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chapter 525
publish date:
2026-11-02 00:16:33
Latest chapter
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 537
Point of View: Alexander“I drove your father to that signing, Marcus. I sat outside for two hours with the engine running. I have never forgiven myself. Today I would like you to decide whether you will.”Abel Pike said it in the boot room at the back of the lodge, on Sunday afternoon, with rain still dripping from his hat. The little room smelled of wet wool and woodsmoke. Coats hung on pegs. A single bare window let in a bar of white light.I had been waiting at the lodge all day with the original transfer locked in my room, pacing like a caged man. When the car pulled into the yard and I saw Elena, Claire, and Lena climbing out, with Abel behind them carrying a bundle in oilcloth, I almost ran out into the mud.Marcus had arrived ten minutes earlier. Now he stood by the long bench with his coat still on, looking at the man who had taught him to ride a bicycle in our father’s yard.The papers lay on the bench between us. Both copies of the transfer. The receipts, the ledger, the no
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 536
Point of View: Elena“Open it yourself, Elena. My husband kept his lunch in that box for twenty two years. I will not be the one who finds it empty.”Lena Marsh said it in the basement of the old Sterling Grand Hotel, at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. We stood in a long, cold passage below the lobby, where the pipes knocked and the air tasted of dust and wet stone. Rows of narrow green lockers lined the wall, their paint cracked like dry mud. Each had a number stenciled in white. A single bulb swung overhead, and our shadows swung with it.Claire stood beside me in her gray coat. Lena leaned on her stick on my other side. We had told no one where we were going except Alexander, and he had stayed behind at the lodge with the original transfer, because Vanessa had asked him to bring it to her on Monday and not before.“It is the very end of the row,” Claire whispered.We walked slowly. I counted the numbers aloud, because it helped me breathe. Ninety eight. Ninety nine. A hundred. Som
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 535
Point of View: Alexander“Sit down, Alexander. Your mother once begged me to burn every letter I ever wrote her. I never did. Shall I tell you why she asked, or would you prefer not to know?”Gerald Halden’s room was at the end of the upper hall, small and plain, with a single lamp burning on the nightstand. It was almost eleven on Saturday night. The rain had stopped. I had spent the day in a fog of shame, on the phone with Hannah, with the bank, with a lawyer who spoke very slowly. At last the purchase was frozen. It was not undone, only held. Vanessa had said, flatly, “We will deal with it Monday,” and left me in the hall like a man who has been politely shown the door.I sat on the hard chair. Gerald sat on the bed, bent forward over his cane, the lamp throwing his shadow huge across the wall.“I am listening,” I said.“What do you know of her, before she was a Sterling?”“Very little. Naomi found a photograph last month. Two young people in aprons at a kitchen door. A girl with a
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 534
Point of View: Elena“Child, your grandmother paid a hundred and eleven of them. Do you want to hear who she forgot, or who she could not bring herself to pay? Because those are two very different answers.”Lena Marsh said it from her chair by the window, with her walking stick across her knees and a black notebook in her lap. It was Saturday afternoon. The little guest room smelled of lavender soap and old paper. Rain had begun to tap against the glass, soft and steady, and the gray light made her face look carved.I stood by the door with a tray of tea I had forgotten to pour. Claire sat on the edge of the bed with Eleanor’s ledger open beside her. I had come to bring them tea. I stayed because of the look on my daughter’s face.“Paid,” Claire said. “Lena, I do not understand. The ledger only shows numbers. The sum that never comes out the same.”“Because it was never one sum.” Lena tapped the book on her knee. “Look at the left column. What do you see?”“Initials. And dates.”“And
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 533
Point of View: Alexander“You called Victor Halden on Friday afternoon, and nobody told me. Say it again, Alexander, slowly, so I can decide whether I am angry or only tired of being the last to know.”Marcus said it with his back to me. The old wooden dock stuck out into the lake like a tongue. It was nine in the morning, and the water was the color of pewter. Frost clung to the rails. His breath rose in clouds. He had walked out here to be alone, and I had followed him in my good coat, with my hands in my pockets, the way I used to follow him across the fields when we were boys.“I called to ask what he wanted,” I said.“And what did you offer?”A gull cried somewhere over the far shore.“I said I might help with his debt.”“Help how?”“Halden Group owes a great deal to two banks. If I bought that debt through a private fund, quietly, I could sit on it. Victor would have to talk to me. It would all be settled before anyone had to read the word theft in a newspaper.”Marcus turned ar
The Billionaire's Secret Bride chapter 532
Point of View: Elena“Take the deal, Vanessa, and your name goes on a bigger door. Refuse it, and by Monday I will have my father declared unfit to hold a pen. So tell me. Which door do you want?”I heard it from the hallway, and I stopped with my hand on the doorframe. It was six o’clock on Saturday morning. I had not slept. I had come downstairs for tea, and instead I found the lodge breakfast room lit by one lamp, with Vanessa sitting very straight at the table and Victor Halden across from her, buttering his toast.He was sixty years old, silver at the temples, with a gentle voice and a lawyer’s patience. Beside him sat a thin woman in a navy suit, a leather folder on her knees.“Good morning, Elena,” said Victor, without turning. “Do come in. I was just explaining the sunrise to Vanessa.”“You drove through the night to eat toast,” Vanessa said.“I drove through the night to save two families a great deal of pain.” He smiled. “This is Ms. Pryce, my counsel. Ms. Pryce, please show
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