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TWENTY-SIX: New Rules
公開日:
2026-07-27 04:53:44
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THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-SIX: New Rules
Aria’s POV Nobody slept much after the message arrived. Romanov spent what remained of the night on the phone with people I never saw, his voice low and clipped through the study door, while I sat awake in the room that had somehow become mine without either of us ever officially deciding it. By morning, the estate had transformed again—more guards, tighter rotations, a version of lockdown that made the previous ones look almost casual. “We’re not meeting their terms,” Romanov said when I found him at breakfast, dark circles carved beneath his eyes. “But we’re not ignoring them either. I want eyes on every road leading to this property, and I want a response drafted that buys us time without giving them anything.” “What kind of response?” “One that makes them think I’m considering it,” he said, “while I use the time to find out who they actually are before I hand you over to anyone.” “You make it sound so reasonable when you say it like that.” “It is reasonable.” He looked
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-FIVE: The Call That Changed Everything
Aria’s POV I stood in the hallway outside Elena’s room with the folded address burning against my palm, weighing the same decision I’d made once already tonight. Don’t tell Romanov. I’d promised him honesty the first morning of this marriage, and I’d kept that promise even when it cost me my brother’s trust. I wasn’t about to break it now, not when Elena’s own warning—you’re not going to like who survives the truth—made it clear that whatever waited at that address mattered too much to handle alone. I found him still in the study, the photograph of Romeo and the mystery man still spread across his desk. “Elena gave me something,” I said, setting the folded paper down in front of him. “An address. Where she hid the proof.” Romanov’s eyes lifted to mine, sharp and assessing. “She told you not to tell me.” “She did.” “And yet.” “I promised you honesty,” I said. “Even when keeping a secret might have been easier.” Something shifted behind his eyes—not quite surprise,
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-FOUR: Shadows and Secrets
Aria’s POV Romanov set the note down beside the photograph, both of them side by side on his desk like evidence in a trial only he understood the stakes of. “You recognize him,” he said, watching my face rather than the picture. “From my father’s birthday two years ago.” I forced the memory into focus, sharpening details I hadn’t thought about in months. “He was introduced to me briefly. My father shook his hand as the man mattered more than anyone else in the room.” “Did you catch a name?” “No. My father never introduced business associates to me properly. I was decoration at those events, not a participant.” The old bitterness surfaced more easily than I expected, worn smooth from years of practice. “But I remember him standing near you. Or near where you should have been, if you’d actually attended.” Romanov’s expression shifted slightly. “I wasn’t there.” “Then who was standing in for you?” The question hung between us, heavier than either of us wanted to ackno
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-THREE: Family Echoes
Aria’s POV I stood in the hallway with the phone still warm against my ear long after Romeo had hung up, Priya watching me with the careful patience of someone trained not to ask questions until she absolutely had to. Tell no one. Not Romanov. Not Elena. The instruction sat heavy in my chest, made heavier by the fact that I’d made Romanov a promise the very first morning of this marriage. And here I was, less than a minute into a phone call, already weighing whether my brother’s paranoia was worth breaking it. “You should sit,” Priya said quietly. “You’ve gone pale.” “I’m fine.” “You’re not,” she said, echoing Romanov’s exact words from days earlier, and something about the repetition made me laugh despite everything, a short, humorless sound that didn’t fix anything but loosened the knot in my chest by a fraction. I made my decision walking back to my room. Not because I trusted Romeo’s warning completely, but because I’d learned the hard way what secrets cost people
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-TWO: Lines Drawn
Aria’s POV She was breathing. That was the only thing I let myself register at first, kneeling in the wet grass beside her, my hands hovering uselessly over a body that looked too small and too still to belong to the woman who’d stood in Romanov’s study demanding her own survival. “She’s alive,” one of the guards said, fingers pressed to her throat. “Pulse is weak, but it’s there.” Romanov crouched on her other side, his voice sharp and controlled even as his jaw betrayed the tension coiled beneath it. “What happened to her?” “No visible gunshot wounds,” the guard said, running practiced hands along her ribs, her skull, the back of her neck. “Looks like blunt trauma. Possibly a fall, possibly worse.” “Get her inside,” Romanov ordered. “Now.” They moved her carefully, and I followed close behind, my mind racing through every version of what might have happened—Elena caught by whoever she’d gone after, Elena running from something that finally caught up to her, Elena sta
THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE TWENTY-ONE: Safe Room Confessions
Aria’s POV Your turn is next. The words sat on the tablet screen long after the secretary lowered it, long after Romanov’s jaw had gone tight enough to ache just looking at it. “Lockdown,” Romanov said. “Full protocol. Everyone into the safe room until I know what we’re dealing with.” Nobody argued. Not even Romeo, who was finally cut loose from his restraints and half-carried down the hall by two guards who clearly still weren’t sure whether to treat him as a victim or a threat. The safe room felt smaller with four of us crowded into it—Romanov pacing near the door, Romeo slumped against the far wall nursing a split lip, the secretary hunched over a laptop tracking security feeds, and me sitting on the steel bench trying to keep my hands from shaking. “We need to talk about what that message means,” I said. “It means they know Elena’s gone,” Romanov said, not looking up from the monitor he’d commandeered. “And they think that leaves you exposed.” “Does it?” I asked.
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