Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back): Kabanata 421 - Kabanata 430

MARY'S POV:​His large palm pressed gently against my upper shoulder. "You need to stay out here and take good care of yourself," he said softly, his deep voice sounding private and quiet. "I will go inside and check on Hotch by myself. If you walk in there right now while the female nurses are helping him change out of his messy clothes, it is going to be far too awkward for him, and that certainly will not help his body recover any faster."​Then Marl deliberately turned his head and raised his voice, making sure every single word was crystal clear for Alistair to hear.​"And make sure you pass a message along to the crazy person who ran Hotch down with his car. If you are planning to go inside that room to visit him, remember that you are there for a quick checkup, not a romantic date. Otherwise, he might get so furious that he decides to hit Hotch again... or maybe even try to run over the two of us at the same time."​Alistair looked completely furious. His face went bright red,

MARY'S POV:​The furious words booming through the phone speaker echoed loudly in my mind, sharp, terrifying, and completely damning.​"What the hell have you done now? You need to publicly strip that foolish woman away from our corporate name this very second!"​I stood there in the cold corridor, watching Alistair's face go completely pale in an instant. His strong jaw tightened up so hard that I could see the muscles twitching under his skin, his trembling fingers clenching around his mobile phone until his knuckles turned ghost white. He opened his mouth to offer some kind of explanation to the angry board member, but not a single sound managed to come out of his throat. He looked exactly like a powerful man who had just been struck by a bolt of lightning, completely frozen right in his tracks and totally unable to process the terrible news he had just received. All the healthy color drained out of his cheeks, leaving his face looking gray, sick, and deeply shaken.​Sitting right

MARY'S POV: ​He was actually standing there telling me that he was willing to forgive my behavior, acting as if he were the innocent victim who had been wronged throughout this entire ordeal. He was treating me as though I were a disobedient child who needed his generous forgiveness to be allowed back into the house. He was offering me a deal, my complete submission in exchange for his fake kindness. He was telling me that if I just kept quiet, stopped fighting back, and accepted his rules, my life could return to the quiet, comfortable routine of the past. ​However, the painful truth was that his idea of Vesper "not bothering me" simply meant keeping me completely trapped under his constant control under the convenient excuse of keeping me safe from public attention. He would isolate me inside his large estate, place guards at the gates, monitor every single phone call I made, and lock me inside a golden cage from which I could never hope to escape. He would surround my life with h

MARY'S POV:​The four bodyguards quickly exchanged confused glances with one another. Hesitation flickered across their tough faces. They had just been handed explicit orders by their primary employer to hold me in place, but now those exact orders were being completely overridden by his own recorded voice. They simply did not know which instruction they were supposed to follow, or whose authority carried more weight in this situation.​Marl did not waste a single second waiting for them to figure out the puzzle. He walked directly through the small gap between the guards, his large warm hand reaching down to wrap firmly around my wrist, pulling my trembling body forward along the polished floor. His grip felt gentle yet completely solid, his fingers radiating a comfortable warmth against my cold skin.​"Walk fast," he instructed in a low, quiet voice that only I could hear. "And whatever you do, do not look back."​I followed close behind his broad back without asking a single questi

MARL'S POV:​I stood completely still right beside the large glass window of my quiet living room, holding my black mobile phone pressed firmly against my right ear, listening to the monotonous sound of Alistair's confident voice coming through the small speaker. Out past the clear windowpane, the bright lights of the massive city glittered in the dark night air, looking like thousands of tiny yellow stars scattered across the dark sky. My clear reflection stared straight back at me in the glass pane, a weary face with dark shadows under the eyes, sharp facial lines, and the tired expression of a man who had been playing a long, dangerous game for far too many years.​The whole apartment around me was completely silent and still, with the only background sound being the the quiet murmur of Alistair's voice on the line. I had been living inside this private city home for several long years now, yet the space had never once felt like a real home to me. It was simply a quiet place where