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Home / Romance / His Tamed Wife, The Wild Heiress / Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

All Chapters of His Tamed Wife, The Wild Heiress: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

100 Chapters

Chapter 71

Chapter 71: Letting Amber LeaveADRIA**Marcus (my brother):** he shielded you.**Me:** Yes.A pause in the chat. Longer than usual.**Sophia:** oh.**Adrian:** okay we are going to need to discuss this later but for right now. are you safe. is he okay.**Me:** He needs stitches and imaging for his ribs. They think bruised. He's going to be okay.**Elijah:** plates are registered to a rental company. digging further.**Me:** The police are coming to take a statement.**Adrian:** do not tell the police anything that connects back to us or to who you actually are.**Me:** I know how to talk to police, Adrian.**Adrian:** i know you know. I'm saying it anyway because i love you and i'm scared.I put the phone down and pressed my fingers to my eyes.The tea was warm through the paper cup. I held it tighter.---Damien came back from imaging with confirmation of two bruised ribs, a stitched forearm, and several additional small cuts on his hand and shoulder that had been cleaned and bandag

Chapter 72

Chapter 72: Police ReportsADRIAThe police came forty minutes later.Two officers. Polite, efficient, the particular manner of people who dealt with the aftermath of things regularly and had developed a professional gentleness for it. They asked Damien first. He told them what he remembered—the direction the car had come from, the speed, the fact that it hadn't stopped.Then they asked me."Mrs. Castellan, did you get a look at the vehicle?""Yes," I said. "It was a dark blue sedan. Newer model." I gave them the make, which I had registered in the fraction of a second before impact.The officer wrote it down. "And the plates? Did you catch any of the plate?"I had the full plate. I had memorized it in the half-second I'd had, because memorizing things quickly was a skill I had and did not stop using simply because the situation was frightening. I had the plate and I knew it belonged to a rental car and I was fairly certain, given the service lane, the timing, and the general shape o

Chapter 73

Chapter 73: I'm StayingADRIA"Meaning she might talk," I confirmed. "Which is why I want to know where she is before that happens.""Marcus is already on it," Adrian said. "He has people watching her apartment.""Good." I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes briefly. "Sophia okay?""She's here. She wants to come to the hospital.""Tell her not to. There's nothing to do here and I can't have her near Damien right now.""I'll tell her. She won't like it.""She'll survive."A small pause. "Adria. The thing with Darius tonight—""I know.""He's getting close. He's already suspicious about Miss Andy. And now he's seen you in person and made a connection he almost named.""I know," I said again. "I'm going to have to move the Darius piece sooner than I planned.""What does that mean, exactly?""It means Adriana Salvadore needs to make a more visible move. Stop being a rumor. Start being present in a way that gives Darius something concrete to focus on instead of the edges of what he'

Chapter 74

Chapter 74: An Almost KissADRIAI did not sleep.Not properly. I drifted in and out of something light and shallow in the plastic chair, the kind of rest that was more like pausing than sleeping. Every time a nurse came in to check on Damien I woke fully, assessed the situation, and settled back down when everything was fine. My neck ached from the angle. My back had opinions about the chair that I was choosing to ignore.Damien slept through most of the night.Around five in the morning he stirred, blinked at the ceiling, and then turned his head and looked at me."You stayed," he said. His voice was rough with sleep."I said I would."He looked at me for a moment. Then he looked at the chair. "That looks terrible.""It was fine.""You're lying.""I'm being polite," I said. "There's a difference."Something crossed his face that might have been the start of a smile. Then he shifted and winced, and the smile didn't finish."Ribs?" I asked."They're reminding me they exist," he said.

Chapter 75

Chapter 75: The NewsADRIAIt opened with the particular energy of people who were not expecting to need to knock, which was to say it opened all the way and fast, and then the room was suddenly full in a way it very much had not been a second ago.Marcus came in first, because Marcus always came through doors like he owned whatever was on the other side. Thomas was right behind him. Robert after that. They were talking before they were fully in the room, overlapping questions and comments that arrived in a wave."—heard this morning, saw it on the news—""—literally a hit and run, Damien, what the—""—you look terrible, mate—"I sat back in my chair.The moment, whatever it had been, was gone. It dispersed the way those moments always did when the world interrupted them, leaving behind only the ghost of what hadn't happened and the very warm sensation in my face that I was doing my best to neutralize.Damien leaned back against his pillow. His expression had shifted. Not back to the

