All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Masked Obsession : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

CORINNEAfter that absolute bombshell of a lie, we were herded into the main sitting room like defendants entering a courtroom. Lucian’s parents claimed the sprawling velvet sofa, while Lucian and I were relegated to a two-seater directly opposite them. The twins were on the rug between us, completely absorbed in their toys and blissfully unaware of the tension thickening the air.Shannon was the first to speak.“Would you care to explain what you said?” her gaze moved between the two of us. “How exactly did this happen?”I turned my attention to him too, curious to hear how far he’s willing to lie because our very first meeting had been here in Brooklyn not in Chicago. I’ve worked on a project for his company back in Chicago when his team reached out to me but I never met him in person—I would have remembered.Lucian leaned back, crossed one ankle over his knee and draped a heavy arm along the back of the sofa behind my neck. His fingers found the unfortunate skin there and he started

CORINNE“She was murdered.”The words hung in the tense air between the three of us.Murdered… Elena. Lucian’s wife.Even though I’ve never met her and feel no personal grief for her, a morbid curiosity flared in my chest; I wanted answers even if I had no right to them.“What?” Lucian’s voice was barely a rasp.Maya kept her gaze fixed on him. “Do you still want the details here?”A quiet beat passed. Long enough for me to consider grabbing her arm and dragging her out of here before she says something we wouldn’t be able to take back. Long enough to imagine the disaster waiting at the end of this conversation.But Lucian took a slow step back, already making the decision for all of us. “Let’s go inside.”The rest of it moved too quickly.Lucian handed the sleeping twins off to George and the nanny with a gentleness that felt at odds with the storm brewing in his eyes.I tried to catch Maya’s attention through all that, desperate to find out what kind of game she was playing, but she

CORINNEEverything was suddenly too much and thousands of thoughts swirled through my mind like a violent storm, but I couldn’t catch a single one long enough to make sense of it. I’m well aware that Nathan is a despicable human being—I was once the primary target of his rot for longer than I cared to remember—I know his ambition is a bottomless pit but I never imagined he would go to such monstrous lengths. To orchestrate a murder just to clear a path for his own greed... that’s a level of depravity that’s unheard of. Across the desk, Lucian looks wrecked with unguarded rage. The veins in his neck were corded like whipcord, stark against his skin and his fists were planted on the table like the only thing keeping him loosing it. Every instinct I have screamed at me to reach out, to place my hand over his and offer some kind of help. I yearned to comfort him but I could feel Maya’s hot, accusatory gaze burning into the side of my face. I immediately realigned my priorities.“I

LUCIANThere was too much to process.It feels like I’m getting attacked from different directions and angles, leaving me with no space to think, no time to breathe. Yesterday had already been a mess, and before I could even make sense of what Maya brought to the table, today decided to raise the stakes.Someone tampered with the car.Someone tried to cause an accident, to harm her.The thought alone was enough to set something violent loose in my chest as the grip on the bottle in my hand tightened.It’s been hours since Officer Maxwell left after going over every detail he came with. I sat through it all, asked the necessary questions and tried to keep my composure exactly where it needed to be.But even after I spent time with the boys and stood for hours under the cold shower, the rage was a living thing under my skin.Feeling the vicious need to break something—probably something that wouldn’t be able to get fixed—I disappeared to the wine cellar in the basement. I needed space t

CORINNELucian has been acting strange for the past few days. He’s more attentive than usual, which honestly should’ve been impossible considering the man already hovers around me like an overprotective shadow. But lately, there’s this tension sitting beneath everything he does, even worse is the way his eyes track me whenever I move too far away from him.My identity is still unknown to the public, thankfully. The tabloids are practically foaming at the mouth trying to figure out who Lucian Delacroix was hiding inside his house, but the closest anyone had gotten was a blurry back shot of Shannon and I during one of our impulsive shopping trips last week.Shannon had found the entire thing hilarious. I, on the other hand, nearly had a heart attack when I saw the photos online.“You should be grateful,” she’d said while sending me seventeen laughing emojis. “Your ass looked fantastic in those pictures.”Traitor.Tonight, the four of us were having dinner together because tomorrow morni