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Chapter 39 – Betrayal from Within
Last Updated:
2025-05-06 19:27:26
Ernest BrooksAre you enjoying the story? Leave a comment, like this chapter
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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
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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
