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Chapter 45
Fecha de publicación:
2026-11-07 19:49:26
Último capítulo
THE ALPHA’S REGRET Chapter 45
The staff quarters were quiet by eleven.I had finished the silver, locked the pantry and hung the keys back on their board, and for the first time since breakfast nobody needed anything from me. My room was at the end of the second corridor in the service wing. A narrow bed, a wardrobe, a chair by the window, one lamp. Eleven years of my life fitted into it with space to spare. I sat on the edge of the bed in my stockinged feet and did not take down my hair.Down the corridor someone ran a tap, and the pipes knocked twice in the wall. I knew every sound this building made after dark. Tonight none of them could cover Victoria's voice.I had hoped that if I scrubbed enough glasses, her offer would stay in the pantry where she had left it. It had followed me up the stairs and sat down beside me.Five thousand now. The same again whenever I had something she could use.My first feeling had been heat, the kind that climbs from the collar. A woman who had never once asked after my health ha
THE ALPHA’S REGRET Chapter 44
Victoria did not go looking for the answer. It found her on the back stairs the next afternoon.She almost never used that route. The service corridor was narrow and smelled of starch and lemon polish, and its only light came from a small window at the far end. She was halfway down, on her way to the kitchen to ask for coffee she did not really want, when she heard voices below her and stopped on the third step from the bottom.Leslie stood at the pantry door with a basket of folded towels on her hip. Maria was beside her with a tea towel over one shoulder, speaking too softly for Victoria to catch.Victoria stepped back until the turn of the stairs hid most of her. From there, she could see them both in profile and nothing else.She could not hear a word. A pipe knocked somewhere in the wall, and the dishwasher ran its long cycle in the kitchen. Whatever Maria said reached her as a low murmur with no edges. Victoria leaned out a little farther. It made no difference.What she could se
THE ALPHA’S REGRET Chapter 43
Victoria went to the florist herself.Catherine had told her to. She hadn’t said it kindly, and she hadn’t said it as advice. It was a correction, and somewhere between the annex and her car, Victoria decided she would carry it out so thoroughly Catherine would have nothing left to find. So she spent two hours that afternoon in a cold back room that smelled of wet stems, measuring roses with a ruler she borrowed from the girl at the counter. Every stem was cut to the height of its vase. She photographed them. She made the owner sign a card confirming the delivery window.On the drive back, she checked her phone at a red light. Tony had answered her message about Saturday with one line. Busy week. Will confirm. She read it twice and put the phone face down on the seat.By the time she reached the house, her feet ached and her pride felt like a bruise she kept pressing to see if it still hurt. It did.She still had the card and the photographs. She thought, and she wasn’t proud of how sm
THE ALPHA’S REGRET Chapter 42
Devin had not slept.He sat on the edge of his bunk with his hands hanging between his knees and listened to the block settle for the night. Doors. Footsteps on the walkway. A man coughing three cells down. He had learned the sounds of this place the way other men learned a language, and tonight none of them meant anything to him.I don’t know yet.Marcus had said it quietly and walked out of the office without finishing the thought. Devin had turned those words over for hours until they stopped sounding like an answer and started sounding like a door left open.He was not angry anymore. Marcus was right about the regional office, the state, and the police. He was right that a warden’s signature could buy one shift, maybe two, but nothing beyond that. What Devin could not accept was stopping there. Somewhere between a missing name and an open gate, there had to be another possibility.He spent the night looking for it.Early the next evening, a guard unlocked his door and told him the
THE ALPHA’S REGRET CHAPTER 41
Victoria heard Catherine before she saw her.The voice carried across the great hall, clipped and precise. Over six years Victoria had learned to recognize it as the sound of a household being corrected. She followed it to the open doors of the ballroom annex.Catherine stood at the center of the room with her arms folded. Four members of staff stood in a loose line in front of her, clipboards held against their chests. At the end of the line, a young man held a tape measure as though he had been asked to explain it."The family table was moved twice," Catherine said. "Twice. Do you know how that looks to a guest who arrives early?""Yes, Mrs. Blackwell," said the woman nearest to her. "I'm sorry. We were told to—""Told by whom?"The woman hesitated. "The events coordinator, ma'am.""Then the events coordinator will be informed that the family table is not a matter for coordinators." Catherine turned her head slightly toward the young man. "Put it back. Exactly where it was on Monday
THE ALPHA’S REGRET CHAPTER 40
The house had a rhythm, and Leslie had learned it the hard way.Breakfast was served at seven thirty in the small dining room, not the formal one. Catherine took her coffee at the head of the table and read her tablet while Tony ate in silence across from her. Maria moved between the kitchen and the table without making a sound. Leslie came down after them, when the plates had already been cleared, and she ate standing at the counter because sitting at the table had never been offered to her and she had stopped asking.She told herself that this morning was like any other.It was not, of course. Two days had passed since she came back through the gates with dirt on her shoes and a scratch on her palm, and the house had not quite settled since. The staff were more careful around her. Some of them looked at her a moment too long when they thought she wasn't watching. Maria had been kind in the small ways she always was, a cup of tea, a quiet question about whether Leslie had slept, but
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