Semua Bab The Billionaire’s Debt Bride: Bab 81 - Bab 90

Mara POVAdrian arrives at 10PM in the night with his laptop and a bottle of water he doesn't offer to share because he's already reading while he walks, and he sets up at the dining table with the efficiency of someone who has been waiting for this call all evening."Tell me what we have and what we want to say," he says without looking up, fingers already moving across the keyboard."The statement is mine," I tell him, sitting down across from him with my legal pad and uncapping my pen. "My words. Not a press release, not a managed apology. Me telling the truth about what happened and why.""It needs to run tonight," Lucien says from the end of the table, already on his phone pulling files. "We need it out before her journalists wake up and run whatever she fed them—that’s if it’s true she did.""Then stop talking and let me write," I say, and I mean it with complete respect and absolute seriousness.I write for twenty-five minutes straight. The contract goes in — not softened, not

Mara POVI grab Lucien’s phone out of his hand, read the headline twice, and feel something cold and clarifying move through me the way it always does when a problem is solvable. “That is a fabrication built from nothing,” I say, and Lucien doesn’t doubt it either — I can tell by the set of his jaw, the way he’s already reaching for his jacket. I set the phone face-down on the dresser because looking at it a third time will not change what it says and I need to be functional right now.“That outlet has no documentation,” I say, pulling on my sweater and forcing my voice to stay level, smoothing it down the way you smooth a tablecloth before company arrives. “Evelyn paid someone to run an anonymous tip, which means it falls apart the moment anyone asks for a source.”“Adrian’s already on it,” Lucien says, phone to his ear, jacket half-on, one arm in and one arm out and not stopping to fix it. “He’s contacting their legal department with a defamation filing. They retract or they get sue

Mara POVI stare at Evelyn’s name on my screen for one full second — long enough to feel my pulse register it, short enough that I don’t give myself time to hesitate — and then I answer, because I am done letting her catch me off guard.“How brave of you to call,” I say.“James Rowe reached out to you.” Her voice has lost the architectural precision she usually weaponizes, the clipped vowels and the deliberate pacing she uses like a structural tool. She sounds like someone making a calculation while bleeding. “I know he did. I need you to understand that footage changes nothing. Whatever he thinks he saw—”“He’s handing everything to the DA,” I say. “Today. You know that, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”A pause. I hear her breathe once, slowly, the sound of someone gathering something they’re not sure they have enough of. “Mara.” Her voice shifts into a register I haven’t heard from her before — something that might, stripped of context, pass for genuine. “I am asking you, person to p

Lucien POVHer father calls and she puts it on speaker, setting the phone flat on the counter between us.Thomas’s voice is steady but careful, the way it gets when he is delivering something he has already sat with long enough to stop being shocked by: the DA found a figure in the background of the footage — someone on site the night of the accident that neither he nor Rowe recognized, visible again two days earlier during the defective beam installation, wearing a Rowe Gallery staff jacket.* * *I'm on the phone with Adrian within sixty seconds of hearing what Thomas said, because someone in a Rowe Gallery jacket standing near a defective beam installation two days before it kills someone is not something that can wait until morning."The figure in the footage," I say. "What does the DA's office have?""The angle is partial," Adrian says. "Enhancement takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours to get anything usable. But Lucien — they're already treating it as material evidence in Evel

Lucien POVWe stay locked together, breathing hard, until the aftershocks fade. I ease out slowly, watching the way my release starts to leak from her, then collapse beside her and pull her against my chest.She tucks her face into my neck, one leg thrown over mine. Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my skin.“I love you so much,” she murmurs.I grin against her hair. “I love you too Babe.”She presses a kiss to my jaw. We lie tangled in the sheets for long minutes, hearts slowing, skin cooling. Mara’s leg is still draped over mine, her fingers idly tracing the edge of my collarbone. The room smells of sex and roses and our perfume clinging to everything.She shifts, propping herself on one elbow to look down at me. Her hair is a glorious mess—pins half-fallen, strands sticking to her damp neck. She’s still flushed, lips swollen from kissing, and wearing nothing but the white garters and the new gold band on her finger. The sight of her like this—my wife, completely undone and comple