All Chapters of THE CEO'S SECRET WIFE: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The sky was gloomy with a strange tenseness as I walked out onto the balcony with my phone gripped in my tight fist. The blank screen greeted me with nothing missed calls, nothing messages—total deafening nothing from Giselle's end. I had been calling for days now and yet, absolutely nothing was coming through. In the depths of me, fear whispered a change of phone number by Giselle that successfully severed her from the world, including me.I brushed my hair one-handedly, getting more frustrated by the second. The city lights below twinkled like diamonds in the sea, the opposite of the tempest taking shape in my mind. I picked up the phone again, trying to call for the last time. The phone rang once, twice—then straight to voicemail. I muttered a curse under my breath.My phone rang in my hand at that moment. I glanced at the screen—it was Debbie. I took a deep breath and answered. "Hey, Debs.""Patrick, can you do me a favor?" she asked, her voice tight with worry and tension. "I don

Giselle's POVThe city sounds outside my hotel room window hummed like a distant lullaby as I shivered on the chaise lounge, staring at my phone. The screen was white, no call, no message. Patrick had called no one, nor did I call him. Half of me wanted to know where we were, but the other half didn't care.I breathed deeply and placed the phone on my side. Miss World was the following day, and I still had some of those last-minute things to sort out. However, my mind was preoccupied by a maelstrom of endless questions—Patrick, Victor, something somewhere in the background.As I was about to hoist myself up, there was a soft knock on the door of my suite. My throat was parched. Was it security? Had something occurred? I walked on my feet, clutching around me the silk robe that I had wrapped around my naked body, and crept up to the door."Who is it?" I asked."It's Nicholas," my brother's reassuringly familiar voice said over the telephone. I swung open the door at once and flung it w

I woke up to the soothing whizz of sea waves on the windowpane, sea wind seeping through the almost-closed curtains. My body felt heavy, as if stuck with a sticky of laziness for days. I rolled over and threw my arm over to the bedside table where my phone rested. Missed calls and unread messages streamed before me.Patrick had been phoning me again.I cursed, sitting up and rubbing sleep from my eyes. I'd been staying away from him, not that I wasn't, but because my brain was in turmoil. My heart was a battleground, past and present, duty and desire.A knocking on the door to break me out of my trance."Come in," I roared, throwing the bed back.Nicholas came in, quieter than normal. "You did not call last night. I was frightened."I fabricated a small smile, attempting to bleed some of the tension from the moment. "I was tired. The party wore me out more than I anticipated."He crossed his arms, his eyes pinning me as he nailed me with them. "Or you were avoiding Patrick?"I winced

Giselle's POVI couldn't breathe.Not because my practice corset was too tight—though it was stuck to me like a vice—because the dressing room walls kept closing in with every untexted moment, every unspoken one, every time I blinked and Patrick's face flashed before me in the darkness.He was there for me.I knew the moment he walked into the lobby. My father had eyes and ears everywhere, but even if he hadn't, I would have known. The air around me shifted. My heart shifted. My phone was in off mode when Becky called me, crying, accusingly, bewildered. I did not need the explanations. Not yet. My world had swerved too far from its axis. I had wished for silence to put it on a straight axis once more.But silence was treacherous. It betrayed things into me I did not want to know."Giselle," my assistant Sarah had called at the door. "Five minutes before last rehearsal. Ready?" "Coming," I had replied, rising from the velvet couch and regarding myself in the mirror.The woman in th

Patrick's POVThe pounding waves on the beach was the raw, distant sound of the thunder. I was standing in front of the balcony of the suite, looking out over the ocean. The sky was a darker blue with an orange tint to it as the sun started to set. The peace of what I was seeing was such a contrast to the storm that raged inside of me.I had hoped that time would mend the gap between me and Giselle. But distance and silence could not remove the pain, the disillusion, or the deceptions that had built up between us. I had hoped that if I came here, if I was merely there, I could mend everything.But even then, after I'd made the reconciliation gesture, part of me was like walking on glass.I hadn't spoken to Giselle in reality since we'd talked on the beach. She'd retreated again into her silence, and this wall was there between us. One I wasn't sure I could climb.The ring of my phone reminded me of what was real. It was Grace on the phone."Patrick," her voice grated across the phone.