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ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
publish date:
2026-10-08 02:04:22
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THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
Aria’s POV Romanov and Dmitri met me at the edge of the woods, both of them scanning my face carefully the moment I came into view, searching for whatever damage the last half hour might have left behind. “You’re shaking,” Romanov said, closing the distance between us quickly, his hands resting on my shoulders, steadying without asking. “I’m fine,” I said, though the tremor in my own voice betrayed how untrue that actually was. “What happened in there?” Dmitri asked. Romanov didn’t ask anything right away. He simply stood there, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him, waiting with the particular patience I’d come to rely on whenever words needed time to find their shape. I opened my mouth to answer and found the words harder to arrange than I expected, everything Simon had said tangled together with everything he’d refused to say, grief and anger and unresolved questions all pressing forward at once. “He knew things about my mother,” I said finally. “Personal things.
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
Aria’s POV The house at the end of the letter’s address sat at the edge of a small, private wood, unremarkable from the road, the kind of place designed specifically not to draw attention. Romanov parked a short distance away, Dmitri positioned discreetly nearby, though I’d insisted on walking the final stretch alone, exactly as I had at the greenhouse months earlier. The front door opened before I’d finished climbing the porch steps. He stood taller than I expected, older certainly, silver hair combed back neatly, dressed in the same kind of worn, old-fashioned coat I recognized immediately from the Cedar Hollow footage. His eyes were pale, careful, studying me with an intensity that felt less like threat and more like decades of curiosity finally reaching its end. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I pressed them flat against my sides, willing them still, and failed. “Little bird,” he said quietly. I stopped moving entirely. “What did you call me?” I asked, my voice unsteady in
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN
Aria’s POV Dmitri called us into the study just after dawn, his eyes bloodshot but sharp, three screens glowing with everything he’d pieced together overnight verifying Constance’s account. “Her story holds up,” he said. “The handwriting matches. The timeline fits. I don’t think she lied to us.” “Good,” Romanov said. “What else?” “There’s something I need your eyes on,” Dmitri said, turning his laptop toward me specifically. “Security footage. Old, and not from this estate.” “From where?” I asked. “Cedar Hollow,” Dmitri said. “The property maintained an old exterior camera system, tied into the same trust that’s kept the taxes current all these years. Most of the footage was never digitized, but I finally tracked down archived files from the night we drove out there.” My stomach tightened, remembering that night clearly, the alert Dmitri had received just as we prepared to leave the estate, someone entering Cedar Hollow ahead of us. “You said someone got there first,” I said
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
Aria’s POV Constance came to us the following morning, before either of us had finished breakfast, her composure carrying a different quality than I’d seen from her before, something resolved rather than merely careful. “I think you’ve found the photograph by now,” she said, standing in the doorway of the breakfast room. “I heard Dmitri moving around the house last night. I assume that means it’s time.” Romanov set down his coffee slowly. “Sit,” he said. “Please.” Constance settled into the chair across from us, her hands folded in her lap the same way they always were, though something in her posture had shifted, the careful armor she usually wore finally loosening. “I promised you the truth,” she said. “I intend to keep that promise now, completely, without the careful edges I’ve been giving you until this point.” “We’re listening,” I said. Constance took a breath, steadying herself visibly before she began. “The man in that photograph,” she said, “the fourth founder, the on
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
Aria’s POV Dmitri called us both into the study just after midnight, his voice carrying an urgency that pulled me out of bed before I’d even finished processing what he’d said over the phone. “I found something in the photograph,” he said, the moment we walked through the door. “The one from the storage crate. The three men in formal dress.” “The one hanging in the east hallway,” Romanov said, remembering immediately. “You’ve seen that photograph a thousand times, you said.” “I have,” Romanov agreed. “But I’ve never looked at the original this closely before. The version in the hallway has been reframed at some point, cropped slightly differently than the original print Dmitri pulled from the crate.” Dmitri pulled up both images side by side on his laptop screen, the hallway version and the original photograph from Box 4471. “Look at the edges,” he said. “The hallway version cuts off about two inches on the right side compared to the original.” I leaned in, studying the differe
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN
Aria’s POV Dmitri found something the following afternoon that shifted the entire shape of what we thought we understood about Constance, though not in the direction any of us expected. “I’ve been tracing her finances,” he said, waving us both into the study with an urgency that told me whatever he’d found mattered considerably more than routine progress. “Not because I think she’s being paid by the Correction. Something about the pattern never fit that theory properly.” “What did you find instead?” Romanov asked. Dmitri pulled up a series of transactions on his laptop, spanning back further than I expected, the dates stretching across nearly two decades. “Regular deposits,” he said. “Consistent, modest amounts, arriving every few months for years. Not enough to raise obvious suspicion if you weren’t specifically looking for a pattern. But consistent enough that it clearly wasn’t random.” “From where?” I asked. “That’s the interesting part,” Dmitri said. “Not from the Correctio
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