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Chapter 15 – A Kiss Meant to Hurt
Last Updated:
2025-04-30 20:55:39
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The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 16 – The Hacker
Elena Montrose’s POVThe next morning dawned grey and cold, but inside me, something burned. The unanswered questions, the veiled threats, Damien’s refusal to talk about the note I received…. it was all tightening around me like a noose. I needed answers and if Damien wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find them myself.I slipped out before sunrise, careful not to alert the newly assigned security that hovered around the estate like watchful statues. My burner phone tucked deep inside my coat, buzzed just once when I reached the outskirts of the property.Unknown Number: ‘Back entrance. Come alone’.The location pinged on the screen; an inconspicuous coffee shop in town. Harmless on the outside, but the person waiting inside could crack open Damien Crest’s secrets with a keystroke.I ducked into the coffee shop, my heart pounding. A man in a navy hoodie sat in the back corner, laptop open, fingers flying over the keyboard. His name was ‘Milo’, a ghost in the system, one of the best data mi
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Elena Montrose’s POVI didn’t sleep.After the question, after the look in Damien’s eyes, I slipped past him and shut my bedroom door. But I couldn’t sleep. Not even close.That flicker of fear I saw when I said “Viper”… it wasn’t just recognition. It was dread. The kind of dread that doesn’t come from hearing a name, it comes from “living with it”.I sat by the window for hours, staring into the blackness outside, the small flash drive heavy in my coat lining like a ticking bomb. Every thread I’d pulled had only revealed more knots, and I was starting to wonder if any of this would ever unravel cleanly.It was nearing 3a.m. when I heard:A sharp, muffled noise down the hall.Not footsteps - “Glass shattering”.I was on my feet instantly. I opened my door in silence, barefoot, the cold floors biting at my skin as I padded through the corridor toward the west wing. The light beneath Damien’s study door flickered.I paused, pressing my back to the wall. No guards. No staff.Just him.I
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Elena Montrose’s POVI thought I was being careful.After slipping the drive from Milo into the lining of my coat, I kept my head down, my steps quiet, every movement deliberate. The secrets I carried felt heavier with every passing hour, but I couldn't let them show not in this house. Especially, not around Damien’s staff. I had no idea how many of them were loyal to him, how many were watching me, how many could be swayed.But that morning, the risk nearly caught up with me.It started in Damien’s office.He’d left in a hurry after a terse phone call, his voice tight, his words clipped. Something about another security breach. Another whistle-blower, perhaps. I didn’t ask. I waited for the sound of his car pulling away before slipping into the room.I wasn’t looking to dig. Not really.Okay, maybe a little.The adrenaline from the night before still buzzed through my veins. Viper’s message haunted every breath. “Playing with fire, Elena?” It wasn’t just a taunt. It was a threat and
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Elena Montrose’s POVI’d never been to a party that felt like a funeral.But then again, this wasn’t just any party.This was the “annual Crest Industries charity gala”, hosted on the exact date my father’s empire began to collapse. The press called it a coincidence. Insiders called it poetic justice.But I called it what it was: A public spectacle dressed in philanthropy. A reminder that no sin went unpunished.And tonight, I was at the center of it all.“Elena,” Damien said, his hand firm against the small of my back as we stepped out of the car and onto the red carpet. “Smile”.I did. Barely.Cameras flashed. Questions were hurled like knives.“Mr. Crest! Is this your new wife?”“Elena, how does it feel to be back in society?”“Any comment on the Montrose trial reopening?”I ignored every voice and kept walking.The entrance to the glass-domed ballroom rose like a shimmering mirage ahead of us, gilded in gold, light, and silent judgment. Inside, the crowd buzzed - socialites in fl
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Elena Montrose’s POVThe air in the Crest estate was different after the gala. Thicker and charged. Like the silence before a storm.Damien hadn’t spoken a word on the drive home. He’d held the door for me, escorted me inside, and even touched my lower back with the same detached gentleness he always showed in public. But behind his eyes, something had changed.The way he looked at me now, it wasn’t cold. It was calculated. Like he was solving a puzzle, and I was the last missing piece.I should’ve gone to my room. Shut the door. Pretended tonight never happened.Instead, I stood in the foyer, heels still on, gown still perfect, mask slipping.“Who was she?” he asked at last.His voice echoed in the marble.“I don’t know,” I replied carefully. “Some woman who said she knew my mother”.He turned slowly to face me, and for a moment, I almost wished he’d yell. Explode. Anything but the quiet intensity he leveled at me.“You didn’t look surprised,” he said. “Not really”.I swallowed. “Bec
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Elena Montrose’s POVThe world around me shattered with the explosion. One moment, Damien and I were standing in the hallway, the heat of his anger and the tension between us thick enough to cut with a knife. The next, the world exploded into chaos.The force of the blast threw me to the ground, the world spinning in a blur of fire and smoke. My ears rang. The taste of ash and metal lingered in my mouth. For a moment, everything felt muffled, as if I were trapped in a nightmare. My heart raced, pounding in my chest like a drum.I tried to push myself up, but a sharp pain shot through my leg, making me gasp. My vision swam. Then I heard Damien’s voice, distant but familiar.“Elena?”His hand was on my arm, pulling me to my feet, his touch firm but shaking. He was covered in debris, dust settling in his hair and along his jacket. His face was a mask of focused fury, but there was something else - something I couldn’t place. Concern? Fear?He caught sight of the blood on my leg, his face
