All Chapters of The Affair Revenge My Bestfriend's Husband Offered Me: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

His gaze snapped back to mine. The confusion in his eyes cleared, replaced by a slow-dawning comprehension—and something else. Something deeper. A crack in the ice, just for a second, showing not approval, but a raw, unsettling vulnerability. He hadn't planned this. He hadn't expected it. And for that one heartbeat, he was just a man with a woman's mark on him, trapped in an elevator, completely off-script.Then the CEO slammed back into place.He straightened, his jaw tightening. He didn't smile. He didn't nod. He simply turned away from me, facing the elevator doors, his posture rigid.The silence between us was no longer charged with strategy. It was charged with something else entirely—something neither of us knew how to name. It made me wonder if I'd miscalculated, if I'd crossed a line he hadn't agreed to. I cursed myself in silence and regretted it immediately.My own heart wasn't hammering with triumph. It was thrashing in a cage of panic. I hadn't outmaneuvered him; I'd jumped

“Does his presence here compromise our position?”Her eyes stayed fixed on the Harringtons, her face a mask of perfect composure. But her knuckles, wrapped around the champagne flute, were bloodless white.The answer, whatever it was, would be whatever best served the alliance.“No,” she said, her voice steady. “It changes nothing.”“Good.”She could feel his palm on her back put a slight pressure as to ground her... or his self, in this current chaos they had to face.Across the room, Jovi began to move through the crowd, Zane stiff beside her, coming straight toward them.“Is that… Nerissa?”Jovi’s voice was barely a whisper, but Zane heard the tremor in it. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His eyes were locked on his wife. Vance Blackwood stood beside her, his head tilted close to hers. They looked like a unit. A team.His chest tightened.“They look… close,” Jovi murmured, her fingers digging into his sleeve. “He was supposed to bring some fling. Not her. She wouldn’t do this. Not Ne

The morning after the party, Nerissa sat at the kitchen island in the quiet house. Zane had left early. The silence felt heavy.At ten, the doorbell rang. A courier handed her an envelope. Inside was a keycard and an address written in strong, clear handwriting: The Aerie. PH 70. 7 PM.No note. No explanation. Just an order from Vance.She didn't want to go. But she had nothing else to do.The Aerie was the top floor of the residential tower next to the Astera Spire offices. The elevator opened right into the apartment. The place was all windows and empty space. It didn't look like anyone lived there. It looked like a museum.Vance was waiting. He wasn't wearing a suit. He had on dark pants and a grey sweater. It made him look different. More real. It was almost worse."Sit," he said."Harrington’s final amendments. Review the liability clauses.”She sat. She looked at the documents, but the words blurred. The memory of last night played on a loop. He stayed standing by the window.“Is

The numbers on the screen bled together into a grey fog. She blinked, hard, trying to force her eyes to focus. Her desk clock read 9:17 PM. The executive floor was a tomb, so quiet she could hear the faint whir of her own laptop fan.This office, her shiny new prize, felt like a glass box suspended over the city. She’d stopped answering her phone. Mom’s worried voicemails piled up. Zane’s pleading texts were little red notifications she swiped away without reading. The only thing that felt real was the Harrington project data. It was clean. It was logical. It didn’t lie or love someone else.A dull ache had been brewing in her lower back for hours. She’d ignored it. She blamed the chair, the stress, the sheer exhaustion of holding herself upright in a world that had cracked open. She pushed back from the desk to stand and a wave of dizziness hit her so violently the floor seemed to tilt. She grabbed the edge of the desk, her fingers digging into the wood.You just need food, she told h

Vance hadn’t left. He stood near the curtained entrance, his back to the fabric wall, a broad, dark silhouette blocking out the noise and light from the hallway. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at a point on the opposite wall, his posture rigid. A sentinel. A wall.The wand pressed against her, cold and foreign. On the screen, a blurry, shifting landscape of greys and blacks appeared. She didn’t know what she was looking at. She didn’t know what any of it meant. Her heart was a frantic bird trapped in her ribs, beating against the cage of her bones. Please, she thought, a wordless, desperate prayer to nothing and everything. Please, please, please.The tech moved the wand. Clicked a button on the keyboard. A still image froze on the screen. More grey shapes. She was too quiet. She measured something, her brow furrowed. The silence in the room grew thick and heavy, pressing down on Nerissa chest. The only sound was the low hum of the machine.She took more pictures. More clicki