Chapter 76

Chapter 76: Amber VisitsADRIAAmber arrived at ten fifteen.I heard her in the corridor first—her voice, carrying the particular note of someone who considered volume a tool. She came through the door in the clothes she'd apparently left the house in at speed, which meant she looked slightly less curated than usual, her hair not entirely settled, her expression tight.She saw Damien first, as everyone did."Oh thank God," she said, and it was genuine—I could hear the genuine in it, the actual relief. Whatever else Amber was, she hadn't wanted him hurt. "I heard this morning, I came as fast as I could.""I'm fine," he said. "Same as I've told everyone."She came to his bedside. Her hand went to his arm—the uninjured one—and she held it in both of hers. The room shifted in the way rooms shifted when Amber entered them. She had a gravitational quality. Always had.I sat in my chair and was the chair.For a few minutes, everyone was focused on Amber's arrival and Damien's reassurances an

Chapter 77

Chapter 77: DischargedDAMIENThe doctor cleared me at eleven thirty.Bruised ribs, stitched forearm, various smaller cuts that had been cleaned and bandaged the night before. Instructions I would follow approximately half of and ignore the rest of, though I kept that assessment to myself while the doctor delivered them. No heavy lifting. Limited physical activity for two weeks. Follow up in ten days to have the stitches checked.I signed the discharge papers with my left hand because my right arm was the stitched one, and the signature looked nothing like my actual signature, which bothered me more than it should have.Adriana was beside me through the whole process. She'd been beside me since sometime around six in the morning when I'd woken up and found her in the plastic chair with her coat over her shoulders and her eyes open, watching the door. She looked tired in a way that she was visibly trying not to show, which was something I recognized because I did the same thing and had

Chapter 78

Chapter 78: Almost Kiss 2DAMIENThe house was exactly as we'd left it the night before, which felt strange. The morning before last night had been so different from this morning that the house existing in its normal state felt like a small lie. Everything in its place. No evidence of what had happened.We went inside. Amber followed. I'd intended to go upstairs immediately—the ribs were talking more insistently than they had at the hospital, and I needed to sit somewhere better than a hospital chair or the back of a car—but Amber stopped in the hallway."I'm not going to that hotel," she said.I turned around.She was standing in the hallway in yesterday's clothes with her hair still not entirely sorted, and she looked—for the first time since she'd come back from Paris—genuinely uncertain. Not performing uncertainty. Actually feeling it."Amber—""I came back for you," she said. "I came back because you told me—you didn't say it directly but you said it in the ways you said everythi

Chapter 79

Chapter 79: Making OUTDAMIENI thought about how to answer that. There were several honest answers and some of them were more complicated than I knew how to deliver standing in a hallway with bruised ribs on no sleep."Because I should have done it before she arrived," I said. "Because bringing her into this house was wrong. Because—" I stopped. "Because I'm trying to do things differently."Adriana was quiet for a moment."You should rest," she said. "The doctor said—""I know what the doctor said.""Then you know you should be sitting down.""I'm fine.""Damien." Her voice had something in it that wasn't quite firmness. Something that was asking without demanding. "Please."I went upstairs.She followed, which I'd hoped she would.I sat on the edge of the bed and let the weight of the morning release through my spine, and she moved around the room with the quiet efficiency she always had, taking her coat off, setting things down. She looked exhausted. Two days of almost no sleep an

Chapter 80

Chapter 80: Terrible TimingDAMIENNot knocked. Opened. With the particular energy of people who had keys or had been given entry by someone, who were carrying things, who were talking before they were fully inside."—thought he'd want real food, hospital food is criminal—"Marcus. Of course it was Marcus."—also brought some things for Adriana, she must be exhausted—"Thomas."—already texted, no response, they're probably sleeping, we should probably—"Robert, slightly too late.They came through the hallway and into the kitchen entrance and stopped.The four of us looked at each other.Adriana made a sound I'd never heard from her before. Then she turned a color I also hadn't seen, detached herself from my hands with a speed that suggested significant motivation, and walked—not ran, but moved with the determined velocity of someone who had decided that upstairs was where they needed to be immediately—directly past Marcus, past Thomas, past Robert, and up the staircase.I heard her

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