All Chapters of The Debt Collectors Bride: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Sera’s pov: I wake before the sun, the silence pressing too close to my ears. For a moment, I reach instinctively to the other side of the bed… an empty habit I don’t understand yet. My fingers brush cold, expensive sheets, and something tightens in my chest. I sit up slowly, wrapping my arms around myself. My body feels restless, too aware of everything it doesn’t know. My father. Damien. The war everyone is pretending I’m not part of. I dress without thinking and leave my room before anyone can stop me. The hallway is already guarded. It always is now. Their eyes follow me—subtle, trained, afraid in a way they don’t want to admit. I nod at them and keep walking. I need air. The garden doors open with a soft click, and the morning greets me gently. Pale sunlight, cool air. The smell of damp earth and trimmed hedges. For a moment, it almost works. My breathing slows. My thoughts loosen their grip. My feet follow the stone path like they’ve memorized it. I don’t look back. I don

Damien’s pov: I forced myself to focus. I moved slowly now, deliberately, stepping over shattered concrete and twisted metal. My boots crunched through glass and bone fragments that should have made me flinch. They didn't. Nothing touched me anymore. I tore through what was left of the room, lifting debris with my hands that no longer shook, ignoring the way my muscles screamed in protest. My shoulder burned. My ribs felt wrong, I felt sharp pain with every breath… but pain was irrelevant. Pain could wait. I needed a body. I needed Gideon. I overturned a collapsed table and found blood pooled beneath it—dark, thick, already drying at the edges. Too much blood. Far too much. My chest tightened, an invisible fist closing around my lungs. No. I crouched, dragging my fingers through it, smearing it across my glove. The copper smell was overwhelming. My mind calculated automatically, cold and precise: this amount of blood could mean survival, or it could mean an ending I wasn't read

Sera’s pov:Something snapped inside me before anyone said a word.It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was quiet—like a thread pulled too tight for too long that finally just gave way. I woke up with a heaviness in my chest that wasn’t exactly fear; it was knowing. The kind of instinct that arrives seconds before the phone rings with bad news.Damien was alive.I knew it the way you know a storm has passed even if the land has been stripped bare. The air felt too still, too sharp. He was alive, but something in him had shifted. He had crossed a line and hadn’t come back.I sat up slowly, grounding myself by pressing my palms flat against the sheets. I didn’t call for anyone. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry.I dressed.My movements were steady, almost calm, and that scared me more than panic would have. I brushed my hair and tied it back, slipping into clothes that felt like armor instead of comfort. When I opened my door, two guards straightened immediately.“Luca,” I said. My voice didn’t s

Sera’s pov:I sat in the dark, the only light coming from the glowing rectangle of the computer screen. I didn’t move for a long time. I just stared at the cursor. It was blinking patiently underneath my mother’s name like it had all the time in the world, while I felt like I was running out of air. It had been waiting years for me to be brave enough or maybe just stupid enough to click it.My hands hovered over the keys, shaking so hard I had to press them flat against my thighs just to keep them still. My heart was beating too hard in my chest, thumping against my ribs. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run, to shut the laptop and pretend I never found it.But I closed my eyes for a second and pictured her face.I didn't let myself see the blood or the night it all ended. I remembered the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, and how she used to tuck my hair behind my ear whenever she saw I was getting anxious. But I also remembered the shadow that always seemed to follo

Sera’s pov:I had never intended to go back down there.That was the lie I kept telling myself as I stood in the hallway long after midnight. I was barefoot, the cold marble floor sending a chill up through my legs. The mansion felt like it was asleep,the lights were dimmed so low that the shadows seemed to pool in the corners. I tried to convince myself that I was just curious. I told myself that knowing the truth was a way to protect myself, and that there was no harm in just "looking."But deep down, a part of me knew better. Ever since I realized that my life was full of locked doors, I couldn't stop myself from wanting to see what was behind them.The archive level was supposed to be completely off-limits. Luca had warned me about it and I had nodded and pretended to agree.Tonight, I stopped listening to his warnings.For days, I had been watching the guards like a hawk. I knew exactly when they swapped shifts. I knew which one stayed in the breakroom too long for his coffee an