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Home / Romance / Hidden Heiress Rising: Married to my Ex-Husband’s Uncle / Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Lahat ng Kabanata ng Hidden Heiress Rising: Married to my Ex-Husband’s Uncle: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

140 Kabanata

Chapter 41

~ DAMIEN'S POV ~I was on a call when I checked my watch for the first time.One hour and fourteen minutes.Eva had said she was going to check on Marty and would not be long. I had assumed thirty minutes at most. I finished the call and told myself to wait.But I was not someone who waited well.I used the time to go through my Paris property files, which I had been sitting on for two days now. If the competition board was going to keep us here, I was going to make the stay worth something. I had seven properties in Paris, one in the seventh, two further out, and none of them were currently set up for extended use. That needed to change.Also, I had been watching videos.This was not something I would be admitting to Roman or anyone else, but for the past week, I had been going through content online about what women apparently wanted from the men in their lives. Most of it was useless. Some of it was not. I had been taking notes in my head and had several plans forming that I was

Chapter 42

~ Damien's POV ~“Put me down right now, Damien. My ass is literally in the air for everyone to see.”I kept walking down the hotel corridor, her body draped over my shoulder. “It wasn’t like you cared back at the club.”She wriggled and made a protesting sound. The thin dress rode higher on her thighs. I used my free hand to tug it down over her bare skin. The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside. Roman followed, Marty still over his own shoulder. No one spoke during the ride up.When we reached the suite I opened the door and slammed it shut behind us. The sound echoed throughout the quiet corridor. I carried Eva to the bed and set her on her feet. She swayed the moment her toes touched the carpet, one hand grabbing my arm to steady herself. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked glassy from the alcohol. The little dress clung to her, showing everything and wrinkled from the ride.She kicked one shoe off. It skidded under the coffee table. The second followed and landed cr

Chapter 43

~ Damien's POV ~ I stood there with the card still in my hand long after Roman had walked away. The words stayed fixed in my mind even though my eyes no longer focused on the letters. The noise from the street, the flashing lights of the security vehicles, the murmurs from the gathered crowd, everything faded into the background until it felt distant and unimportant.Fear crept in again, the same cold fear that had gripped me earlier in the evening when her phone kept ringing without answer. I worried I would fail to protect Eva the same way I had failed to protect my mother. The thought lodged in my chest and refused to leave.What most people never knew was that the Blackwood family operated like a dungeon for every child born into it. You either became ruthless or you got killed off. There was no middle ground, no room for softness.My mother, Elizabeth, always saw the good in people. She had spotted a woman injured on the side of the road one rainy night and stopped to help.

Chapter 44

~ EVANGELINE'S POV ~I woke up with my face pressed into the pillow and no memory of how I got there.I lay still for a moment, taking stock of the situation. My head was not pounding the way I expected it to. My mouth was awfully dry. But not something I couldn't deal with.I sat up slowly.I noticed the silver dress was gone. I was in a hotel robe that I had no memory of putting on. My shoes were nowhere to be seen. The events of the previous night came back in pieces, the club, the music, Marty being shoved, a hand on my arm, and then Damien's voice putting an end to it all.But after that, it was all pieces that didn't make sense to me at all. I swipe my tongue over my lips out of habit only to feel they are quite tender. I pressed my fingers to my lips just to be sure and indeed, they were swollen.I got up and went to the mirror in the bathroom and looked properly. Definitely swollen. Not painfully, but noticeably. I frowned at my reflection and tried to push further into the

Chapter 45

~ DAMIEN'S POV ~The room Gustavo had chosen said something about him. It was not an office, but it bordered somewhere between the two. It was comfortable enough that he could lean back in his chair and look at ease. He had always understood that an environment was a form of intimidation. He was flanked by his men, and when his eyes found me across the room, he smiled as if seeing me entertained him. I scanned the room before I looked at him, I counted fourteen men. Two exits beyond the one we had come through. Roman had already clocked both without being told to do so.I walked to the center of the room and stopped.Gustavo let the silence stretch for a while trying to assert dominance. What a shame. That nonsense display of power will not work on me. I smiled cockily at him."How many more of our companies are you going to burn?" He asked, taking a sip of his drink. His tone was light. Almost amused but I knew they were all cover-ups. "As many as I want," I replied, "if you ke

