All Chapters of Scent of my mistress : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Damian POVThe call with my lawyer ended and I went to the window to catch a glimpse of fresh air."Lying is so exhausting," I said as I mustered under my breath, pressing my palm flat against the cool glass.Outside, the city moved with its usual indifference. The ordinary machinery of a world that did not know or care that everything I had built was currently being dismantled by a woman I had underestimated for far too long. The irony of that was not lost on me. I had always prided myself on reading people. On knowing, before they did, exactly what they were capable of.Lydia had proven me spectacularly wrong.If only I hadn't staged that accident. If only I had thought it through more carefully ,but there had been no time, or at least that was what I had told myself. The accident was supposed to buy me time.Pull her back into the role of worried wife, attentive and distracted, while I managed the things I needed to manage.Instead it had handed her the opening she needed.I turne

## Ava POVForty-eight hours is a long time when there's nothing to do but think.I couldn't stay still. I paced the length of that narrow room three steps forward, three steps back ,replaying the hotel in my head until I wanted to scream. I stopped at the window, pressed my palm flat against the glass, jaw tight.I'd been so sure.I'd read people my whole life. Walked into rooms and known, within minutes, exactly what everyone in them needed. It was the one thing I'd always trusted about myself.I turned and kicked the leg of the bed.Lydia had looked me in the eye and lied with her whole body. And I hadn't seen it coming.I'd read Lydia completely wrong.Or maybe I hadn't. Maybe I'd read her exactly right, and she'd simply gotten better at this than me.And the worst part? I knew it. Somewhere underneath all of it, I knew she'd outplayed me. I just wasn't ready to sit with that yet.A nurse named Grace checked on me every few hours. Soft-spoken. Patient. I answered her questions h

Chapter 75## Samuel POVI sighted Ava.She stood under a shop awning, arms folded, chin up ,same clothes she'd gone in with, somehow still looking intentional on her.I pulled up and lowered the window.We looked at each other."You look terrible," I said."You're late," she said."I was across town.""I've been standing here for twelve minutes.""You escaped from a locked facility. Twelve minutes should feel like nothing."She opened the door and got in without another word.---I pulled into traffic. Neither of us spoke for a full minute. Ava sat with her hands on her laps, looking straight ahead, jaw set in that way she had when she was organizing her thoughts into an order she found acceptable."You spoke to Damian," she said finally."This morning.""How did he look?""Like a man who thinks he's still in control of a situation that has moved considerably past him." I glanced at her sideways. "How did the facility look?""Clean and should I say boring""Forty-eight hours of bori

Chapter 77## Damian POVDamian had always been a man who filled silence but here was he in an hospital room that he caused himself.He reached for his phone on the bedside table and knocked over the water glass instead. It hit the floor and shattered, water spreading across the tile.He stared at it.A nurse came in within seconds, took one look at the mess, and began cleaning without a word. Damian watched her hands move across the floor with a cloth and felt something tighten in his chest that he didn't have a name for."Leave it," he said.She looked up. "Sir""I said leave it."She left.He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there, elbows on his knees, head bent. The back of his neck felt hot. His hands, when he looked at them, were not quite steady.He picked up his phone and called his lawyer.It rang four times before connecting."Tell me something good," Damian said.His voice was rude and coarse.A pause on the other end that lasted half a second too long. "We'

Damian's PoV Today, I called the nurse and told her I wanted to be discharged. I couldn't stay in that hospital anymore. That man gave me seventy-two hours. Seventy-tw hours to make sure everything was in place, or he was going to come and take everything from me. More than twenty-four hours had already passed, and I still hadn't figured out what I was going to do. Lydia had Rachel dismissed from my company. Just like that. She had told me she was going to help me, but where was the help? She hadn't called. She hadn't visited me. She hadn't even checked on me. It had been more than twenty-four hours since everything happened, and I was still alone, trying to figure things out by myself. I leaned back on the hospital bed and laughed. What was I even doing here? The man who built everything with his own hands. I am a man. I'm not going to let any woman become lord over me. No. It can't happen. I don't care if people find out I cheated. Cheating? Why should I be sc