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Two
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2026-04-13 19:13:04Celeste's POV
I turned and walked out before he could respond. I didn't head back to the maid’s quarters, I headed toward the grand ballroom.
The air in the grand ballroom smelled like expensive perfume and old lies. I stood in a corner, my back against the cold marble wall, holding a silver tray of champagne carefully in my hands. My hair was pinned so tightly into a bun it felt like it was pulling the skin from my forehead.
To the many rich guests laughing and clinking glasses, I was invisible… I was just a staff, I was part of the background. They looked past me as they took their drinks, not noticing that I had the same hazel eyes as the man whose name was written in gold at the entrance."Numb. Just stay numb," I whispered to myself, my voice lost in the swell of the orchestra.
Across the room, my half-sister Vivienne stood at the center of attention. At twenty-two, she looked perfect in every way. Her blonde hair fell in soft, expensive waves over a dress that cost more than my mother earned in ten years. She laughed gently and leaned into our father, Howard.
Howard looked every bit the king of the Harrington empire… polished, powerful—but fake inside. He hadn't looked at me once tonight. He never did. In this room, I wasn't his firstborn daughter, I was the mistake he never wanted, proof of a past affair with a woman he hurt, and who later died broken-hearted.
"More champagne, girl. Don't just stand there like a statue." Margaret scoffed without glancing at me, her eyes were fixed on the grand entrance, her face a mask of anxious greed. She was the one who had moved me into the attic the day after my mother’s funeral. She was the one who had handed me a scrub brush and told me that “shame must work to earn its keep.”
"Yes, ma'am," I murmured, dipping my head.
"Straighten your back," she whispered. "Tonight is the most important night in this family's history. Chen is coming. If he sees so much as a speck of dust on you, I’ll have you sleeping in the cellar."
I didn't argue, I simply walked into the crowd, weaving between the giants of industry. They had no idea that while I was cleaning their suites and emptying their trash for the last seven years, I had been reading their ledgers. I knew which of them was embezzling from their partners. I knew which of them had offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Most importantly, I knew that my father was broke.
The Harrington empire was a hollow shell. The luxury, the lights, the laughter? It was all a facade built on a foundation of rotting debt. They needed Damien Chen to sign a check, or by Monday morning, the Harrington name would be worthless.
Suddenly, the music stopped. The large wooden doors at the end of the hall swung open, and silence fell over the room like a heavy weight. Damien Chen didn’t just walk into a room, he took it over. He was thirty-eight, but he seemed like a man who had lived many lives. He was tall, and his figure stood out in a dark charcoal suit that looked perfectly fitted to him. His hair was dark, his face looked sharp and strong like it was carved from stone, and his ice blue eyes? Oh my goodness! They were so alluring.He was the man who broke companies for sport. And tonight, he was here to buy a bride.
"Mr. Chen," Howard stepped forward, his voice booming with a fake confidence that made my stomach turn. He extended a hand. "Welcome. We are honored."
Damien didn't take the hand, he simply looked at Howard, then at Margaret, and finally at Vivienne. Vivienne struck a pose, her smile practiced and gleaming. She was the prize, the eldest Harrington daughter or so the world believed.
"Let’s get to the point, Howard," Damien’s voice was a low, smooth rasp that carried to every corner of the room. "I don’t care for the theatrics. The merger documents are in the library?"
"Of course, of course," Howard stammered, his face reddening. "Vivienne, darling, why don't you lead Mr. Chen to the library? You’ve studied the architectural plans of the new expansion, haven’t you?"
Vivienne stepped forward, her hand reaching out to touch Damien’s arm. "It would be my pleasure, Damien."
Damien looked at her hand as if it were an interesting insect, then stepped back, his gaze scanning the room. And I noticed her getting embarrassed.
"The contract," Damien said, loud enough for the board members nearby to hear, "was very specific. I save your empire from the bankruptcy you’ve been hiding, and in exchange, I marry the eldest Harrington daughter. Is that correct?"
"Yes," Margaret chimed in, stepping toward Vivienne. "Our Vivienne is ready to fulfill her duties to this family. She is our pride and joy."
I stood ten feet away, my tray of champagne glasses trembling. Our Vivienne. The lie was so smooth and practiced. They had spent seven years erasing me, convinced that if they treated me like a servant long enough, I would eventually believe I was one.
Damien’s eyes suddenly snapped to mine.
The world seemed to stop. The hazel of my eyes met the frozen dark of his. For a heartbeat, I felt a jolt of electricity so violent I almost dropped the tray. He didn't look through me. He really looked at me… a gaze that stripped away the black uniform, the apron, and the years of dirt.
