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**Chapter Thirty: The Bait**
publish date:
2026-09-02 00:53:28
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THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Thirty-Two**
**Sam's POV** Something moved against my temple, cold and rough, slowly tucking a loose strand of hair back from my face, the touch so light it felt more like something I'd imagined than something that had actually happened. In the half-second before my mind caught up, I let myself stay soft in it, unguarded in a way I never allowed myself to be in this house. Warmth pulled me out of sleep before sound did. My eyes opened on instinct, my whole body already half braced, the old reflex of a woman who'd learned that waking up unguarded could cost her something. Adrian stood in front of me, already a step back, hand withdrawn, like he'd finished the motion before I could catch him in the middle of it. A blanket sat heavy across my shoulders, tucked in at the side where I'd curled into the kitchen bench, the kitchen held its breath around us, the way rooms did in this house whenever he was in them. "This isn't a bed. Sleep somewhere proper." I pulled the blanket tighter aroun
THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Thirty-One: The Photograph**
**Sam's POV** His voice found me before I'd finished turning around. "Rosa told the maid to move everything in here. I came to check that nothing got left behind in the transfer." It came out smoother than I expected, and I let myself lean into the ease of the lie rather than second-guess it. He studied me for a moment, not with suspicion exactly, more the way he studied everything, cataloguing, filing details away for later use whether or not they meant anything yet. "You could have asked a maid to check for you, while you get dressed." "I… I didn't think of it." Something almost like amusement crossed his face, there and gone fast enough that I couldn't be sure I'd actually seen it. He stepped closer anyway, toward me, close enough that the towel suddenly felt like the only thing standing between us and a conversation neither of us had agreed to have yet. His cold grey eyes held mine, steady, unreadable in the low light. Heat climbed up my neck, nothing to do with ange
THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Thirty: The Bait**
**Sam’s POV** I turned and carried the tray back to the kitchen without seeing much of the corridor in front of me. A guard stepped aside when he saw me. Another opened a door. I barely noticed either. …Mrs. Samantha… The words followed me all the way back to my separate room. By the time I got inside, I had already gone through every face from the council chamber. The men who had started when Adrian refused to formalize the Laurent alliance. Adrian's grandfather, whom I haven't seen in the castle since I arrived… The guards… The servants. My mind kept circling the same question. Why me? Celine Salvatore was dead. Everyone believed that… Sam Dela Cruz was supposed to be nobody. So who had a reason to kill a woman who technically had no past? I stood there with my hand still on the door after I'd closed it, the thoughts still circling. I turned the key twice and crossed to the small dresser in the corner and opened the bottom drawer, the one I kept locked sinc
THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Twenty-nine: The Woman Beside Him**
**Sam's POV** The words sat in the air longer than they should have. "The Laurent alliance," he said, "will be formalized tonight. Signed before this council disperses. The terms have waited long enough." A few approving murmurs rolled down the table's length, quiet, satisfied, men who'd clearly been waiting months for exactly this sentence. Vivienne laughed, smoothing her dress with both palms, unhurried, claiming the ground one motion at a time. "It's overdue," she said, simple, composed, though something underneath the composure sat too careful to be entirely comfortable. "I think everyone at this table agrees the timing has already cost us more than it should have." "Agreed," A woman said from further down, quick enough to sound rehearsed. Adrian let the silence stretch the way he always let silence stretch, unbothered, until even the satisfied murmurs thinned out waiting for him to fill it. "There will be a signing," he said finally. "Not tonight." His eyes moved onc
THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Twenty-Eight**
**Sam's POV”* “Let go of me." The guard's grip on my arm loosened the moment we cleared the secure room, and I pulled free of it entirely before we reached the corridor, needing at least that much control back over my own body. One clear second earlier, I'd had the barrel turned on Adrian instead of the man tied to that chair. The gun had felt lighter in that direction than it had toward either prisoner, like some old, buried part of me had been waiting weeks for exactly that alignment. The urge to pull the trigger sat in my blood the same way anger did, but I couldn't do it, and I still wasn't entirely sure which part of me had made that decision, the part that needed my father found, or the part that was simply too much of a coward to finish what I'd started. Why had he handed me that gun? He let me walk out of that room untouched the second I refused. None of it added up into anything I could trust as an answer. And the man Rachel had actually died because of? He was st
THE WIFE THEY BURIED **Chapter Twenty-Seven: Kill him, Sam**
**Adrian's POV** She was sitting where I'd instructed Theo to keep her, her wrist was raw at the edge of the cuff, spine straight despite everything the last few hours had put her through. I crossed the room slowly, watching the way her eyes tracked every step without her head actually turning to follow me. Her hair had come loose from whatever style the maids had pinned it into that morning, dark strands falling loose around her face, still faintly damp at the ends from the rain. Her eyes found mine and held there, steady, dark enough in this light that I couldn't tell where the color ended and the pupil began. The slit in her gown had shifted where she'd been sitting, baring most of her leg, from the knee up to her thigh, my gaze dropped there before I could stop myself, then back up, slower than I meant to allow. She sat there matching my patience with hers, which told me more about her than a hundred questions would have. "You've got an hour left, Mrs. Samantha Dela Cruz
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