All Chapters of THE WRONG SISTER : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

79 Chapters

Chapter 41: Dissected

The drive back to the estate was completely silent. Caelum drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road the entire way. Arwen sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap and watched the city lights appear gradually as they left the coast behind. He hadn’t asked her to pack. He’d just said they were leaving and walked to the car and she’d followed because there was nothing else to do. The glass house was behind them. Everything it had held — the proposal, the ring, the album, the last few hours of something that had felt real and safe, was behind them too.-----He slammed the bedroom door behind them, and stood in the middle of the room with his jacket still on and looked at her with an unreadable expression she’d never seen him wear before — the look of a man who had made a decision and was executing it. “Sit down,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral even though he was furious inside. She sat on the edge of the bed, keeping her eyes steadily

Chapter 42: The Cage

She couldn't sleep.She lay on the bed in the dark with her eyes open and Caelum’s words echoing in the room, and she stared at the ceiling until the sky outside the window started going grey.He never came back to the room.She listened for footsteps in the corridor, for the door handle, for any sound that meant he was still somewhere close. Yet nothing. Just the quiet of the estate and the distant, occasional sound of his voice somewhere below.She was still in her clothes from the glass house when the door opened at seven.Rowan.He stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides and looked at her with the expression of a man carrying out instructions he hadn’t written.“Mr. Ravencroft has asked me to stay close today,” he said.She sat up slowly. “How close?”“Outside your door.”She looked at him for a moment. “Am I being guarded or watched, Rowan?”He held her gaze. “Those were my instructions, ma’am.”By nine she understood the full shape of it.Her phone was gone from the nig

Chapter 43: First Strike

She noticed it first on the third day.She’d been sitting at the window, which was her default position now, when something outside caught her attention. On Rowan’s phone, which he’d left face-up on the small table in the corridor when he stepped away briefly. The screen was visible through the gap in the door.A notification from a social media platform. And above the preview text was a name.Isolde Ravencroft.She couldn’t read the full notification from where she sat.“What’s happening to my public profile?” She asked Rowan directly when he came back.He looked at her for a moment. “I don’t have information about that.”“Rowan.”“I genuinely don’t, ma’am.” He said it in the way he said things that were true but incomplete. “That would be handled through Mr. Ravencroft’s communications team.”“Simone?”He said nothing, which confirmed it.She turned back to the window.So that was how it was starting.By the following morning she could feel it even from inside a locked room.Simone

Chapter 44: The Defiance

She put the pen down. Just set it on the table next to the annulment document, stood up, and walked to the window.The drive was empty. The garden was grey. Rowan was outside her door. Everything exactly the same as it was yesterday. She looked at the document from across the room. At her real name printed on it. The first time any official paper had ever carried her name on it. She was not going to sign it. Not because she had a plan. Not because she had resources or allies or any clear path forward. She was not going to sign it because Marcelline had walked in here and placed that document on the table like the outcome was already decided, and something in Arwen had gone very certain the moment she’d touched it. She may have entered this house under someone else's name. But she was not leaving it as no one at all.She asked Rowan for paper the next morning. He looked at her. “Paper?” “And a pen. The one I had yesterday is almost running dry.” She held his gaze. “I jus

Chapter 45: The Gambit

The next morning, Arwen sent a message through Rowan.She wrote it on a torn corner of her notepad, folded it once, and handed it to him when he brought her breakfast.“Give that to Caelum,” she said. “Please.”Rowan looked at the folded paper. Then at her. And he took it without a word and left.She waited while she ate her breakfast.His reply came back through Rowan forty minutes later. Also in a note.One hour. My office.She looked at it for a moment. Then she picked up her notepad, reviewed everything she’d written over the last two days, and started preparing.The office felt different with Rowan walking her to it.Caelum was behind the desk when she came in. He had his jacket on, the formal version, which told her he’d made a decision about how this meeting was going to go before she’d walked through the door. He gestured at the chair across from him without standing.“You said you wanted to discuss terms,” he said. “I’m here.”“Thank you for seeing me.”“I’m expecting a settl

