Adrian Drake stopped being a free man and became something else entirely.The officer doing the cuffing was professional about it. Not rough, not gentle. Just efficient. He positioned my hands behind my back and secured them with the practiced ease of someone who had done this thousands of times before."Adrian Drake," he said, his voice carrying the same professional neutrality. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you."The words were familiar from television, from movies, from a hundred crime dramas I'd never paid muc

  • 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 60: The Edge of Revelation

    Multiple POVsAdrian’s POVSleep had become impossible. My head throbbed constantly, the aftertaste of whiskey lingering on my tongue. I had stopped pretending to work, stopped pretending to care about meetings or reports. Every time I looked at Vanessa, I saw questions that refused to leave me alo

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-27

  • She died a wife, Returned a flame   Chapter 55: The Double Game

    Sheila’s POVIt started with a whisper in the kitchen.The maids were gossiping again, their voices low, cautious, full of the kind of fear that only Adrian Drake’s name could stir. I didn’t pay attention at first until I heard the one name that didn’t belong in this house.“Kyle,” someone said. “M

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-26

  • She died a wife, Returned a flame   Chapter 54: The Board and the Blackmailer

    Vanessa’s POVThe moment I saw Kyle’s name flash across my phone, my throat tightened. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks, not since he’d hinted at “keeping a souvenir” from the hospital months ago. I should have known silence was just the calm before his next strike.The message was short, sharp, an

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-26

  • She died a wife, Returned a flame   Chapter 52: The Hollow Cradle

    Sheila’s POV The mansion was filled with light when Vanessa returned. Every servant lined up at the entrance, pretending to smile, pretending to care. I stood among them, hands clasped, face calm.Adrian stepped out of the car first, carrying a small bundle wrapped in white. The sight hit me harde

    last update최신 업데이트 : 2026-03-26
더보기

다른 추천

좋은 소설을 무료로 찾아 읽어보세요
GoodNovel 앱에서 수많은 인기 소설을 무료로 즐기세요! 마음에 드는 작품을 다운로드하고, 언제 어디서나 편하게 읽을 수 있습니다
앱에서 작품을 무료로 읽어보세요
앱에서 읽으려면 QR 코드를 스캔하세요.
DMCA.com Protection Status