All Chapters of The CEO’s Vengeful Bride: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The silence between us was the kind that suffocated. Heavy. Impenetrable. I stood by the window, arms crossed over my chest, staring out into the night as if the moonlight might somehow illuminate answers that Damien refused to give.He sat behind me, still pale, fresh out of the hospital bed, but his voice was steady when he finally said it.“Elena, your father is alive.”The world didn’t tilt. It shattered. Glass-on-concrete kind of shatter. I turned slowly, too afraid that if I blinked, he’d say something cruel, something to take it back.“What did you say?”“He’s not dead,” Damien repeated, his jaw tightening. “He survived the fire. Barely. And he’s in hiding, under government protection.”My knees buckled. I didn’t fall, but I staggered, catching the edge of the table like it was the only solid thing in my collapsing world. “That’s not possible,” I whispered. “I saw the wreckage. The explosion. I buried a coffin. I,”“It wasn’t him in the coffin,” Damien said quietly.“No.” I sho

The scent hit me first.Ash and damp wood, long cooled by time but never forgotten. It clung to the ruins like a ghost. The burned Montrose estate stood before me, the skeletal remains of what used to be my family’s empire. A mausoleum made of memories.The wind rustled through the blackened trees lining the perimeter, whispering secrets in a language only the past understood.I hadn’t planned to come here. But something inside me, something raw and restless, had driven me back to this place. The flash drive Damien showed me had ignited more than just questions. It had cracked open a door I thought I’d sealed forever.Now I stood here again. Alone. Or so I thought.“You shouldn’t be here.” His voice came from behind me, low and rough.I turned, heart jerking. Damien stepped out from the shadows cast by what used to be our garden archway. His coat fluttered in the wind, his face pale beneath the overcast sky.“I needed to see it,” I said my voice barely a whisper.Damien walked beside

The event had been a disaster from the start. I knew it was going to be bad when I stepped into the lavish ballroom, my heels clicking loudly on the marble floors. The Gala for Women in Business had always been one of those affairs where the high-powered elite gathered to pretend they liked each other, exchanging smiles that never quite reached their eyes. But tonight felt different. The air was thick with tension, and the room was buzzing with whispered rumors. Elena Montrose. The notorious daughter of the disgraced billionaire. The woman who’d somehow gotten herself into the good graces of one of the most powerful CEO's in the world, Damien Crest.I had learned to ignore the rumors, to block out the judgment. But this time, it was harder. Because I wasn’t just the daughter of a man everyone despised; I was also the woman whose name was now permanently etched beside Damien’s. And not in a way that was accepted by everyone. The whispers, the glances, the subtle slights, I had become

The air in Damien’s office felt heavier than usual, thick with unspoken words and unresolved tension. After the revelations about my father and the increasingly complicated web of lies we were trapped in, I wasn’t sure where I stood with Damien anymore. His silence, though, was what was strangling me now. As I wandered the room, I tried to shake off the unease that had settled deep in my chest. The papers on Damien’s desk, documents, contracts, more secrets, didn’t hold my attention. Not right now. It was the feeling of being watched, of being on the edge of something, something huge, that had my mind swirling. I moved instinctively toward the safe in the corner of the room. It was a part of this strange world Damien inhabited, locked away in secrets, protected by a combination no one but him could crack. Yet, in the weeks I’d spent at his side, I’d come to realize that nothing was truly safe in his world, not even the things he hid. The door to the safe creaked open, and I felt a t

The silence in the Crest estate was deceptive, like the calm before a devastating storm. I stood by the window, arms crossed, staring at the sprawling grounds bathed in the pale gray of a brooding dawn. The mansion had been too quiet lately, too perfect. And that perfection unnerved me.Damien was in his study, poring over files that had arrived from a private investigator he trusted. Since discovering the truth about my mother’s locket and our shared past with his brother Lucas, things between us had shifted again. Not in an explosive, heartbreaking way, but quietly. Intensely. Like the slow tightening of a knot, we both knew we couldn’t escape.We were living under one roof, sharing information, even meals, but neither of us said what needed to be said. There was too much history, too much pain. And something told me the worst was yet to come.The creak of the floor behind me pulled me from my thoughts. I turned.It was Samuel.Damien’s longtime personal assistant. Impeccably dressed