Chapter 46: The Leak

Rowan's phone buzzed three times in quick succession outside her door, which never happened, and then she heard him step away to make a call in a voice deliberately low enough that she wasn't supposed to catch anything. But she was already at the door with her ear close to it. She caught two words clearly. Evelyn Crowe. She stepped back from the door and sat on the edge of the bed and waited.The estate air changed within minutes. She could feel it without seeing it — the particular shift of a large house trying to absorb a shock. Doors. Footsteps moving faster than usual. A phone ringing somewhere below and being answered on the first ring. The low, urgent sound of multiple conversations happening in different rooms at the same time. She went straight to the window. The drive was still empty. But through the iron gates at the far end, a car were already pulling onto the road outside. Then another. A figure climbing out of the passenger seat with a camera around his neck, l

Chapter 47: The Weaponized Wife

Later that evening, he came back from the meeting. Not with an explanation. Just a knock. The door opened, and Caelum was standing in the frame with his jacket still on and his phone in his hand. “There’s a gala tomorrow night,” he said. “The Hargrove Foundation’s quarterly. I need you there.” Arwen looked up from the window seat. “You need me there.” “The board meeting went the way I expected. The article is already everywhere. Simone has drafted three different public responses and none of them are working because all three require us to say something without showing anything.” He moved into the room, stopped at the center of it. “People need to see us.” “Together?” “Yes.” She looked at him for a long second. “And what exactly are we telling them?” “That this marriage is real.” He held her gaze. “Whatever the circumstances were at the beginning, what exists now is real. That’s the line.” “That’s a very clean line.” She snorted. “It has to be.” She stood up from the windo

Chapter 48: The Enemy’s Offer

She didn’t move.That was the only decision she could make in the two seconds after Viktor’s voice carried across the room and landed exactly where he’d aimed it. She stood still, kept her face composed, and looked at him the way she’d learned to look at people who were trying to find the crack in her.“That’s a generous offer,” she said. “From someone I don’t know.”“You know just enough about me.” Viktor lowered his glass slightly. The smile hadn’t shifted. “And I know considerably more about you than you’d probably like.”“I’m sure you think you do.”“Arwen.” He said her real name quietly, just for her. “I’ve known since before the wedding.”Something moved through her chest, cold and fast. But she didn’t let it reach her face.“Then you’re better informed than most,” she said.“I am.” He stepped slightly to the side, angling them both away from the nearest cluster of guests, casual enough that it didn’t look deliberate. “I also never used it. You might want to think about why.”Sh

Chapter 49: The Only Pawn

“How long did you know?”The question echoed in her head. Arwen looked at him, at the expression on his face that wasn’t calm at all, and made a decision.“I found a note,” she said. “In Isolde’s room.”Caelum didn’t move. “What kind of note?”“It was handwritten but had no signature.” She held his gaze. “Just four words. ‘Be ready to choose.’”He clenched his jaw.“I didn’t know what it meant then,” she continued. “I thought it was someone pressuring her. A friend, maybe. Someone who knew she was getting cold feet.” She paused. “I didn’t know it was Viktor.”“When and how did you figure it out?”“The night of the dinner. When I heard your call and started putting the pieces together.” She crossed her arms, just to have something to hold onto. “The affair made sense of things I hadn’t understood. Why she ran. Why she didn’t warn me. Why the note said choose instead of run.”Caelum turned away from her. He walked to the side table against the wall and set Viktor’s card down on it, with

Chapter 50: She Came Back

The call came at seven forty-three in the morning.Arwen heard Caelum’s voice change through the wall. That particular drop in pitch that meant whatever was happening on the other end of the line had just rearranged the entire morning.She set down her coffee and waited.He came through her door two minutes later without knocking. He still had his phone in his hand and his jacket half on, one arm through the sleeve and the other one hanging.“She’s back,” he said.Arwen looked at him. “Who?”“Isolde. She walked into Ravencroft headquarters twenty minutes ago.” His voice was stripped completely of emotion. “With a lawyer. And cameras.”Arwen couldn't help but stare into space, like she had forgotten how to speak.Twenty minutes later, they were at the office. Silas was already on a call when they got there. Simone was standing at the window with her tablet, scrolling through something fast. Rowan had taken his position near the door.“How did she get past security?” Caelum said the mom

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