All Chapters of THE PROXY BRIDE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The accident stole more than Amara’s mother.It stole Étienne Veyron.For three months after the crash, Étienne lived in a haze of brandy and grief. He stopped shaving. Stopped changing his clothes. Stopped leaving the library where his wife’s scent still clung to the manuscripts. Amara—five years old, barefoot, clutching a tattered copy of Peter Rabbit—would find him slumped in his oak chair, staring at the Corniche through rain-streaked windows. "Papa?" she’d whisper, tugging his sleeve. He’d blink, as if seeing her for the first time, then pull her onto his lap. But his arms felt like empty sleeves. His voice, when he spoke, was a ghost of the man who’d built blanket forts in the ballroom."Mama’s in the stars now, mon coeur," he’d murmur, pressing a kiss to her hair. "She’s watching us."But his eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, as if waiting for a sailboat that would never return.The Intervention (A.K.A. How Grief Becomes a Weapon)Lucien Moreau arrived on a Tuesday.He found Ét

The Drevane children didn’t play with toys.They played with trusts.Cassian remembered his fifth birthday like a surgical incision:Grandma Drevane placing a miniature gavel in his small hand. "This," she’d said, monocle gleaming, "is how you control empires." Behind her, Victor Drevane (their father) stared at ledgers, while Eleanor (their mother) adjusted Cassian’s silk tie with hands that never trembled. No cake. No presents. Just the weight of a gavel and the lesson: "Sentiment is bankruptcy."Lysandra—his younger sister by eight years—learned the same lesson, but with a different weapon.While Cassian was drilled in boardroom etiquette at age ten, Lysandra sat cross-legged on Persian rugs in the solarium, humming tunes she’d heard from the gardener’s radio. Her fingers, already ink-stained from sketching song lyrics in margins, traced the pattern of a silver spoon left behind from breakfast."Why’s everything so shiny here?" she’d asked Cassian, holding up the spoon. "Even the s

Monaco sunlight spilled across the villa’s terrace, laying gold over every stone arch and glass balustrade. From here, the Mediterranean glittered like shattered sapphire, each wave cutting light into shards sharp enough to wound the eye. Marcella sat at the center of it, a vision of calculated calm in ivory silk, one ankle crossed over the other, her posture so precise it might have been measured.Her gaze, however, was not on the sea.It was fixed on the single white rose wilting in her teacup.Plucked that morning from the garden where Amara’s roses once bloomed, it had been flawless—stem straight, petals tight, scent soft as a promise. Marcella had snapped the stem herself. Now, the flower listed sideways in the Earl Grey, its reflection warped by ripples. She watched one petal break away and spin lazily on the surface before sinking.Too fragile, she thought. Like that girl.The porcelain cup felt warm in her hand; the phone in the other, cool and sleek. She lifted it, pressing t

Five months before the Drevane attendant ever stepped into the Veyron villa, the city slept under a veil of fog.Marcella Veyron moved through the narrow alleys like a shadow given form, Selene trailing behind in stilettos too sharp for cobblestones. They didn’t speak. Didn’t look at each other. Just turned down a nameless passage near the old port, where the air reeked of salt and rust, and pushed open a door disguised as a fishmonger’s freezer.Inside, the bunker was cold and concrete, lit by a single bare bulb swinging from the ceiling. A man waited in the corner—face hidden in shadow, hands folded on a steel table. He didn’t rise. Didn’t greet them. Just watched as Marcella smoothed her gloves and Selene lit a cigarette with trembling fingers."He’ll come in three weeks," Marcella said, voice steady as a surgeon’s blade. "The Drevane attendant. He’ll offer the marriage contract for Selene."The man said nothing. Just tapped a single sheet of paper on the table—a draft of the trust

Sunrise in Ibiza bled across the horizon like liquid gold poured over broken glass. Selene Veyron watched it from her penthouse terrace, bare feet propped on a chaise lounge draped in silk the color of crushed raspberries. Below, the sea churned slate-gray, but she didn’t see it. She saw only the glint of her new diamond anklet—a gift from Luca, her lover—catching the dawn like a promise. In her hand, a flute of Dom Pérignon fizzed with bubbles that tasted like freedom. Five months. Five months since she’d screamed, shattered a Ming vase, and fled the Drevane attendant’s marriage proposal. Five months since Mama’s voice had crackled through the phone: "The deal is sealed. Come home." Five months since Amara had stepped into her shadow, bleached her hair, and become the ghost. And not once—not once—had Selene looked back.Luca snored softly in the bedroom, a tangle of limbs and guitar-calloused hands. Selene ignored him. She never slept with him—only beside him. Like everything else in