Todos os capítulos de The Stripping Heiress : Capítulo 41 - Capítulo 50

{Hailey’s Pov}Sunday arrived quiet and gray, the kind of morning that felt like it was waiting for something to happen. Williams drove me in silence to the McConnell Smith and Jones building, the same firm that had handled everything George Lachlan-related since before I was even born.Clara met us in the lobby—a sea of chrome and glass so sterile it made a hospital waiting room look cozy. The place was massive, clearly designed for high-stakes negotiations and power plays, not just simple will readings. And yet, the moment we walked in, it was nearly deserted.“You said I was the firm’s only client,” I told Clara as we passed a receptionist and a guard on our way to the elevators. “So why does this place feel like it’s hiding an army of lawyers behind closed doors?”“There are several divisions,” she said, her voice clipped. “Mr. Lachlan’s assets were… broad. He needed lawyers for each one.”“And the will I asked about—it’s here?”I kept a hand in my pocket, fingers brushing over th

The solarium was massive—vaulted glass ceilings, glass walls, sunlight pouring in like it had somewhere to be. Marcus stood at the center of it all, shirtless, barefoot, and bathed in gold. He looked like some tragic painting: ancient myth meets tabloid royalty. A bottle of bourbon rested near his feet, already a quarter empty. Again, like the first time we met, he was shirtless and drunk. Also again, I couldn’t seem to look away. “What’s the occasion?” I asked, gesturing toward the bourbon with a tilt of my chin. Marcus didn’t answer right away. He stared upward, swaying slightly, the muscles in his back tight with whatever storm was brewing in him. “Theodore. Arthur. Frederick. Wilder.” He rattled off the names like a prayer. Or a curse. I recognized them immediately. “Middle names,” I said, treading carefully. I swallowed hard. “They’re all surnames, your father’s?” Marcus let out a humorless laugh, bitter and hoarse. “Debra doesn’t talk about our fathers. Not a word. As far as

“I told you what your mother said.”Marcus didn’t react right away. He just stared at me. Not blinking. Not breathing. “The old man chose our names.” His voice was quiet—flat—but I could already see the gears in his head turning.Then, all at once, it was like something snapped.“He picked our names,” he repeated, sharper this time. “He chose them, and then he highlighted them in the Red Will. He disinherited the family twenty years ago, and not long after that, he gave us our middle names.” Marcus began pacing the hallway, his movements quick, erratic—like an animal that suddenly realized the size of its cage.“Julian’s twenty-eight. I’m twenty-six. Aaron turns twenty-four next month.” He stopped walking. “It lines up. All of it.”I could feel him fighting for clarity, for control, trying to see the shape of the pattern that George Lachlan had left behind. “The old man was playing a long game,” Marcus muttered. “Our whole lives… we were pieces on his board.”“The names have to mean s

I couldn’t stop thinking about Eloise’s face, but I hadn’t really looked closely enough to remember all her features. Her eyes were green. Her hair was strawberry blonde, like sunlight shining through amber. I remembered the flower crown on her head, but not how long her hair was. No matter how hard I tried to see her face clearly, all I could remember was that she was laughing and looking straight at the camera.“Hailey,” Williams said from the front seat. “We’re here.”We had arrived at the Lachlan Foundation. It felt like a long time since Agnes had offered to show me around. When Williams opened my door, I noticed that, for once, there was no reporter or photographer waiting outside.Maybe the media was finally cooling off, I thought, as I walked into the Foundation’s lobby. The walls were a soft silvery-gray, and huge black-and-white photos seemed to float on the walls. Around those big pictures were hundreds of smaller ones. They showed people from all over the world—laughing, c

That night, Clara called. Not called, summoned. She didn’t just read me the riot act; she read me the I can’t do my job if you won’t let me riot act, the kind that came preloaded with the sort of clipped enunciation and scalpel-precise pauses that made every word feel like a personal indictment. I couldn’t even get in a “but” without being steamrolled. When she finally hung up..with a terse “good night” that carried the same warmth as a weather warning…it felt less like closure and more like a promise of future retribution. I sat down at my desk, fingers hovering over my laptop keyboard. “How bad is it?” I asked the empty room. The answer hit the moment my browser loaded: The leading story on every major site is bad. Lachlan Heiress Keeping Secrets. What Does Hailey Vale Know? The photographs the paparazzi had captured didn’t look like me at all. The girl in those shots was composed, sharp-edged, and beautiful in a way that looked like it might cut. She was all chin tilt and