LOGIN"Give me thirty days as your real wife, Julian. Then I’ll sign the papers and disappear." It sounded like the final desperate plea of a woman dying for his affection. But to Seraphina, those thirty days weren't just about love they were a countdown to the one thing she needed from him to feel whole again, a baby. For three years, Seraphina endured an ice-cold marriage to Julian, the ruthless billionaire CEO of Vance Global. He married her solely to satisfy his grandfather's deathbed decree, while reserving all his tenderness for the glamorous socialite, Evelyn Cross. Trapped in a mansion surrounded by a hostile mother-in-law and snobbish elite, Seraphina kept her head down, waiting for her moment. When Julian presents the final divorce papers to marry Evelyn, Seraphina makes one startling counter-offer: thirty days of a true marriage. No secrets, no cold shoulders, and one month in his bed. Julian assumes she's playing a pathetic, gold-digging game to trap him. He agrees, determined to prove she means nothing to him. But he doesn't know her true motive: Seraphina needs an heir to unlock her late mother's hidden estate and the moment the thirty days end, she plans on faking her exit forever. As the days tick down, Julian finds himself inexplicably drawn to the quiet strength of the woman he discarded. But by the time he realizes he is falling for his own wife... the thirty days are up, and Seraphina may vanish without a trace.
View MoreChapter 32Cassian"It's not what you think," she said.She said it too fast. Her hands were wrapped around the notebook so tightly that her knuckles had gone white, and she was holding it against her chest the same way she'd held my letter two nights ago, like it was something alive that might get away from her."They're just notes," she went on. "About my health. My doctor wanted me to keep track of some things. It's private, Cass, it's nothing to do with Julian or the thirty days or...""Window opens day seven," I said quietly. "Best odds day eight. If not this cycle, next window falls too close to day thirty. Can't count on him still being in my bed by then."She stopped talking.I hadn't meant to memorize it. I'd only read the notebook once, sitting on the edge of my mother's desk with the door half open, listening for her car in the drive. But some lines you only have to read once. That one had gone into me like a splinter and stayed.Sera stared at me across the firelight. Her
Chapter 31Sera"Just old notes," Julian repeated slowly.He was still holding my wrist. Not hard. His thumb rested over the place where my pulse was racing, and I knew he could feel it, the way it hammered against his skin like something trying to get out."Yes," I said. "Nothing important."He looked at me for a long moment. I had seen that look across boardroom tables. It was the look he gave people when he already knew the answer and was waiting to see whether they'd be honest enough to give it to him themselves.I didn't give it to him.He let go of my wrist."All right," he said.That was all. Two words, quiet and even. He didn't push. He didn't ask what kind of notes, or why I'd turned a drawer upside down over the rug for something that didn't matter. He just stepped back and looked at the mess I'd made on the floor, the hand cream and the paperback and the hairbrush scattered across the carpet, and then he looked at me again, and something in his eyes closed very quietly, lik
Chapter 30JulianMarcus was still talking in my ear.I could hear his voice, small and tinny, saying something about a ferry route and a harbor master's records and a name he wanted to check before he was sure. I didn't take in a single word of it. I was standing in the boathouse doorway with the phone pressed to my ear, and at the end of the dock, with the wind whipping her hair across her face, Lucien Hale had his hand on my wife's cheek and his mouth on hers.It was brief. It barely lasted a second. He pulled back almost as soon as he'd leaned in.But she hadn't moved.That was what I saw, more clearly than anything. Not the kiss itself, but the moment before it. He'd leaned in slowly, so slowly that a child could have stepped away, and she'd stood there in the scarf he had wrapped around her neck and let him.Then her eyes found mine over his shoulder, and I watched every bit of color leave her face."Julian? Are you still there?""I'll call you back," I said, and ended the call.
Chapter 29SeraI almost put it in my bag.The thought came to me clearly and calmly while I stood there holding it against my chest. I could take it home. I could open it alone in the sewing room with the door locked, where nobody could watch my face while I read whatever my father had needed to say to me. That was what the old Sera would have done. She'd have folded it away and waited for a private moment, the way she'd folded away every feeling she'd had for three years.But I had already waited eleven years. I had spent eleven years thinking my father had simply walked out of my life one ordinary morning and decided not to come back. I couldn't wait the forty minutes it would take to drive home.I sat down at the wooden table by the window.Neither of them said anything. Julian pulled out the chair beside me and sat, close enough that I could feel him there without him touching me. Lucien stayed standing on the other side of the table with his hands in his coat pockets, watching t






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