All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Broken Angel… and His Darkest Desire: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The coffee mug shattered against the wall six inches from Maya's head.She didn't scream. Didn't cry out. She simply froze, her body already anticipating the next move, calculating escape routes, making herself smaller. The old instincts flooded back so fast it felt like she'd never left Boston at all—like the past five months in Moonlight Cove had been nothing but a dream, and she was waking up to her real life.Except the hand that reached for her wasn't his. It was Ethan's. And the horror on his face told her everything she needed to know."Maya—God, Maya, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean—" He stepped toward her, and she flinched backward, her shoulder blades hitting the kitchen doorframe.That flinch—that involuntary recoil from the man she'd been falling in love with—broke something in his expression. He stopped mid-step, his hand dropping to his side, his face draining of color."I would never hurt you," he said, his voice raw. "Maya, please. I would never—""You just threw a mug at

Maya knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the Tidewater's kitchen and found Ethan standing by the window, his body rigid as carved stone."Ethan?" She set down the grocery bags, her pulse already quickening. In the six weeks since she'd arrived in Moonlight Cove, she'd learned to read him—the set of his shoulders when he was frustrated with a repair, the slight smile that played at his lips when she brought him coffee, the way his eyes darkened when she got too close. But this was different. This was the stance of a man preparing for war."We need to talk." His voice was flat, controlled. He didn't turn around.The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Those four words. She'd heard them before, in another life, and they'd always preceded something terrible. Her hands moved instinctively to her phone in her pocket, muscle memory from months of survival."A man came by the inn this morning." Ethan finally turned, and Maya's breath caught. His jaw was tight, a muscle tick

The door at the end of the third-floor hallway had been locked for ten years, and Maya's grandmother had taken the key to her grave.Or so Maya had thought, until she found it wrapped in wax paper at the bottom of Eleanor's jewelry box, tucked beneath a tangle of costume pearls and a wedding ring that had never left the drawer. The key was old iron, heavy in her palm, with an ornate bow that bore the Tidewater Inn's lighthouse emblem. Taped to the wax paper was a note in her grandmother's shaking handwriting: When you're ready to know the truth.Maya stood in front of the door now, key burning a hole in her pocket, while rain hammered against the windows like it was trying to get inside. The storm had rolled in just after sunset, turning the October sky bruise-purple and filling the inn with shadows that moved when they shouldn't. She'd told herself she was just doing inventory of the third floor. That she was being thorough, responsible, earning her inheritance one closed door at a t

Maya's hands were shaking as she gripped the steering wheel, watching Ethan cross the inn's parking lot toward the hardware store truck. She'd told him she needed space. She'd practically ordered him to leave after he'd suggested—suggested—that maybe she was taking on too much, that maybe she should let him help with the final renovations for the spring opening.The rational part of her brain knew he was being kind. The traumatized part heard you can't do this without me.She pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, her breath coming in short gasps. This was exactly what Dr. Chen had warned her about during their last phone session. "You'll conflate care with control," she'd said. "You'll push away people who are trying to help because help feels like losing autonomy. The pendulum swings hard in the other direction before it finds the center."But knowing it intellectually and feeling it in her body were two different things entirely.Three months at the Tidewater Inn, and May

Maya had become an expert at pretending. She pretended the way Ethan's hand lingered on the small of her back when he guided her through a doorway didn't send electricity down her spine. She pretended she didn't notice how his jaw tightened every time Deputy Marcus stopped by the inn with his easy smile and convenient excuses. She pretended the anonymous notes that had started appearing—tucked under her windshield wiper, slipped beneath the inn's front door—were just pranks from bored teenagers.You don't belong here. Leave before you can't.She crumpled the latest one and shoved it deep into her jacket pocket, her hands steady even as her pulse kicked up. Four months at the Tidewater Inn, and Moonlight Cove had revealed itself to be exactly what small towns always were: beautiful on the surface, rotting underneath. But she'd survived worse than cryptic threats and cold shoulders. She'd survived a man who'd nearly killed her. A few hostile locals and mysterious messages weren't going