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Chapter Thirty-One: Strange
publish date:
2026-09-02 22:24:07
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Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Seventy One: The Night They Came Home
Elena's POV"Nikolai, look at me. Look at what you've done. I was going to make you safe. I was going to give you everything. Everything I did was for you. You've destroyed my life. You've destroyed everything I…"He didn't look at her.He turned his head, slowly, toward the detective."Detective Vega," he said, in a voice so flat and level that it chilled me more than any shout could have. "Please take her away.""With pleasure, Mr. Carter.""Nikolai!"He set me on my feet. He kept one arm around my waist, and I felt his thumb press once against my ribs, a question. Do you want to leave?I shook my head.Slowly, because my legs were not entirely mine, I turned.Lillian was staring at me now. Her eyes were wild and black, and there was a thin line of mascara down one cheek that made her look, for the first time, like a real person."You," she whispered. "It's you. Everything was fine before you. He was going to marry me. Everything was going to be fine. And you walked in and took wha
Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Seventy: The Night They Came Home
Elena's POV"Please hurry. They're moving us."The words left me in a breath so thin I wasn't sure they had reached him. I was crouched behind the crates with the stolen phone pressed so hard against my ear that the edge of it bit into the bruise on my cheekbone. I had dialed the only number I knew by heart. I had done it in the four seconds between the first bang of the door and the first heavy boot on the concrete, with Samantha's body curved in front of mine like a wall.Static. A rasp of breathing that wasn't mine."Elena." Nikolai's voice, rough, nearly unrecognizable. "Stay on the line. Where are you? Tell me what you can see."I could see nothing. I could only listen."Samantha's with me," I whispered. "She's alive. She's hurt, but she's alive."Something happened on his end, a sharp, wordless sound, quickly swallowed."It's cold," I said. My teeth had started to chatter and I couldn't tell whether it was the air or my own body giving up. "There's a hum under everything,
Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Sixty-Nine: The Man Who Refused to Give Up
Nikolai's povI felt the room change before anyone moved."You."Lucas was across the floor before I had finished turning. He had one arm bandaged to the shoulder and he moved like a man who had forgotten he was hurt. His good hand seized the front of Damien's shirt and slammed him backward into the wall hard enough to rattle the shelves."Lucas…""You stood there." His voice was a low, terrible thing. "You stood next to my sister with a gun at her head and you said you only wanted to *talk.* I should end you right here. I should…""Lucas."I was already between them. I had not decided to be. My hand closed over his wrist, the cold one, the one still bleeding through its dressing, and I pressed him back with a gentleness I did not feel."Not now.""Get out of my way, Carter.""Not now," I said again, quieter. "You can break every bone in his body when we've found her. If you do it now, and he can't speak, we lose the only man in this room who might know where she is."His arm trembled
Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Sixty-Eight: The Man Who Refused to Give Up
Nikolai's POVI watched the video four times before I understood I was holding my breath.Four times, because I needed to see it as something other than a man who loved her. I looked for the room, the shadows, and the angle of the light. I looked for anything that wasn't Elena's face.A concrete wall with a hairline crack running diagonally from the top left corner. A bare bulb. A faint, regular hum under Lillian's voice, steady as a pulse, that I couldn't name yet.And Elena looked straight into the lens as though she could see me through it.I'm still here. Don't you dare give her anything.She hadn't said it. She hadn't said a word. But I had spent weeks learning the language of that face, the small tightening at the corner of her mouth when she was refusing to be moved, and I read every syllable."Sir." Daniel's voice came from somewhere behind me. "We should go. The audio's already with the technicians. They can work on it from the road."I handed the phone to him without look
Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Sixty-Seven: Two Friends, One Promise
Boots. Slow, unhurried, somewhere along the corridor. They stopped. A voice, low, spoke a few words I couldn't catch. A key jingled.I flattened myself against the wall beside the door and held my breath.The footsteps passed. They went all the way down, past my room, to the far end where a bolt slid back and a door opened and closed. Then the footsteps returned, and this time the man was whistling under his breath, tuneless and bored.He walked right past me.I listened to him go. I listened to the faint creak of a stairwell door, and then I listened to nothing.Samantha's door was at the far end of that corridor. I was sure of it now.And he had left it open.---I don't remember the walk.I remember the corridor. Long, narrow, lit by one flickering tube. I remember the strip of rusted metal that was the storage room door, standing a hand's width ajar. I remember my own breath rasping in my ears.I pushed it open.The room was small, smaller than mine, with shelves stacked with card
Too Late Mr. Hawthorne I Already Married Your Rival Chapter Sixty-Six: Two Friends, One Promise
Elena's POVI never got the chance to say her name a second time.The lock turned, and the whisper on the other side of the wall cut off as if someone had closed a hand over it.I jerked my head back from the concrete and sat rigid in the chair, my right wrist pressed hard against the one behind it so the loosened strap wouldn't slip and give me away.Lillian came in first. A man followed her, the same broad-shouldered guard who had checked my ties earlier, and he was holding a phone up in front of him with the camera light already glowing."Don't look so hopeful," Lillian said when she saw my face. "It's only a short message. Nikolai deserves to know how his evening is going.""Lillian…""Quiet." She gestured, and the man stepped back until the lens filled with me, with the chair, the bulb, and the bare gray wall. "Hair, please."She pulled it out of the elastic herself, quick and rough, and shook it over my face. Then she stepped behind the phone, out of frame.I knew what she wante
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