Alle Kapitel von His Tamed Wife, The Wild Heiress: Kapitel 131 – Kapitel 140

Chapter 132ADRIAThey moved him to a private room four hours after surgery.The VIP ward at St. Catherine's had the quality of a space that had been designed to make wealth feel appropriate in a medical context—comfortable chairs rather than plastic ones, an adjustable bed with better linens than the standard issue, a window that let in actual afternoon light, a small refrigerator stocked with water and juice, a television mounted on the wall at a reasonable angle.The television was on every channel simultaneously, in the sense that every channel was running the same story.I found this out when Thomas, settling into one of the comfortable chairs and reaching for the remote with the practical intent of finding something neutral to watch, cycled through six channels in quick succession and found Damien's car on every one of them.Aerial footage. Ground level footage. The expressway barrier where the car had gone over. Reporters standing in front

Chapter 134DAMIENI made the decision at three in the morning.Not impulsively. That was the thing I needed to be clear about, even if only to myself—this was not the decision of a man running on pain medication and fear and the specific disorientation of waking up in a hospital bed at three AM with the recollection of fire arriving before the recollection of anything else.It was the decision of a man who had been thinking about it for weeks and had finally run out of reasons not to act on it.The room was quiet. Adriana had gone home hours ago—I had insisted, because she had been in that chair for most of a day and her ankle was still in recovery and the circles under her eyes had been visible even in the low hospital lighting. She had argued, briefly, in the way she'd started arguing things this week—less the apologetic deflection of the first eighteen months, more the direct pushback of someone who had opinions and had decided to have

Chapter 136DAMIEN"The tension between them," I said. "I see it. I've seen it. I have chosen, in the last several weeks, to be present in my own marriage in ways that I was not present before, and I understand that this is—" I stopped again. "Late. It's late. And even if it weren't, even if I had been doing everything right from the beginning—she would still be the pressure point. She would still be the thing Greaves reaches for. And I can't fix that while she's Mrs. Castellan."Marcus made a sound.Robert looked at the window.Thomas said, very quietly, "What do you want us to do?""I'm going to call Amber," I said. "I'm going to have her come to the hospital. Public enough to be documented. I need you to—" I paused. "I need you to let it happen. And I need you to not explain to Adriana why."Marcus stood up."You're going to lie to her," he said."I'm going to tell her a version of it," I said."You're goin

Chapter 138ADRIAI screamed for help.Not a performance. Not the calculated deployment of distress for operational effect. The raw, involuntary sound of a person watching someone collapse in front of them and understanding in the same moment that they caused it and cannot undo it and need someone else immediately.The nurses came fast. The doctors faster. The room filled with the specific controlled urgency of medical professionals executing a protocol they had practiced until it was reflex, and I was pushed to the wall beside the door by someone's firm and impersonal hand, and I went because there was nothing else to do, because the alternative was to be in the way of people trying to keep my husband alive.The monitor was doing something.I looked at it and understood what I was seeing because I had spent the last day learning to read the monitor and what it was doing now was not what it was supposed to be doing.Flatline was the word that arrived in my mind with the specific clari

Chapter 140ADRIAI walked through the hospital lobby and made my way towards the elevator. I walked through the doors and into the cold outside air and I kept walking until I reached my car and I got in and I sat behind the wheel and I looked at the steering wheel and then I put my head down on it.And I cried. I did not cry for what happened in the corridor or for Marcus or for Amber's presence here, berating me like I was the one who had caused Damien's heart to stop.I had cried because of the argument.For the specific, particular memory of his face when he'd said I never loved you. The repetition of it. The precision and how it hurt each time he said it, as if repeating it was going to make it real. And my own voice saying you're lying, I know you're lying, and the moment everything had gone to shit.I had believed him. For sixty seconds, maybe ninety, I believed him.And then the floor. And his heart giving out at the worst time ever and then the monitor.And then the part of