He began to walk, not toward Vivienne… toward me.
The crowd parted like the Red Sea. I could see my father’s face turning ashen in the corner of my vision, while Margaret’s hand flew to her throat.
Damien stopped inches away from me. He was so tall I had to tilt my head back to see him. He smelled of Tom Ford Oud Wood.
최신 챕터
Unwanted Bride One Hundred and Fifty-One(Book Three)
The Void Left BehindThe winter in Oakhaven had settled into a rhythm of deep, meditative silence, but as the first thaw of early spring began to turn the snow into rivulets of grey slush, the outside world started to seep back in. It didn’t arrive with the clamor of the press or the knock of a process server, but with a series of subtle, unsettling anomalies that only someone as trained as Celeste could detect. It began with the global shipping manifests—not the illicit, shadow-registry manifests they had once controlled, but the legitimate, public-facing data streams that tracked the pulse of international commerce.Celeste sat at her desk, the notebook from her own life pushed aside in favor of a tablet she had long ago stripped of all tracking software. She was monitoring the flow of steel, medical supplies, and high-tech components through the Mediterranean and the South China Sea. She had expect
Unwanted Bride One Hundred and Fifty
The Unwritten LifeThe first winter in Oakhaven arrived with a sudden, beautiful intensity, covering the hills in a blanket of pristine, white snow that muffled the world. The cottage was warm, the fireplace crackling with the heat of the oak logs they had cut themselves, the scent of pine and woodsmoke permeating the air. It was a life of simple, tangible things: the weight of a book in her hands, the smell of fresh bread, the quiet rhythm of their daily life. The past was a fading memory, a story that belonged to someone else, a person who had walked a different path through a different world.Celeste sat at the small, oak desk by the window, a blank notebook before her. She wasn't writing a ledger. She wasn't drafting a charter or a list of assets. She was writing the start of a story—the story of a woman who had been a pawn, who had become a queen, and who had eventually decided that the game wasn't worth pl
Unwanted Bride One Hundred and Forty-Nine
149: The Final AuditThe reaction to the list was instantaneous and total. Within forty-eight hours, the news cycles were dominated by the new round of investigations, the "Shadow Registry" becoming the rallying cry for a global reform movement. Celeste and Damien watched the reports on the small, grainy television in their living room, hearing their own principles being echoed by prosecutors and journalists who were now equipped with the tools they had left behind. The transition was no longer a personal crusade—it was a societal shift, a cleansing fire that was sweeping through the institutions they had spent their lives dismantling.They saw the raids, the arrests, and the public dismantling of the final vestiges of the old order. The people on the list, the ones who had thought themselves immune to the consequences of their trade, were being systematically brought into the light. It was a process of
Unwanted Bride One Hundred and Forty-Eight
The UnmaskingThe arrival of the letter, months later, was an anomaly that shattered the quiet. It was tucked into the rural mailbox at the end of the lane, a heavy cream envelope with no return address, stamped with a postmark from a city three states away. Celeste found it while collecting the mail, her hands instinctively tightening around the thick paper. It felt like a relic from the old world—a cold, calculated intrusion into the sanctuary they had built. She carried it inside, her heart rate accelerating, the old, familiar instinct to scan for traps and analyze threats surfacing with a sharpness that surprised her. It was a muscle memory she hadn't realized was still so deeply embedded.She waited for Damien to come in from the woods before opening it. When he arrived, he found her sitting at the kitchen table, the envelope sitting like a venomous insect in the center of the wood grain. He didn't ask where it c
Unwanted Bride One Hundred and Forty-Seven
The Echoes of the PastLife in Oakhaven was not entirely devoid of shadows, though they were no longer the creeping, suffocating shadows of the corporate underworld. Even in a town that moved at the speed of the seasons, the past had a way of bleeding through the cracks of the present. One rainy Tuesday, while clearing out the kitchen, Celeste found a small, dusty box in the back of a cupboard—a collection of letters, receipts, and photographs that the previous tenants had left behind. Among them was an old newspaper clipping, yellowed, brittle, and stained with the passage of time, dated from thirty years ago. It was an announcement of the Harrington-Chen merger, featuring a stark, high-contrast photograph of her father and Damien’s father standing on the docks, their faces partially obscured by the harsh, unnatural shadows of the flashbulbs.She stared at the image, feeling a cold, familiar prickle of uneas
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Unwanted Bride Forty-Two
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Unwanted Bride Forty
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