All Chapters of Secrets of a Hidden Marriage: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

"You lunatic! Let me go!"Mia pulls against his grip with everything she has. Her nails dig into his wrist. Her body twists. For a second it looks like she might break free.She doesn't.The man reacts fast. His arm tightens around her throat and he takes two steps backward, toward the edge. Mia's heel catches on the concrete and she stumbles. For one sickening half-second she hangs in the air with nothing below her but twelve stories of empty space and the Chicago skyline.She screams.The sound cuts through the rooftop like something sharp. It's not a composed sound. Not the controlled, measured Mia Stone that the world knows. It's raw. Animal. The sound of a person who has just understood, in the most physical way possible, what it feels like to almost fall.Nobody moves.The police haven't arrived. The negotiation team is still assembling. The security guards maintain their semicircle, but none of them

His hand leaves Mia's neck.For one second, everything holds. The man is at the edge. Mia is free. Liam is two feet away. The gun is pointed at the ground. The crowd behind the perimeter is holding its breath.Then the man's face changes.He sees something. Some expression on Mia's face, some micro-second flicker that tells him what he already suspected. She's not going to agree. She was never going to agree. The proposal, the marriage, the fantasy he's been building in his head for months, none of it was real. It was his. Only his."You lied to me!" he screams, lunging forward. "She would never agree! She would never!"His hand grabs Mia's wrist.The gun comes up.Liam moves first.He steps forward and knocks the gun out of the man's grip. It clatters across the concrete, spinning toward the far wall. The man stumbles, his balance gone, his feet sliding on the smooth rooftop surface.

I understand now.The crowd. The signs. The matching shirts. The organized, coordinated energy of people who showed up at a specific hospital at a specific time to confront a specific person.They're Mia Stone's fans.I should have guessed. The language on the signs, the terminology, the specific vocabulary of celebrity fandom: "Heavenly Empress," "get out of the entertainment industry," "home wrecker." These aren't random strangers with opinions. These are devoted followers who have been told, online, in real time, that the woman they love is being wronged by the woman standing in front of them.I can argue with three people. Maybe five.I cannot argue with ten women who are screaming and throwing water bottles and swinging promotional boards like weapons.The first bottle hits the ground beside my foot. The second grazes my shoulder. The promotional board catches the edge of my arm and the plastic cuts a thin line a

Catherine doesn't leave.She circles back. Returns to the bed. Stands over Mia with the specific, predatory posture of someone who has been waiting for this moment for a long time and is not finished.Mia is still in the corner. Smaller now. The way people get when they've been hit and the hit has reminded them of other hits, older ones, the kind that leave marks you can't see.Catherine's voice is vicious. Controlled. Each word placed with the precision of someone who has practiced this speech."I don't know what my brother and his wife were thinking. They rushed back to celebrate your birthday and died for it. A plane crash. Because of you. Because of a child they shouldn't have adopted in the first place."Mia says nothing."And George." Catherine's lip curls. "Foolish boy. Defending you all these years. Protecting a bastard sprung from who knows where.""I'm not a bastard," Mia says. Her voice is quiet.

I sit back down. "I want to ask you one thing," I say. "Directly. And I want a direct answer." Mia watches me. Her guard is down, but not all the way. I can see the hairline fractures in her composure, the places where the mask cracked when Catherine was in the room, but also the places where it's already rebuilding. Mia Stone doesn't stay unprotected for long. "Was it you," I say, "who put the Heart of the Kingdom in my bag?" The question lands between us. Mia snorts. A short, sharp sound. The closest thing to a laugh she's managed all day. "Thief crying stop thief," she says. "That's your trick, isn't it? Frame me, then turn around and accuse me of framing you. Look at you now, so bold. Liam hasn't seen this side of you." I feel my jaw tighten. "How can you say that?" I lean forward. "Five minutes ago I threw a woman across a hospital room for you. I dislocated her wrist. I recorded her confession. I gave you the evidence. And now you're going to sit there and call me a lia