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Chapter 34: Mrs Parker made tea
publish date:
2026-05-27 20:48:26
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THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 90: Mini date
OLIVIA’S POVIt was one of those evenings that arrived gently.No event. No appointment. No appearance required of either of us. The day had finished quietly and the house had settled into its evening self and somewhere around seven Jaden had appeared at the door of the sitting room where I was reading and said simply:“Come outside.”Not a question.Not an instruction exactly.Just an invitation offered in the particular way of someone who had decided they wanted company and had chosen whose.I set my book down and followed him.The back terrace in the evening was one of the things I had come to love about this house without planning to.The way the city spread out beyond the grounds. The specific quality of the light as it dropped. The particular cooling of the air that happened in the hour between late afternoon and dark when the temperature shifted and everything became slightly more itself.We sat in the chairs we had developed a habit of occupying. He's on the left. Mine on the
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 75: The filling
JADEN’S POVThe filing arrived on a Wednesday.Ethan brought it to me in the late morning with the expression he wore when he was delivering something he had already assessed and did not like the assessment of. He set it on my desk without preamble and stepped back.I picked it up.Read the cover p
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 74: The lunch
OLIVIA’S POVThe visit had gone better than I expected.Better than I had quietly been dreading on the drive over that morning. I had sat in the passenger seat watching the city move past the window and running through versions of how it might go. My father asking Jaden direct questions that requir
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 73: Peaceful day
OLIVIA’S POVI got home later than I intended.The afternoon had stretched itself. My father had wanted to walk through every room of the new house slowly. Had asked the maids questions with the thoroughness of a man conducting an inspection. Had rearranged two things in the kitchen and declared th
THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE Chapter 72: Leaving the hospital
OLIVIA’S POV The house Jaden had arranged for my father was nothing like our old apartment.I had expected something comfortable. Something functional. A decent space with enough room for a man recovering from surgery to move around without difficulty.I had not expected this.Three bedrooms. A pr
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