ANMELDENTeilen
Chapter 17: I am not unsettled
Veröffentlichungsdatum:
17.05.2026 18:00:02
Aktuellstes Kapitel
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 89: Real
OLIVIA’S POVSomething had shifted.Not dramatically. Nothing between us was ever dramatic. But something had moved in the days after the article and the sitting room and the pause that had answered a question more honestly than words would have.I noticed it first in small things.The way he found me in the library on a Tuesday afternoon with no stated purpose. Just appeared in the doorway with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up and said something about a documentary he had seen the night before and then sat in the chair across from mine and kept talking.For forty minutes.About a documentary.With no meeting afterward. No call waiting. No file requiring review.Just forty minutes of conversation in the library on a Tuesday because he had wanted to have it.I noticed it in the mornings.He had started arriving at the breakfast table slightly later than usual. Not late. Just later. The difference between a man who came downstairs to fuel himself efficiently before the day began
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 88: The Question I asked
OLIVIA’S POVThe sitting room had settled into the particular quiet of a morning that had already contained too much.We had been sitting in it together for almost an hour. Not talking. Not performing the comfortable silence we had developed over months. Something different from that. Something that had weight in it but was not heavy. The specific quality of two people who had just moved through something significant together and were still inside the aftermath of it.The article was being taken down.The retraction was being prepared.Camille had been warned in terms that Jaden had described as final and that I believed completely.I looked at the grounds outside the window. At the morning going about its ordinary business with complete indifference to the fact that I had spent my night with shaking hands reading comments from strangers and my morning being held steady by a man who had made three phone calls before nine o’clock on my behalf.I turned from the window.Looked at him.H
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 87: Handled misconception
JADEN’S POVI called Ethan from the study at eight fifteen.Olivia had gone upstairs to shower and change and I had come to the study and closed the door and sat behind the desk and made the call with the particular focused calm of someone who had already decided what they wanted to know and was simply waiting for the information to confirm it.“The article,” I said when Ethan answered.“I saw it,” he said. “I have been pulling threads since six.”“How long do you need?”“I have something already.” A pause. The specific pause he used when what he was about to say required careful delivery. “Sir. You are not going to like it.”“Tell me.”Another pause.“The sourcing goes back to a communication chain we can trace to a number connected to Camille Rousseau.”The study went very quiet.I sat behind the desk and looked at the filing cabinet in the corner and let the information arrive and settle and arrange itself into its full shape.Camille.The photograph sent to Olivia’s phone with its
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 86: In his comfort
OLIVIA’S POVHe was already there when I came downstairs.I had not expected that. I had spent the last hour in my room rehearsing the conversation. How I would tell him. The order of it. The way I would keep my voice even and my face managed and present it as information requiring a response rather than something that had kept me awake since half past one with shaking hands.I had a plan.The plan dissolved the moment I saw his face.He was sitting at the dining table with no phone in front of him and no file and no screen. Just him. Two coffee cups. The morning quiet of the house around him.He had already seen it.I understood that the moment I sat down across from him. The particular quality of his stillness. The way he looked at me without the assessing professional look. The other one. The one that asked questions the contract had not written in.“Are you alright?” he said.And it was the way he said it.Not the routine inquiry of one person checking in on another. Something und
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 85: The Article
JADEN’S POVI found out at six forty three in the morning.Not from Ethan. Not from the news alert I had set up years ago for mentions of my company name. From Marcus.My phone buzzed on the nightstand before my alarm. I reached for it in the dark with the particular reflex of someone who had trained themselves to treat early morning messages as things requiring immediate attention.Marcus had sent a link.No message. Just the link.Which from Marcus meant he had seen something and wanted me to see it before I heard about it from someone else.I opened it.Read it.Read it again.Then I set the phone down on the nightstand and looked at the ceiling for a moment.The article was detailed in a way that required access. Not the vague approximation of someone working from public record. Specific. The hospital. The bills. The timeline. The framing designed to make Olivia look desperate and me look naive and the whole arrangement look like something shameful that had been hidden rather than
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 84: The anonymous Blog
OLIVIA’S POVI could not sleep.It was one of those nights that arrived without warning. Not the anxious kind from the early months in this house. Not the grief kind from the hospital months. Just the wide awake kind. The kind where your body had decided it was finished with sleep for reasons it did not feel obligated to explain.I lay in the dark for an hour.Turned over.Turned back.Got up and went to the window and looked at the grounds and came back to bed.Picked up my phone at half past one because that was what you did at half past one when sleep had decided to go somewhere else.I opened the news app out of habit.Scrolled.And stopped.The headline was from a gossip outlet. The kind that operated in the specific territory between news and cruelty and had learned to dress the second thing as the first.I stared at the title.Then I opened the article.And read it.And read it again.It was detailed in the way that required access.Not the vague innuendo of someone working fro
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 35: Surgery at Ten
OLIVIA’S POV I could not focus on the book.I had tried. I had turned twelve pages and retained nothing. The words kept dissolving before they reached anywhere meaningful, replaced immediately by the same loop of thoughts I had been running since I woke up.My father.The surgery.The specific hel
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 34: Mrs Parker made tea
OLIVIA’S POV Ethan came to the house for a meeting that afternoon.I heard him arrive from the library. His voice in the entrance hall. Warm and easy in the way it always was. The kind of person who filled a room with a comfortable energy without trying to. I had decided early on that I liked Etha
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 33: The Photograph
OLIVIA’S POV The house had a rhythm I was beginning to know.Not just the schedule of it. The deeper rhythm. The way it breathed differently on mornings when Jaden had early calls versus mornings when he worked from the study. The way the kitchen smelled before Clara had fully started breakfast. T
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 32: Eleven years ago
OLIVIA’S POV The car ride home was quiet.Not the comfortable quiet of the drive back from the Thompson event. Not the easy silence of two people who had finished a long evening and were simply resting in it.This was different.This quiet had something in it. Something that had walked out of that
Das könnte dir auch gefallen
Flash Marriage: A Billionaire For A Rebound
LiLhyz731.0K AufrufeThe Three Little Guardian Angels
Ginger Bud3.3M AufrufeOne Night Stand
Favor V April1.0M AufrufeEx-Husband's Regret
Evelyn M.M4.8M AufrufeBetrayed By My Husband, I Married His Billionaire Uncle
Maritha19 AufrufeSuit and Scars: Claimed By The Biker Boss
Edwinayuss122 AufrufeDivorce Suits Me Better
Olivia GW226 AufrufeThe other Mrs.Adie (mistress to my sister’s husband)
Sunflower 27 Aufrufe
