Once His Wallflower, Now His Biggest Mistake 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 30

Chapter 22Caleb’s POVThe silence in the boardroom after the heavy mahogany doors swung shut behind Evelyn was deafening. It was the sound of a vacuum, the air of my life being sucked out of the room. The other nine fallen kings were scurrying out, clutching their bruised egos, whispering about liquidation and bailouts.I didn't move.My pride had been stripped from me like skin from bone. Every failure I’d suffered over the last five years hadn't been a stroke of bad luck; it had been a masterpiece of her design. She hadn't just watched me drown; she had been the one holding the tide.I surged to my feet, my chair skidding back with a screech that sounded like a wounded animal. I didn't care about decorum. I didn't care about the Sterling security detail. I needed to see the woman behind the mask.I burst into the hallway just as the silver doors of the executive elevator were closing."Evelyn!" I roared.The doors hesitated, then slid back open. She was standing there, framed by th

Chapter 24Evelyn’s POVThe private Sterling terminal at Teterboro was a cathedral of glass, cold steel, and silent, lethal tension. Outside, the tarmac shimmered under a brutal New York sun, the heat waves rising off the pavement like distorted ghosts. Inside, however, the air-conditioning was set to a crisp, clinical chill that felt like a warning.I stood at the center of the reception hall, a space designed to intimidate world leaders. I was not alone. To my right stood, Arthur Sterling, the Patriarch. My father looked every bit the emperor the world feared him to be. He leaned slightly on an obsidian cane topped with a silver wolf’s head, his white hair groomed to a razor edge, his eyes two chips of flint that had watched markets crash and rivals burn for fifty years. He hadn't spoken since we left the penthouse, but his presence was a shield. He was the wall between me and the prying eyes of a city that still wanted to believe I was a victim.To my left were the pulses of my he

Chapter 26Caleb’s POVThe penthouse was a graveyard of broken glass and shattered pride.I sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, my head buried in my hands, the rhythmic pulsing in my skull matching the dull throb of my shoulder where it had slammed into the stone fountain. The smell of expensive bourbon and stale grief clung to the walls, but I didn't care. I couldn't feel the cold. I couldn't feel the sting of the shards I’d stepped on.I could only see her.Not Evelyn. The other one.The image was burned into my retinas like a flashbulb at close range. A small, delicate figure in a cloud of cream silk. Dark, tumbling curls that caught the moonlight, the exact same shade of chestnut that I saw in the mirror every morning. A sharp, narrow nose. And those eyes.She hadn't looked at me with fear. She had looked at me with a terrifying, piercing curiosity.“Mommy?”The word echoed in my ears, louder than the roar of the ocean, louder than the screaming headlines of my own downfall.I ha

Chapter 28Caleb’s POVIn my previous life, the one where I didn't smell like yeast and desperation, I was a connoisseur of fine biological warfare. Not the kind involving anthrax, but the kind involving corporate boardrooms, high-fiber muffins, and strategic timing. But today, I had outdone myself.I had combined a triple-strength dose of industrial-grade laxatives with a proprietary blend of "Fart-Inducing Legume Extract" I’d sourced from a sketchy bodybuilder forum. I called it The Knight’s Gambit. Alaric called it delicious soup.Poor, stupid Alaric.As he stood in the foyer with Evelyn, the Prince looked like he was posing for a cologne ad. He adjusted his silk bowtie, his chin tilted at an angle that suggested he had never once in his life encountered a problem he couldn't solve with a trust fund."Ready, darling?" Alaric asked, his voice a smooth, buttery baritone."Ready," Evelyn replied, looking breathtaking in a dress that hugged curves I still remembered with agonizing cla

Chapter 30Caleb’s POVThe door to the guest suite creaked open, and I stepped into the lion’s den or rather, the peacock’s recovery ward. The room was shrouded in a dim, expensive gloom, smelling of eucalyptus, lavender, and the lingering scent of Alaric’s shattered dignity.Alaric was propped up on roughly fourteen silk pillows, looking like a wilted lily. His skin was pale, and his hair, usually coiffed to withstand a hurricane, was a tragic mess of tangled gold. He was clutching a hot water bottle to his stomach as if it were the Holy Grail."Jean-Pierre?" he wheezed, his voice sounding like a rusty flute. "Is that... is that the constitution-builder? I feel as though my soul was purged along with my dinner.""Oui, Monsieur le Prince," I said, my accent thick enough to clog a drain. I swept across the room, the silver tray vibrating with the suppressed energy of my internal hysterics. "Zis is ze Bleu de l'Aube, ze Blue of ze Dawn." It is a rare, ancient French remedy for ze... how