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Chapter 42: The part I kept

Clara’s Pen
last update Veröffentlichungsdatum: 29.05.2026 22:14:00

OLIVIA’S POV

I did not tell him about Adrian’s call that night.

I had decided that in the car on the way back from Millbrook. And then I had undecided it approximately four times since. Sitting with it alone in the armchair that evening while Jaden was still at the office. Turning it over. Testing its weight.

It is information he can use. The contract implies I am here to provide information. Telling him is the logical and correct thing to do.

All of that was true.

And yet.

The phone call had h
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  • 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 83: Something real

    OLIVIA’S POVHe was in the study.Of course he was. It was a Thursday afternoon and there was a regulatory filing and a deal in motion and eleven years of momentum building toward a conclusion. Jaden Parker did not take Thursday afternoons off.I knocked.“Come in.”He was at the desk. Screens open. The focused version of him that existed when the work had its teeth in properly. He looked up when I came in and read my face the way he always did.Something shifted in his expression.He set his phone down.I sat in the chair across from him without being asked.“Adrian called,” I said.Jaden was still.Not the professional stillness. The other kind. The complete attention of a man receiving information he was going to hold carefully.“Today?” he said.“An hour ago.”He looked at me.“Tell me,” he said.So I did.All of it. The almost not answering. The different quality of his voice. The I made a mistake and the worst decision I ever made and the way the genuine emotion and the strateg

  • THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE    Chapter 82: Cornered

    OLIVIA’S POVThe silence after my question was longer than any of the others.I sat with it without filling it. That was the thing about having loved someone for six years. You learned their silences. The way each kind sounded different. The silence of someone thinking. The silence of someone deciding. The silence of someone caught between what they had planned to say and what they were actually going to say.This was the third kind.“I need to know what Jaden is planning,” Adrian said finally.There it was.I looked at the library shelves in front of me. At the rows of books arranged with Jaden’s particular precision. At the room I had made my own over fourteen months without meaning to.“Specifically,” Adrian continued, his voice shifting slightly into something more practiced now that the pretense had dropped, “the regulatory response. He filed something counter to our complaint and I need to understand the scope of it. You have access to things I do not. Things you would know from

  • 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

  • THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE    Chapter 31: Face to Face

    OLIVIA’S POV The gala was winding down the way expensive events always did. Gradually. Reluctantly. People finishing conversations they had started two hours ago, collecting coats and compliments in equal measure, the energy of the room thinning slowly like something being poured out.Marcus had

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