FAZER LOGINCompartilhar
Chapter 15: A Cornered Man
Data de publicação:
2026-09-11 05:17:54
Último capítulo
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 18: The Story Breaks
AMARA’S POV The article went live at eleven that night, while the twins were asleep and Adrien and I sat together in his study, waiting for news the way people wait for storms they can already hear approaching. His head of communications called first. Then his lawyer. Then, within an hour, three more calls stacked on top of each other, each one delivering some fresh piece of the wreckage. The headline alone told me everything I needed to know before I even opened the article myself. "Billionaire's Secret Surrogate Scandal: The Truth Behind Adrien Morretti's Sudden Marriage." I read it once, my stomach twisting with every paragraph. They had details they shouldn't have had. The clinic. The contract terms. Even a description of the house where I'd spent nine months in isolation, though thankfully no mention of the assault itself, not directly, though the implication sat heavy between every carefully worded sentence. "They don't name the drugging," Adrien said, reading over my shoul
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 17: What We Tell Them
AMARA’S POVZuri was midway through building a paper crown for one of her stuffed animals when we walked in, and Kian sat beside her sorting crayons by color with the same quiet focus he gave everything."Mommy! Daddy!" Zuri abandoned her crown immediately, scrambling up to hug both our legs at once, delighted to see us together. "Are we going somewhere fun?""Not today, sweetheart." Adrien knelt down to her level, and I did the same, settling onto the rug the way I had that very first afternoon. "We need to talk to you both about something important."Kian looked up from his crayons, already alert in that quiet, watchful way he had. He set down the crayon in his hand and gave us his full attention without being asked, the way he did whenever something in the room shifted."Are you getting a divorce?" he asked, blunt as ever."No," I said quickly. "Nothing like that.""Then what?" Zuri asked, settling into my lap without hesitation, her small hands playing with the hem of my sleeve.A
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 16: Before It Breaks
ADRIEN’S POVThe call came in at half past six in the morning, before I'd even had coffee, before Amara had stirred beside me."You need to see this," my head of communications said, her voice tight in a way I'd learned over the years to take seriously. "Now. Before it goes further."She sent the email forward within seconds.. a journalist's inquiry, polite and clinical on the surface, asking for comment on "an alleged surrogacy arrangement" connected to my marriage, alongside a request to confirm or deny "circumstances surrounding the conception of the twins." Someone had fed them enough detail to make the questions specific. Someone who knew exactly which nerve to press, which words would do the most damage in the fewest sentences.I didn't need to guess who."Has it published?" I asked, already reaching for a shirt, my mind racing three steps ahead of my hands."Not yet. They're giving us until end of day to respond, which means they already have enough to run it regardless of what
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 15: A Cornered Man
SCOTT’S POVAdrien's lawyer called me before the sun was even up, informing me in the flat, rehearsed tone of someone reading from a script that my shares were being frozen pending an internal investigation. Breach of partnership conduct, they called it. Careful, sanitized language for what we both knew was really happening.I sat in my kitchen with the phone still in my hand long after the call ended, staring at nothing, feeling the walls of my own life closing in with a speed I hadn't prepared for. Outside my window, the city was just beginning to wake up, delivery trucks rattling past, someone's dog barking three floors down, the ordinary noise of a world that had no idea mine had just started collapsing.Fifteen years. Fifteen years of building that company at his side, and it took him one conversation to start dismantling my place in it entirely.I should have expected this. I'd known, the moment I said the words out loud in that conference room, that there was no walking them ba
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 14: What He Carried Home
AMARA’S POVI knew something was wrong the moment Adrien walked through the door that evening.He didn't come find me first, which wasn't like him anymore. In the weeks since the wedding, he'd fallen into a habit of seeking me out before he even took off his coat, some quiet ritual neither of us had ever named out loud. Instead I found him in his study, standing at the window with his back to the door, a glass of untouched liquor sitting on the desk behind him."Adrien?"He turned, and the look on his face stopped me cold. Not the controlled mask he wore for meetings, not even the softer, guarded expression he'd worn with me in private. Something rawer than either."Sit down," he said quietly. "Please."I sat. He didn't, choosing instead to pace the width of the room like the walls were too close for whatever he was about to say."Scott confirmed it," he said finally. "That night. Five years ago. He drugged me."The air left my lungs in a rush. "He admitted it?""Not in so many words
Signed the Devil’s contract Chapter 13: The Meeting
ADRIEN’S POVScott was already seated when I walked into the conference room, feet up on the edge of the table like he owned the building instead of merely a stake in it."You look well-rested," he said, grinning. "Marriage suits you.""You said this was urgent.""It is." He dropped his feet to the floor and slid a folder across the table, a different folder than the one sitting in my desk drawer at home, though something in my stomach tightened at the sight of it regardless. "Investors are asking questions about the merger. Specifically, about how quickly it came together. People talk, Adrien. They're wondering why a man who's spent a decade avoiding marriage suddenly found a bride the same month his grandfather started threatening to change his will.""The merger is sound. The marriage is real.""Is it, though?" Scott leaned back, studying me with an expression I'd once mistaken for friendship and now recognized as something closer to hunger. "Because from where I'm sitting, it look
Você também pode gostar
Oops! I Married A CEO By Mistake
Lisa Salman1.8M visualizaçõesA Ruling Passion: Mr Tremont's Priceless Little Bride
Lemon Flavored Cat1.5M visualizaçõesThe Wrong Woman
Ginny Not Genie1.2M visualizaçõesBegin Again
Val Sims1.0M visualizaçõesBound to Killian St. Claire: The Nanny’s Forbidden Vow
R.A. Sterling53 visualizaçõesSuspended By My Hockey Captain, Now He’s My Step-Brother
Chinny 21 visualizaçõesHIS DARKEST HEIRLOOM
MJ EVERLY 57 visualizaçõesMy Ex husband Wants Me Back
Miriam Remi 19 visualizações
