LOGINShare
CHAPTER 26- WHO ARE YOU?
publish date:
2026-08-10 07:51:29
Latest chapter
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE Chapter 75: A Leak From Inside
HOWARD'S POV"There was something," I said. "Two nights ago. I wasn't supposed to hear it.""What," Vivienne said. "What did you hear."I reached for the envelope first. I want to say I hesitated, that there was a version of this where my hand stayed on the table and some old, buried piece of me won out over the new one that's been losing every round for months — but there wasn't. There hasn't been, not since the bank started calling before nine in the morning. I pulled it toward me and didn't look at her while I did it, because I've found that's the only way to do certain things cleanly, not looking at the person you're doing them to."Celeste's lawyer was here," I said. "Not Damien's. Hers. Separate counsel, which nobody in that house has bothered to explain to me, and I didn't ask, because asking gets you noticed and I have worked very hard this year to not be noticed.""Go on.""They were in the study with the door shut, which means nothing, except Margaret's name came up twice be
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE Chapter 74: Vivienne's Next Move
VIVIENNE'S POV"You don't knock anymore?""I used to live here.""Past tense, Vivienne. We've been over this."He didn't look up from the glass. That was the first thing I noticed, before the smell, before the state of the kitchen, before any of it — my father has spent forty years making sure a room reorganizes itself around him the second he walks into it, and now he couldn't be bothered to lift his eyes off a tumbler of something brown for his own daughter."Where's Margaret.""Upstairs. Not speaking to me. Join the club, we're starting a chapter.""That's not funny.""Wasn't trying to be funny. Sit down if you're staying. Don't if you're not."***I sat. Not because he asked nicely — he never asks anything nicely, it isn't in him — but because standing in that kitchen made me feel sixteen again, waiting to be told what I'd done wrong this time, and I have spent six months clawing my way out of feeling sixteen in front of anyone."You look thin," he said, finally looking at me. "Th
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE CHAPTER 73- HER ANSWER
CELESTE'S POV"You don't have to say anything.""I know.""You can just sit there. I'll take the silence as information too."I didn't move. The pen was still in my hand, capped now, because somewhere in the last minute I had stopped believing I needed it for anything. Page nine sat between us on the desk with its three yellow tabs, and neither of us had touched it since he said the sentence that undid the whole document."Damien—""You don't owe me tonight. I know what tonight is." He said it evenly, the way he says things in boardrooms he's already lost, a flatness that costs him more than shouting would. "I'll go if you want me to go.""I don't want you to go."That earned me something — his eyes came up off the desk and found mine, and for once in seven months of watching that man arrange his face for whatever room he's in, he didn't arrange it fast enough.***We ended up on the floor. Not because it was romantic. Because the chair by the window was too far from him and the desk
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE CHAPTER 72- CHOOSING IT
CELESTE'S POV"I'd rather stand.""That wasn't a request, Damien.""It sounded like one from here.""Then it's the tone. I'm told it's the laundry room voice. It doesn't come off."He didn't laugh. He stayed in the doorway with one hand flat on the frame, no jacket, sleeves shoved to the elbow, at one in the morning in a house where I had never once seen him without a collar, and behind him the hall was so dark it looked like he'd walked out of it on purpose."You've been in here since ten," he said."Eleven.""Adrian said ten.""Adrian wasn't here.""He's very sure of himself for a man who wasn't here.""It's the law degree. It makes him brave."The corner of his mouth moved and thought better of it. I looked down at page nine, which is where I'd been looking for the best part of three hours, at the three yellow tabs along its edge, the twelve months, the review, and the line about either party withdrawing on thirty days' written notice, which was the first one I'd tabbed and the one
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE CHAPTER 71- A WARNING WORTH TAKING
DAMIEN'S POV"How long was she standing there.""Since the coffee," Adrian said. He was already shrugging into his jacket, the way a man does at the end of an ordinary Tuesday. "Give or take."I looked at the glass. The clear half showed me the corridor and a wall clock and nothing else, but a second earlier there had been the shape of her above the frost, a box on one hip and a hand on the door, and then there hadn't."You knew she was there.""From the second I opened my mouth.""You said all of that to a pane of glass.""I said it to you. The glass just happened to be where she was standing.""That wasn't yours to do.""No," Adrian said. "It was yours. And you'd have got around to it in about eleven months, probably on page nine of a document I helped you draft, standing at a window in a very good coat."I opened my mouth and there was nothing in it."What did she hear.""Enough." He picked his folder up off the table and tucked it under his arm. "Probably a few things you didn't m
THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE CHAPTER 70: WHAT ADRIAN NOTICES
CELESTE'S POV"You've read that page four times," Adrian said, "and it hasn't changed, so either it's the most interesting page in the building or you're not actually reading it.""I'm reading it.""You're reading the same paragraph and looking at the door."I turned the page face down, which was a stupid thing to do in a room where the only other person had already watched me do the opposite for ten minutes."He said twenty minutes," I said. "That was forty minutes ago.""He said twenty minutes to Marcus, and Marcus went down the hall to fight with the printer, so I'd say Damien is standing in the corridor doing what he does when he's supposed to be working and isn't.""Which is what.""Watching the elevators. Waiting for somebody to come out of them."He said it lightly, pen running down the margin of the ledger timeline, not looking up, the way he'd said everything for weeks, ever since Damien finally opened the case file to him and let him sit at this table with the clinic dates a
You May Also Like
Craving The Wrong Brother
Elysian Sparrow605.9K viewsTriplets on Secret Mission
Lamour Toujours1.3M viewsMaster Odell’s Secret Ex-wife
Eggsoup1.2M viewsForceful Marriage: Young Master's Mute Wife
A Lake’s Depth1.3M viewsApocalypse: Too Late To Want Me Back
Phil Joses253 viewsMy Billionaire Husband Killed Me, I Came Back As His Enemy
readlashes17 viewsI Died Loving Him. This Time He Remembers Too.
Lyra Vance137 viewsToo Late, Ex-Husband: The Wife He Lost
FrevinaWrites 17 views