Chapter 46

~ EVANGELINE'S POV ~The address in the email took us to a building on the edge of the fourth arrondissement that looked like it had once been used for something official and had spent the years since not seeing its better days. I stood outside it for a moment."This doesn't look like a competition board location," Marty murmured beside me. He was right. It didn't seem like one. But this was the location of the email, as stated. "The email said it was a temporary venue for the preliminary hearing." I checked the address on my phone against the building. They matched. "Come on."We went inside. To my surprise the lobby was empty. The lights were on, and the floors were clean. But there was no person at any desk and no sound of an audience from anywhere.Warning bells began ringing in my head. Marty turned a slow circle in the lobby."Eva.""I see it.""There is no one here.""I know.""We have been tricked." He turned to me, his voice turning urgent. "Someone sent that email specifi

Chapter 47

~ DAMIEN'S POV ~ I returned to the hotel with twelve of my men and found the security team assembled in the lobby, looking exactly like people who knew they had failed at something and had spent the last hour hoping no one would come back to ask about it. I stood in front of them. "How did she leave this building?" The team leader stepped forward. He was a huge man, with scars on his face, someone I had personally vetted before this trip. He looked uncomfortable in a way that told me the answer before he gave it. "She said she was informed of a hearing, sir. She insisted on attending. We told her we could not allow her to leave without authorization and she agreed to wait while we contacted you." He paused. "She then told us there was a problem with the vehicle in the basement and when two of us went to check, she and her friend used the other exit." The lobby went very quiet. "She tricked you," I said, a little shocked. "Yes, sir." I looked at him for a long moment. Then

Chapter 48

~ EVANGELINE POV ~ I didn’t plan it. The feeling simply would not leave me. His hands. His voice. That scent stayed on my skin no matter how many times I scrubbed in the shower. I tried to ignore it at first. I showered again, changed clothes twice, but nothing worked. The sensation stayed under my skin like something alive and kept eating away at me. The harder I pushed it down, the stronger it grew and puke. So I went to him. Damien was in the adjoining room on a call. When I walked in he noticed me right away, not because I made any sound, maybe it was how I stood there. He ended the call without another word and came toward me. For a moment neither of us spoke. He looked unsure whether he should reach for me or stay back. I noticed him lift his hand and then drop it again. My fingers stayed curled into my palms, pressing hard enough to ground myself through the discomfort. “I can still feel him,” I said at last, my voice low. Damien’s whole body pulled back slightly.

Chapter 49

~ EVANGELINE POV ~"Mom, help. Alexandre came into my room again last night. You need to do something."My mother was at her vanity, running a brush through her hair with the unhurried patience of a woman who had decided the conversation was not worth interrupting her routine for."Eva, darling. What exactly do you want me to do?""Talk to him. Talk to Dad. Just do something." I sat on the edge of her bed, pressing my hands together in my lap. "It is not normal, Mom. He comes in and he won't let go of me. He makes me call him honey. He won't let me use his name. He holds onto me and I can't make him leave my room and it scares me."She set the brush down and looked at me in the mirror."You are twenty years old and you are still behaving like a child." Her tone was not unkind. That was almost the worst part about it. She said it the way someone states an obvious fact. "Alexandre loves you. That is just how he shows it. If I had a brother who loved me the way he loves you, maybe I wo

Chapter 50

~ DAMIEN'S POV ~I gave Gustavo twenty-four hours.Not out of generosity, but out of strategy. A man who has been given time to think about what is coming makes worse decisions than a man who is caught unprepared.And I wanted Gustavo to have had time to think about it. I wanted him to sit with the possibility of what I could do when I arrived at our second meeting.When I got there, he was waiting in one of his casinos.His men were positioned around him. He even managed to look unbothered, even though I could see the lines between his eyes, a tell I had come to recognize as him being unsettled.He was not as comfortable as he wanted me to think. Good. I had had enough of him.Roman was standing at my right while Nero was at my left. The rest of my men positioned themselves at the exits before Gustavo's people had time to think about running if it came to that.I sat down across from him. Gustavo looked at me."Back so soon," he said."I told you I would be."He studied me for a mome

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