OFF LIMIT: FOURTEEN NIGHTS WITH MY HUSBAND'S BEST FRIENDS 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 141 - 챕터 150

Chapter 142Elowen"You knew!" I hit him again, tears streaming down my face, my palm stinging from the impact. "You knew he falsified that letter and you were just going to let him get away with it!"Kian caught my wrists this time, his grip firm but not painful, holding me in place while I struggled against him."Elowen, stop...""Why won't you let me leave?" The words tore out of me as a sob, my whole body shaking so violently I could barely stand. "I'm not asking for anything! I don't want his money, I don't want the house, I don't want a single thing except my life back!"My knees buckled and Kian had to hold me up, his hands steady on my arms as I sagged against him, all the fight draining out in one horrible rush."Please," I choked out, barely able to form words around the sobs that kept coming. "I just want to leave. Why won't he let me go? What did I ever do to deserve this?"People were staring. Phones were definitely out, recording every moment of my breakdown. Security wa

Chapter 144Elowen"The police have no record of any accident involving Dr. Ellis this morning," Rebecca confirmed, her voice tight with controlled anger. "No taxi crash, no investigation, nothing. Someone fed me false information knowing I'd relay it to you."I couldn't breathe. The car felt too small, too hot, the air pressing down on my chest."Why would someone..." I started, but the answer was already crystallizing in my mind, sharp and terrible."To make you react exactly the way you did," Rebecca finished. "To make you have a breakdown in the courthouse, to make you attack Adrian in front of witnesses and cameras." She paused. "Elowen, they wanted this. They orchestrated the entire thing."My vision blurred at the edges. I'd played right into his hands. Given him exactly what he needed."I should have verified," Rebecca continued, and I could hear the self-recrimination in her voice. "I should have called the police station directly instead of trusting the caller, but everyth

Chapter 146Elowen I wanted to believe her.But as I lay there in the dark, all I could think about was Adrian's face when I'd attacked him—the flash of satisfaction before he'd arranged his features into fear.He'd won today.I closed my eyes and all I saw was the courthouse hallway, the cameras, my own hands shaking as security grabbed my arms.Caroline's palm connecting with his face in the ringing silence that followed — all of it exactly as bad as it looked.All of it captured in high definition by people who had no reason to question what they were seeing.All of it now living permanently on the internet under headlines that had already decided who I was.He'd orchestrated my breakdown so perfectly that I hadn't seen it coming until I was already inside it.Until the rage and the grief had taken over completely and there was nothing left in me that was capable of stopping or thinking.And that was the part I couldn't let go of — not that I'd broken, because God knows I had reas

Chapter 148Elowen Inside the apartment, Zac made me promise to stay inside, to not look at social media, to call him if I needed anything.I agreed to all of it, knowing I wouldn't follow through on any of it.The moment he left, I was back online, scrolling through the increasingly vicious comments.Someone had started a petition demanding I be charged with assault too.It had thirty thousand signatures.A Insta account had posted "Adrian's side of the story" quotes that were probably fabricated, painting him as a devoted husband trying desperately to hold his marriage together while his unstable wife attacked him publicly.It had hundreds of thousands of likes.My phone buzzed—Rebecca calling.Why is she just calling now? Where has she been all this while?"Don't look at social media," she said immediately. "Please tell me you're not looking.""Too late," I said.She sighed. "It's going to get worse before it gets better. Adrian's team is clearly running a PR campaign. But Elowen,

Chapter 150Elowen The doorman looked at me when I walked up, and I watched his face, he didn't reach for the phone.He just nodded and held the door open.I stopped walking for just a second and then I let out a short quiet laugh that had nothing funny in it at all.Of course he wasn't calling up, and of course Adrian had told them to expect me, and the only thing that surprised me was that some small part of me had still been hoping I was wrong about that.I wasn't wrong.I knew he'd be waiting here. I knew him more than I'd let myself believe.I walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse and stood there watching the floors climb and kept my breathing steady the whole way up.He was in the sitting room.When I walked in he looked up and I watched his face do the thing it always did when something went exactly the way he planned it — that small, private settling, like a man who had been holding tension in his shoulders finally letting it go — and then he smiled,