All Chapters of REBORN TO LOVE MY FATHER-IN-LAW: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Scarlett POV He moved.Without warning…no shift in his expression, no change in his posture, nothing. And one second, he was standing across from me, and the next he was crossing the ground fast and low, his arm was coming toward my shoulder in a move that would have put me flat on the dirt in one clean motion.I dropped my weight and turned.But it wasn't enough. His hand clipped my shoulder and I staggered right, caught my footing, spun around to face him.He was already coming back.I shifted left, got my arm up and blocked the second strike, and the impact ran all the way up to my elbow and my teeth knocked together with the force of it. He was not going easy…not adjusting for my size or pulling his strength or treating me like a figure that needed protecting. He was fighting me the way you fight an ordinary thing that means nothing to you. Good.I went at him.I drove the knife hand low and pushed my other elbow up hard toward his jaw. He pulled back fast, caught my wrist, twis

Scarlett's POV My eyes filled.I did not let them fall, rather I pressed everything I had against the back of them and held them there, then kept my chin steady in his hand and looked right back at him without flinching, without wavering, without giving him anything except the plain, unguarded truth sitting openly on my face."I am not playing you," I said. "Not this time or ever again."He stared at me.One second, then two, then three…long enough that the floodlight hummed above us. And at some point in the pack, a distant bike engine rose, then faded into thin air, and the whole world outside those three walls kept moving, completely indifferent to the two of us standing in the dirt with everything finally out in the open.Then his hand dropped from my jaw.He stepped back.He turned away and stood with his back half-turned, one hand pressed flat against the top of the weapons rack, and I could see the tension coiled through his shoulders and the visible, painful effort it took to

Scarlett’s POV “Take him” Marco did not resist…he walked out between the soldiers without looking back, and the door closed behind him, and then there was just the study and the cold fire and the ticking clock and Dominic standing on the other side of his desk looking at the space where Marco had been standing for eleven years.Eleven years…I watched him absorb it…he did not move, nor did he reach for the whiskey, nor did he do anything that would have been the human response to having the floor torn out from under a decade of trust. He just stood completely still and let the weight of it land on him and carried it the way he carried everything.Alone and upright without making a sound.Then he turned to me.The expression on his face was not one thing…it was several things sitting on top of each other and not quite fitting together. Suspicion and reluctant gratitude. A feeling that badly wanted to be relieved and was not letting itself be that yet. And underneath all of it, the qu

Scarlett’s POV He held my gaze for three more seconds.Then he nodded once…a nod that meant the terms were set and the conversation about the terms was over.He stood and crossed to the fireplace, reached for the matches on the mantle and lit the grate, and the fire caught and the room went warmer and he stood there watching it for a moment with his back to me, and I sat with the note in my hand and felt the full strange weight of sitting in this study in this life…alive, with the man I had died beside in the last one."We start in the morning," he said. "I want every piece of false information you have been feeding Luca catalogued…everything he believes is true that is not. We build on that." He turned. "And the bond. What did Mama Roux say.""She said Luca has to consent," I said, "or my wolf has to awaken fully and reject it from the inside."He looked at me and said nothing about the second option…which told me he already knew exactly what it meant and what it would require and h

Scarlett’s POV But it wasn't on her chair…her knees just stopped working and she went down onto the edge of the low seat near the door and put her face in her hands and the sound that came out of her was not crying exactly. It was the sound of a feeling giving way inside a person who has been holding too much for too long. I watched her. The fire popped behind me. Zara lifted her face. Her mascara was fully destroyed now, her eyes swollen and red, and she looked nothing like the woman who had walked into a burning warehouse in red ankle boots with her arms folded and her expression unreadable. Nothing like her at all. "He is at the Iron Veil compound," she said. Her voice was flat, all the colour drained out of it. "The main one, east of the border. He has been there for two days…He is negotiating with their president…offering them Dark Eclipse's full border map in exchange for enough soldiers to challenge you directly." She pressed her lips together. "He is planning to come ba