Semua Bab His Tamed Wife, The Wild Heiress: Bab 161 - Bab 170

Chapter 162KIERANThe text came through at eleven forty-seven in the morning.I was at my desk in the penthouse, working through the Kane Industries documentation that Darius had sent over the night before—partnership terms, the Salvadore connection that was still being finalized, the structural questions that required my sign-off before anything moved forward. I had been at it for two hours with the focused attention of someone who needed the work to occupy his mindThe phone buzzed.I looked at it.Simon.The contact name was plain, no last name, no company designation. Three years old in my phone.I opened the text.*You've been very helpful, Kieran. I wanted you to know that. Before it becomes public.*I looked at the message.I typed back.*Helpful with what.*The reply came in under thirty seconds.*The schedule. The routes. The conversations we had about Damien's patterns over the last year. He's ver

Chapter 164DARIUSThe call came in at two seventeen in the afternoon.I was between meetings. The Kane Industries situation was moving faster than I had anticipated—the Salvadore partnership documentation was almost finalized, Kieran had called with information about Greaves that had restructured my understanding of the last three years, and my legal team was working through the night on something that was going to require decisions I wasn't ready to make yet.My assistant knocked and said there was a journalist on the line who had asked three times and would not be transferred to the press office."Name?" I said."Isla Vance," my assistant said.I picked up the phone.---Isla Vance was not the kind of journalist you were dismissive with.I knew her work. Anyone in my position who didn't know her work was not paying adequate attention. She had broken three stories in the last four years that had moved markets, ended careers, and in one case resulted in a federal investigation that w

Chapter 166DAMIENThe eggs were grey again.Different hospital, different ward, different tray—but the eggs had the same quality of defeat that hospital eggs always had, the color of something that had given up on itself before it reached the plate. They sat on the tray beside a cup of orange juice and two pills in a small paper cup and a piece of toast that had achieved the specific texture of cardboard that had been introduced to humidity.I had not touched any of it.Marcus had told me to eat three times. Thomas had suggested, gently, that the medication required food. Robert had said nothing and moved the tray slightly closer to my reach, which was Robert's version of a strongly worded statement.I had looked at the tray and looked at the wall and continued looking at the wall."You need to take the pills," Marcus said."I know," I said."The doctor said—""I know what the doctor said," I said."Then—""Marcus," I said.He stopped.The room was quiet in the particular way it had

Chapter 168DAMIENThe cardiologist had opinions.She expressed them in the measured, precise language of someone who had learned to deliver uncomfortable truths without the emotional register that caused patients to stop listening. She told me that a discharge at this stage was not her recommendation. She told me that the commitment required for home recovery was significant and she wanted me to understand what significant meant in practical terms. She told me that the next six weeks were going to determine the trajectory of the next several years, and that the decisions I made in those six weeks were going to matter more than I was probably prepared to accept.I told her I understood.She looked at me with the expression of a doctor who had heard that sentence from a thousand patients and had developed an accurate assessment of how often it was true."I'm going to need daily check-ins," she said. "Not through an assistant. You, directly, on the monitoring system. I'm going to need t

Chapter 170DAMIENThe call came at nine forty-three in the morning.I was in the kitchen, which was where I had ended up after a night that had not involved much sleeping and had involved a significant amount of sitting in the dark office with a wedding ring in my hand and thoughts that went in circles without arriving anywhere useful. I had made coffee because the medication required food and coffee was adjacent to food in a way that felt sufficient at nine forty-three in the morning when the alternative was actually eating something.The ring was in my jacket pocket.I had put it there when I finally came upstairs. Not in the drawer, not on a surface. In my pocket, where things went when you weren't sure what to do with them but weren't ready to put them down.The phone showed an unknown number.I almost didn't answer.Then I answered, because unknown numbers had been significant recently and I had learned not to let them go to voicemail when I could control the timing of the conve