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Chapter 65: The gilded cage waltz

Author: Claire Lemaire
last update Last Updated: 2025-07-04 07:35:31

The echo of Ethan’s enraged roar had faded, replaced by an unnerving, heavy silence that pressed against the locked door of my room. Leaning against the cool wood, the tremors finally subsided, leaving a hollow exhaustion warring with the fierce, intoxicating triumph humming in my veins. I had done it. I had shattered his glacial control, exposed the raw, desperate need beneath the armor of arrogance. The taste of power, sharp and sweet as forbidden fruit, lingered on my tongue, mingling with the phantom musk of him.

A long, scalding shower did little to cleanse the memory, only seeming to amplify the sensory echoes: the scrape of his stubble, the heat of his skin beneath my palms, the guttural sounds torn from his throat. I dressed mechanically in soft lounge wear, armor against the invisible battle lines drawn through the house. Hours bled away in the suffocating quiet. No summons. No slammed doors. Just the oppressive weight of *waiting*. What form would his retaliation take? The s
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  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 96: The Weight of Letting Go

    The silence after the door clicked shut behind Ethan was a physical thing. Thick. Suffocating. Charged with the lingering electricity of his presence and the stunned hurt radiating from Michael. The signed divorce papers felt like lead in my hand, their sharp edges digging into my palm, a brutal counterpoint to the phantom heat still burning on my skin where his gaze had seared me.Michael didn’t move. He stood frozen near the doorway, the bag of pigments forgotten at his feet. The easy warmth that usually lit his kind eyes was gone, replaced by confusion, dawning realization, and a deep, unsettling hurt. The air crackled with the unspoken question: What did I just walk into?"Lila?" His voice was quiet, strained. "Who was that?"The manila envelope felt slick. My throat tightened. There was no easy way. No soft landing. Just the jagged truth Ethan had dropped into the center of my carefully curated new life. "That," I managed, my voice sounding rough, unfamiliar, "was Ethan Blackwell

  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 95: The Ghost of Who You Were

    The ghost of his touch lingered like a brand. Not a physical imprint, but the phantom pressure of his gaze, the searing memory of his closeness in the orphanage hall. After months of carefully constructed peace lay in ruins around me, shattered by two words: still married. And the terrifying, undeniable truth: the spark between us hadn’t died. It had merely banked, waiting for oxygen. His presence was the bellows.I paced the studio, the familiar scent of linseed oil and turpentine doing nothing to calm the storm inside. My fingers traced the edge of my worktable, rough wood beneath smooth skin, a grounding counterpoint to the chaos in my chest. Ethan’s words replayed on a loop: “I loved you. I was scared." They warred violently with the echo of slamming doors, cold silences, the suffocating weight of Claire’s unspoken presence. Which was the truth? The man who whispered Finnish lullabies after nightmares, or the one who turned his back when I cried? My traitorous body remembered the

  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 94: The Spark

    Rage.It wasn’t a wave; it was an explosion. A supernova detonating behind my ribs, incinerating shock, fear, guilt, everything but a pure, white-hot fury that turned the air to ash in my lungs. It flooded my veins, burned my vision crimson at the edges, vibrated in my clenched fists. After months of freedom, of rebuilding, of carefully stitching myself back together, shattered in the space of a single heartbeat by the man standing before me, cloaked in the obscene disguise of a benefactor.He stood there. In my sanctuary. Among my children. Smelling of expensive cologne and absolute fucking entitlement. Sister Magdalena’s supportive hand on my elbow felt like a brand. I wrenched my arm free, the movement violent, jerky. The hopeful decorations, the children’s bright faces, Sister Agnes’s fluttering excitement, it all blurred into a sickening backdrop for this obscene tableau.He just looked. Those dark, fathomless eyes holding mine with a possessiveness that hadn’t dimmed, only calc

  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 93: The Kindness That Cuts

    Three months. Three months of Michael’s careful smiles, his thoughtful gestures, the specific art book he’d tracked down because I mentioned it once, the perfect pulla he brought on rainy Sundays, the way he always listened, truly listened, when I talked about the light on the water or Aino’s latest crayon masterpiece. Three months of being his girlfriend.The word still felt foreign on my tongue. Girlfriend.He’d asked me under the soft glow of lanterns strung across a harbourside terrace, the Baltic whispering below. His eyes, those calm sea-grey eyes, had held such earnest hope. "Lila," he’d said, his hand warm over mine, "these past weeks, they've meant a great deal to me. Would you...would you consider being my girlfriend? Officially?"And I’d said yes. Not because my heart leaped, not because a flush of certainty warmed me. I’d said yes because it felt like the next step. The logical progression in the narrative of moving on. He was kind. He was safe. He respected my art and my

  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 92: The Hollow Man

    Ethan's POVEight months. Two hundred and forty three days of breathing ash. That’s what this place is now, Blackwell Industries, my empire, my meticulously constructed fortress of steel and ambition. It feels less like a throne room and more like a tomb I built for myself. The view from the penthouse window, the sprawling cityscape I once surveyed with cold satisfaction, now just reflects the vast, echoing emptiness inside me.I miss her.The admission, even in the silence of my own skull, is a raw, scraping thing. It claws at me constantly. I miss the quiet rustle of her turning pages in the library, a sound I used to find irritating background noise. I miss the tentative way she’d smile at me across the breakfast table, a smile I met with indifference or worse. I miss the scent of vanilla and something clean, uniquely hers, that used to linger in the halls, now obliterated by sterile air and the cloying ghosts of my own failures. I miss the curve of her hip beneath my hand, the s

  • Winning Her Back   Chapter 91: The Archaeology of Intention

    The studio, usually a sanctuary of glorious, productive chaos, felt like a crime scene I was desperately trying to clean before the detectives arrived. Specifically, one detective in a tweed jacket with eyes like a calm sea."Honestly, Lila, if he’s half the art historian he seems, he’ll appreciate the authentic ambiance," Sandra declared, perched precariously on a rickety stool, waving a dust rag like a surrender flag. She hadn’t actually dusted anything. "This," she gestured grandly at the explosion of half-squeezed paint tubes, stacked canvases leaning precariously, brushes soaking in murky jars, and the ever-present scent of linseed oil and turpentine, "is the sacred ground where magic happens. Tidying it is practically sacrilege."I yanked a paint-splattered drop cloth off the floor, sending a small cascade of dried pigment flakes onto my boots. "It’s not sacrilege, it’s basic human decency! He’s not coming to witness the 'magic,' he’s coming to see the space. And right now, the

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