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Elena Montrose’s POVThe night pressed in around me, a suffocating stillness. I could barely breathe as I lay there, staring up at the darkened ceiling of the villa. The soft rustling of trees in the distance was the only sound, but even that felt too loud in the silence that stretched between Damien and me. The weight of everything that had happened, everything we’d uncovered hung over us like a thick fog, choking out any peace.I shifted in the bed, pulling the covers closer despite the heat. My leg throbbed, a constant reminder of the chaos that had unfolded hours before, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my chest. It wasn’t just the physical pain; it was everything I had learned. The explosion, the secrets, and the realization that Damien had been caught up in something far bigger than either of us. And now, I was trapped in this web, struggling to find a way out.I closed my eyes, hoping sleep would bring some relief. But instead, it brought only nightmares.Flames, So m
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Elena Montrose’s POVThe villa was too quiet.That kind of silence, the unnatural kind - wasn’t peace. It was the hush before a scream, the breath before a bullet. And I knew it. My instincts had been honed by fire, betrayal, and years of surviving in the shadows. Every tick of the antique clock on the wall was a countdown. I just didn’t know what it was ticking toward.I sat alone in the study, the laptop open on the desk. Milo's encrypted drive was plugged in. I’d been trying for hours to decode the remaining files, but every firewall he’d bypassed in his final upload felt like a warning. Like he knew he wouldn’t be able to protect me much longer.The message came in at 2:13 a.m.Unknown Sender: Check your secure inbox, now.I didn’t hesitate.I opened the private vault—an encrypted server Milo had set up years ago, buried under false identities and routing tunnels. The message was waiting. One file. No text. Just a timestamp: Ten minutes before he died.My heart dropped.I clicked.
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The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 40 – The Real Enemy… Is Family
The mansion felt quieter than usual. Not just in volume, but in energy. Like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to detonate.I stood at the tall glass window of Damien’s study, the night bleeding into the sky, the city twinkling in oblivion. Everything was moving forward out there, cars, people, deals. But inside me, everything had come to a halt.The revelation from hours ago still pulsed behind my eyes: Damien’s assistant, the one who knew every security detail, every shadow in this house, had been Viper’s mole.The explosion.The threats.The surveillance.All orchestrated from the inside.And yet… that wasn’t the part haunting me.It was what Damien had said just before we confronted the traitor, his voice hoarse, like dragging confession from his throat. “There’s still someone worse than him. Someone you trust.”I had brushed it off in the chaos. I didn’t want to believe it. But now, every memory from my past seemed to shift under that possibility. Because the trut
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 39 – Betrayal from Within
The silence in the Crest estate was deceptive, like the calm before a devastating storm. I stood by the window, arms crossed, staring at the sprawling grounds bathed in the pale gray of a brooding dawn. The mansion had been too quiet lately, too perfect. And that perfection unnerved me.Damien was in his study, poring over files that had arrived from a private investigator he trusted. Since discovering the truth about my mother’s locket and our shared past with his brother Lucas, things between us had shifted again. Not in an explosive, heartbreaking way, but quietly. Intensely. Like the slow tightening of a knot, we both knew we couldn’t escape.We were living under one roof, sharing information, even meals, but neither of us said what needed to be said. There was too much history, too much pain. And something told me the worst was yet to come.The creak of the floor behind me pulled me from my thoughts. I turned.It was Samuel.Damien’s longtime personal assistant. Impeccably dresse
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 38 – The Fake Affair
The photo still burned in my mind.That image of me and Lucas Crest, Damien’s younger brother, laughing in a sun-drenched garden, tucked away inside my mother’s old locket. A locket that Damien had kept hidden in his safe, buried beneath layers of secrets. I hadn’t spoken much to him since confronting him about it. The look in his eyes that day, half guilt, half pain, told me everything and nothing.I didn’t know what to believe anymore. But I knew I couldn’t run.Not with Viper still out there.Not with the pieces of this puzzle finally starting to fit.And certainly not with the media closing in after someone leaked a tip that Damien Crest and I were back under the same roof. The headlines were spinning wild theories. Most were salacious, and all were wrong. We needed to shift the spotlight. To misdirect whoever was watching. Whoever had been feeding on the chaos surrounding us.That’s how the idea of the fake affair was born.It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Just a strategy. A
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 37 – The Locket
