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Chapter 32: What the Fever Loosens
publish date:
2026-05-01 06:47:53
Latest chapter
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 140 — The Proposal; Wedding
It was late when we ended up in the gallery.We hadn’t planned it. The important moments between us had rarely happened that way.We were sitting on the floor. I had sat down at some point, and he had sat beside me. We had been there for a while when he spoke.“I want to try this for real,” he said.I looked at the painting. “We already are,” I said.The past several months had been real in every way that mattered.“Officially,” he said. “Legally. This time, we both choose it.”I was quiet for a moment. I looked at the painting, then turned to him.“You want to get married again,” I said.“Yes,” he replied.“To me?” I asked.He looked at me. “There is no one else I want to be read by,” he said.I took in his words. I understood them immediately and completely.I stayed quiet for a long moment, not because I was unsure, but because the moment was important enough to deserve silence. I wanted to take in what he had said instead of rushing to answer.I had spent much of my life carefully
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 139 — What Fate Was Doing
We drove back that evening.The return journey felt different from the drive that morning. There was a difference between driving toward something and driving away from something good. The day had gone better than I had expected, and I felt satisfied in a way that did not require me to change what I had expected from it. It had simply been a better day than I had imagined.My father had stood at the door again when we left.He shook Adrian’s hand and, unlike his usual self, gave him a single pat on the shoulder. Then he looked at me.The drive home was quieter than the drive there.It was not an uncomfortable silence. We had spent the day with someone else, and now we were returning to the comfort of being alone together. It was the quiet that came after good company, when the visit was over and there was nothing left to do but settle back into each other’s presence.The fields passed outside the window as dusk fell.Adrian asked about the journalism prize.Not immediately. We had pas
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 138 — Sunday Lunch
Adrian drove.That was the first thing we had not planned but simply allowed to happen. I had assumed we would take the train, as I had done many times before. The two-hour journey was so familiar that I could almost feel every part of it without thinking.But on Saturday evening, Adrian offered to drive if I was okay with it. I said I was, and by nine on Sunday morning, we were in his car, with the city behind us and Fenwick ahead.For once, the journey was not planned around saving time or being efficient.Adrian drove while I watched the city disappear behind us.We talked now and then, with comfortable silences in between. Our best conversations had always been like that. Neither of us needed to keep talking just to fill the silence.He asked about my father’s history society, which I had mentioned when telling him about my visit.I told him what I knew. My father had joined after a neighbor suggested it, but he had stayed because he discovered he had strong opinions about local f
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 137 — Her Father
Fenwick was two hours away by train.I had made the journey many times throughout my adult life. I knew it so well that I could almost feel each part of it without thinking. I knew the order of the stations and how the light through the windows changed as the train left the city, passed through the outer districts, and entered a landscape that had remained much the same over the decades I had spent leaving and returning.I had not been back since the investigation was published.That was what I thought about for most of the journey. I did not feel guilty, or carry the weight of a daughter who had stayed away for too long. I simply accepted the truth. I had not come back by accident at this particular time. I had needed to get through certain things before I could return as the person I had become. It had taken until now for me to feel that I was finally that person.My father met me at the station.He was thinner than the last time I had seen him. Not so thin that I needed to worry im
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 136 — What He Says
He looked at me.“I know,” he said, but I could tell he had more to say.“I’ve read everything you wrote,” he continued. “Not just the investigation. Your earlier work too. Your reports on the Carver inquiry and the articles you wrote before that. I also read the planning document you sent Daniel. Nathaniel forwarded it to me because he thought I should know what you were working on.”He paused.“I’ve read the things you chose not to include, too.”I stood very still.“I know what you included in the investigation and what you left out,” he said. “I know the difference between what a journalist includes to make a report complete and what a journalist leaves out on purpose. You made those choices carefully. You decided what information the investigation could include and what had to stay out.”He repeated my words, almost exactly as I had said them. That told me he had heard the five words I spoke while standing in the entryway. He had remembered them and was now saying them back to me
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 135 — What She Says
“Adrian,” I said.He waited for me to speak.“I am a journalist. That is the first truth I need you to understand because everything else I tell you comes after it. I want to make sure there is no confusion about that.”He stood still and listened.“The investigation was true from the day I accepted the assignment until the day the article was published. The research was real, and so was my commitment to uncovering the truth. I followed the same professional standards I use for every important investigation, and I never compromised them during those eighteen months.”I paused.Not to make the moment more dramatic, but because the next sentence was the most important part, and I wanted to say it clearly.“The story was always going to be published,” I said. “I didn’t make that decision at any particular moment. I had already committed to telling the truth before I ever walked through your door. The fraud was real. It had been going on for fifteen years. The thirty-one names in the vict
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 12: Serena Voss
The dissolution was too clean and too fast. Someone had been ready to shut it down the moment she was gone. I checked the director's history. Lena had been the sole director for four years. But in her final year, a second director was added. The name had been redacted in the public record, it was
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 11: First Real Argument
His mother’s maiden name. I sat at the kitchen table staring at the message while Adrian moved behind me making breakfast. Lena Voss. Dead for twenty years. The name had come from the same anonymous source that had been feeding me pieces of this puzzle for weeks. Someone who knew far more than they
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 8: Nathaniel’s Suspicion
The lights snapped back on forty seconds later. Every bulb in the east wing lit up at once. The footsteps in the west wing stopped, and the house was quiet again. I checked the door, the window, and the hallway to see if someone was out there, nothing was there. Then, I walked to the ground floor q
The Playboy's Forced Bride Chapter 7: The Gallery
I didn’t sleep after that email. Someone up there had sent me a warning. Stop looking. Leave now. Though, it didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like someone who knew what was coming and didn’t want me in the middle of it. The next day at seven in the evening, Adrian left the estate for dinner in
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