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Chapter 23: The Chef Is Gone
Fecha de publicación:
2026-07-08 06:19:22
Último capítulo
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 25: The Caller
“Who is this,” I said again, my voice steadier than I felt. Ethan was already watching me, alert to the shift in my posture, and I put the phone on speaker without needing to ask.“My name doesn’t matter yet,” the voice said. Male, older, careful in a way that suggested caution rather than menace. “What matters is that I was in your gardens two nights ago. I imagine your security team is still trying to figure out who.” Ethan’s whole body went rigid beside me. “You were the one in the tree line,” he said, leaning toward the phone. “Ethan Knight,” the man said, not quite surprised. “I wondered if you’d be with her when I finally called.” “Who are you.” “Someone who used to work security for Aldridge Holdings, before it dissolved. Someone who got paid very well, for a long time, to make sure certain things stayed buried. I’ve spent the last several years trying to decide whether I could live with that silence forever. I’ve decided I can’t.”I gripped Ethan’s hand tighter. “You were watc
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 24: Ordinary Things
We didn’t talk about the kiss again right away — not because either of us regretted it, but because something about naming it too quickly felt like it might make it smaller than it was. Instead, for the rest of that morning, we existed in a strange, comfortable orbit around each other, finding excuses to be in the same room without needing a reason.I found him in the library after lunch, and instead of leaving him to whatever he was reading, I sat across from him with a book of my own, and we stayed like that for over an hour, saying nothing, occasionally glancing up to find the other already looking. It was, I realized, the first entirely unremarkable afternoon I’d had since the ballroom, and I hadn’t known how much I needed one until it was already happening.“You’re staring,” he said eventually, not looking up from his page. “So are you.” “I’m allowed. You’re the one supposed to be reading.” “I am reading.” “You’ve been on the same page for twenty minutes.” I closed the book, caug
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 23: The Chef Is Gone
I came downstairs the next morning to find the kitchen in a state of quiet chaos — flour dusted across the counter, a pan smoking faintly on the stove, and Ethan standing in the middle of it all looking more lost than I’d ever seen him in the face of an actual armed threat.“What happened in here,” I asked, trying not to laugh. “The chef quit.” “The chef quit.” “This morning. Apparently the tree line incident was the last straw. She said something about being paid to cook, not survive a siege, and left before anyone could stop her.” He turned off the burner, grimacing at whatever was inside the pan. “Marcus is dealing with her replacement. In the meantime, I offered to make breakfast.” “You cook?” “I said I offered. I didn’t say I was good at it.”I peered into the pan and found something that had once, optimistically, been intended as eggs. “Ethan.” “Don’t.” “I wasn’t going to say anything.” “You were absolutely going to say something.” “It’s very… rustic.” “It’s inedible and we both
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 22: The Name on the Screen
Marcus didn’t move for a long moment after Ethan read the name aloud. He just stared at the screen like it might change if he looked at it long enough, like the letters would rearrange themselves into something less impossible.“That’s not—” He stopped, swallowed, tried again. “That’s a mistake. A clerical error. It has to be.” “Marcus.” Ethan’s voice was careful, the way it got when he was handling something breakable. “When’s the last time you spoke to your father?” “He died when I was nineteen.” Marcus’s hands had gone very still on the keyboard. “Heart attack. I was the one who found him.” “Did you ever go through his things afterward? Papers, accounts, anything like that?” “No.” The word came out rough. “I was nineteen, Ethan. I buried him and I took the security job Victor offered me because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t grieving, and I never once thought to ask why a man who worked as a groundskeeper his whole life would have anything to do with a holding c
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 21: What Elena Wrote
Reyes brought the letter down the next morning, the one she’d found alongside Sarah’s journal, still unopened after everything else had pulled our attention elsewhere. She set it on the kitchen table between the three of us — me, Ethan, and her — like she was handling something fragile enough to matter.“I kept meaning to give you space to read this properly,” she said. “Then everything else kept happening instead.” Ethan looked at the faded envelope, his mother’s handwriting across the front, addressed simply to Eleanor. “Have you read it?” “No. It felt like it belonged to you first.” That small kindness seemed to steady him more than he let on.He opened it carefully, the paper soft with age, and read it once in silence before handing it to me without a word, his jaw tight in a way that told me it had cost him something.Eleanor,I don’t know if this will reach you before Victor finds a way to stop it, so I’ll say what matters most first. You are not imagining what’s happening to yo
THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH Chapter 20: What the Trees Held
“Everyone inside,” Ethan said, already moving, one hand closing hard around my wrist. Daniel Knight was still standing on the other side of the gate, and for a strange, suspended second nobody seemed to know what to do with him — ally or stranger, father or ghost.“Take her,” Daniel said sharply to Ethan, all hesitation gone from his voice now, replaced by something that sounded, unmistakably, like command. “I’ll cover the tree line from out here.” “You don’t work for me.” “I’m not asking permission, son. I’m telling you what I’m doing.” Something passed between them, fifteen years of silence compressed into half a second of understanding, and then Ethan was running, pulling me toward the house, Reyes close behind with her weapon already drawn.Marcus met us at the door, pale but steady. “Guards are already moving on the east side. Whoever’s out there hasn’t made contact yet — they’re just holding position.” “Holding position for what,” Ethan said. “I don’t know. That’s what worries m
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