The air in Damien’s office felt heavier than usual, thick with unspoken words and unresolved tension. After the revelations about my father and the increasingly complicated web of lies we were trapped in, I wasn’t sure where I stood with Damien anymore. His silence, though, was what was strangling me now.As I wandered the room, I tried to shake off the unease that had settled deep in my chest. The papers on Damien’s desk, documents, contracts, more secrets, didn’t hold my attention. Not right now. It was the feeling of being watched, of being on the edge of something, something huge, that had my mind swirling.I moved instinctively toward the safe in the corner of the room. It was a part of this strange world Damien inhabited, locked away in secrets, protected by a combination no one but him could crack. Yet, in the weeks I’d spent at his side, I’d come to realize that nothing was truly safe in his world, not even the things he hid.The door to the safe creaked open, and I felt a thr
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 36 – Someone's Watching
The knock on the door startled me, pulling me from my thoughts. My hands were shaking as I set the file down, eyes scanning the words on the page, the weight of the information pressing against my chest. The familiar tension between Damien and me was still heavy in the air, but there was something more, a lingering sense that the ground beneath us was crumbling, and we were running out of time.I stood up quickly, smoothing my dress as I approached the door. My heart raced in anticipation of what was coming next.When I opened it, I found a manila envelope lying on the doorstep. No one was there, and the silence felt unnerving as if the world had stopped, holding its breath. I bent down to pick it up, my mind spinning with possibilities. With one swift motion, I tore open the envelope. Inside, I found a stack of surveillance photos. The first one hit me like a punch to the gut.Damien.And my father.The photos were grainy, taken from a distance, but unmistakable. Damien was sitting
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 35 – The First Kiss (That Meant Something)
The event had been a disaster from the start.I knew it was going to be bad when I stepped into the lavish ballroom, my heels clicking loudly on the marble floors. The Gala for Women in Business had always been one of those affairs where the high-powered elite gathered to pretend they liked each other, exchanging smiles that never quite reached their eyes. But tonight felt different. The air was thick with tension, and the room was buzzing with whispered rumors.Elena Montrose. The notorious daughter of the disgraced billionaire. The woman who’d somehow gotten herself into the good graces of one of the most powerful CEO's in the world, Damien Crest.I had learned to ignore the rumors, to block out the judgment. But this time, it was harder. Because I wasn’t just the daughter of a man everyone despised; I was also the woman whose name was now permanently etched beside Damien’s. And not in a way that was accepted by everyone.The whispers, the glances, the subtle slights, I had become a
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 34 – The Alliance
The sound of the rain against the villa’s glass panels was steady, calming, and almost deceptively peaceful. But inside, the air between Damien and me was charged. Not with anger or suspicion, but something far more volatile, truth.Real truth.We sat across from each other in the dim glow of the living room, a spread of files, photographs, and encrypted flash drives laid out between us like the pieces of a broken life. Mine. His. Ours.Damien leaned forward, his sleeves rolled up, revealing a constellation of bruises and healing cuts. The gunshot wound to his shoulder still had him favoring his left side, but he hadn’t slowed down. If anything, his intensity had doubled."This one," he said, tapping a picture of a board member from my father's company, "was at the meeting where the Montrose Agreement was signed. But he died in a car crash two weeks later. That’s too convenient."I nodded slowly, my eyes tracing the fine lines of suspicion and betrayal etched across the documents. "Th
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 33 – Back to the Fire
The scent hit me first.Ash and damp wood, long cooled by time but never forgotten. It clung to the ruins like a ghost. The burned Montrose estate stood before me, the skeletal remains of what used to be my family’s empire. A mausoleum made of memories.The wind rustled through the blackened trees lining the perimeter, whispering secrets in a language only the past understood.I hadn’t planned to come here. But something inside me, something raw and restless, had driven me back to this place. The flash drive Damien showed me had ignited more than just questions. It had cracked open a door I thought I’d sealed forever.Now I stood here again. Alone. Or so I thought.“You shouldn’t be here.” His voice came from behind me, low and rough.I turned, heart jerking. Damien stepped out from the shadows cast by what used to be our garden archway. His coat fluttered in the wind, his face pale beneath the overcast sky.“I needed to see it,” I said my voice barely a whisper.Damien walked beside
The CEO’s Vengeful Bride Chapter 32 – Code Name: Viper
Elena’s POVI stared at the encrypted file again, the name “Viper” pulsing on the screen like a warning I couldn’t unseen. The drive had been locked tight, but Damien’s tech specialist, reluctantly sworn to secrecy, managed to recover fragments of conversations, redacted signatures, and timestamps. Everything pointed towards a corporate elite… someone powerful, protected, and cold enough to order executions under code names."Viper says she's getting too close. Remove her."My hands shook slightly as I scrolled through the fragmented logs. The deeper I looked, the worse it got. Government connections. Offshore accounts. A cover-up that spanned a decade. And all of it centered on one question that haunted me like a whisper in the dark:Who is Viper?Damien stood at the edge of the study, arms crossed, face unreadable as always. But his silence was different now, no longer suspicious, just... resigned."You're thinking what I'm thinking," I said without looking at him.“That the snake
