All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S RELUCTANT BRIDE : Chapter 81 - Chapter 84

EVANGELINEThe rest of the day passed in a blur of forced normalcy. Sebastian and Thaddeus returned from town with several bottles of spirits, their cheerful mood a contrast to my increasingly dark mood.The group gathered on the terrace as planned, settling into comfortable chairs arranged in a loose circle.Gael didn't join us, and I found that his absence was both a relief and a disappointment. Part of me had hoped that our confrontation might have shaken something loose in him, might have made him reconsider his choices. But apparently, I'd been naive to think that one conversation could undo months or maybe years of poor decisions.Margaret was the first to feel the effects of the alcohol, giggling at jokes that weren't particularly funny and telling rambling stories that seemed to have no point. Her uninhibited laughter was infectious, and soon the entire group was more relaxed than we'd been since arriving at the lake house.I found myself watching Thaddeus with growing concern

EVANGELINEThe clock on the dashboard read 8:47 PM as I navigated through the empty streets.The silence in the car was broken only by Thaddeus's occasional groans and the hum of the engine.I watched Gael's motionless figure in the rearview mirror until he disappeared from sight, swallowed by the darkness behind us.A transparent layer of tears resumed accumulating in my eyes, blurring my vision and making it difficult to focus on the road.The doubts that always haunted me might actually be true. Maybe I was fooling myself about Gael, about who he really was beneath all that anger and violence. Maybe Thaddeus was right, and I was just clinging to an illusion of the man I thought I knew.I knew there had to be a valid reason for his anger. No one becomes that emotional in a vacuum. He might be suffering from some disorder or trauma, something that explained his volatile behavior.He might have been exposed to something terrible in his past that made him what he is now.I was a psycho