All Chapters of The CEO's Fake Girlfriend : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The key felt impossibly heavy in my palm.Above me, music thumped through the floorboards. Bass pressed against the concrete walls. Drunken voices rose and fell.I stared at the locked door. Now? While they were distracted?Then I looked down at myself. Torn shirt, matted hair, wrists ringed in purple. If I walked into that party like this, someone would notice. Ronan would drag me back.I had to wait until the noise died and people left.I closed my fist around the key and curled in on myself. Just wait.Hours crawled by. Maybe two, maybe four, until the music finally stopped. Voices grew quieter, doors opened and closed, cars started outside, engines fading into the distance. Every muscle protested as I stood up. The room spinned, but I steadied myself against the wall, breathing through the dizziness. Two days without food. Barely any water.Sliding the key into the lock and turning with a soft click, the door opened. I climbed the stairs slowly. At the top, I pressed my ear again

I woke up on a bed too soft to be my own bed.The bed was huge, the sheets smooth and cool against my skin.To my side, I saw the expensive looking furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows that showed a gray sky outside. Where was I?I turned to the other side of the bed. It was empty, the pillow undisturbed. I tried to piece together how I got here. Running in the rain. My mother's cold body. The neighbors. The letter clutched in my hand. And then... Lucien finding me on the sidewalk.I got up quickly, my hand flying to my chest to feel my heartbeat.It was just a dream. It had to be. My mother wasn't dead. I'd go home and she'd be there, alive and angry and... movement to my right caught my eye.Lucien stood in the corner near the door, leaning against the wall. He wasn't smiling nor frowning, but there was sadness etched into every line of his face as he watched me.My knees started to feel wobbly.It wasn't a dream.It really happened.My mother really died.My legs barely held me

Camila's POVShock flickered across Lucien's face first. His eyes widened, his jaw clenched. Then I watched the shock morph into something darker. Anger maybe. Or betrayal. But beneath it all, I saw the question forming before he even asked it.How?I pushed gently at his chest, and he sat back in the water. I sat up too, but turned away from him, unable to meet his eyes for what I was about to say."I killed someone."The words hung in the steamy air between us. I stared at the tile wall, my heart pounding so hard It could break through my ribs."My mother called me one Friday evening." My voice came out flat. "She was crying on the phone, saying she was dying. I left my part-time job immediately and rushed home."I felt Lucien shift behind me, but I kept going."When I got there, she was all dolled up. Hair done, makeup perfect, wearing a dress I hadn't seen her in for years. I was furious. Told her she was cruel f

The days after the bathtub passed in a haze of quiet domesticity that felt almost surreal. We'd returned to the city, and the media drama with my mom has died completely. Lucien worked from the penthouse, taking calls and video conferences from his home office while I tried to figure out what normal looked like. I moved back in properly. Maya had helped me pack up my apartment, both of us crying as we folded clothes and boxed up books. "You're doing the right thing," she'd said, hugging me tight. "No matter how complicated everything else is, being with someone who loves you just makes it better, Cami."Now my things were mixed with his. My hoodies beside his tailored suits. My paperbacks filling the perfect, too-empty spaces on his shelves. My toothbrush beside his in the bathroom.It felt like playing house. Like someone could yank the curtains open at any moment and end the fantasy.Except Lucien kept proving it wasn’t a fantasy at all.Little things, constant things. Coffee mad

He looked at me the way someone might look at gum stuck to their shoe. His mouth pulled tight, his eyes cold as they moved from my legs swallowed by Lucien’s shoes, to the expensive jacket drowning me, to my tangled hair.Judge Raymond Caldwell.I’d seen that expression before—on my mother when I disappointed her, on precinct guards who thought I was a spoiled rich girl begging for special treatment.This man had already decided I was guilty.Miranda stood beside me, her hand brushing my elbow in a quiet attempt at comfort. Across the aisle, the prosecution team watched me like sharks scenting blood.“All rise,” the bailiff announced, though we were already standing.Judge Caldwell settled back in his chair like a man preparing to deliver a verdict he’d written in advance.“Miss Sterling, you’re charged with vehicular manslaughter. How do you plead?”“Not guilty, Your Honor,” Miranda answered before I could."Mm." The sound was dismissive. He looked down at the papers in front of him.