All Chapters of The Playboy's Forced Bride: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

131 Chapters

Chapter 1: The Announcement

Chapter 2: The Deal

I stood in the hallway for a long moment. The smart move was to turn around, get back in the elevator, go home, and forget I ever saw it. I had spent three years playing it safe, knowing exactly when to step forward and when to pull back, knowing the difference between an opportunity and a trap. But I had also spent three years trying to get behind that door. So I entered the office, and it was dark except for the city lights pouring through the tall windows. I went straight to the desk first, but found nothing. I checked the drawer, and it was also empty. Then I moved to the filing cabinet against the distant wall. That was when I heard the footsteps. They came down the hallway, slow and steady. I straightened up and turned around. Adrian Tao stood in the doorway, still dressed from the gala, his jacket off, and his collar loose. He looked at me with a calm expression that was impossible to read. “You didn’t go home,” he said. “Neither did you.” His mouth shifted slightly, al

Chapter 3: Moving In

The dinner went better than I expected, but worse than I needed. Dominic was exactly what my three years of research had warned me about. He watched me across the table the whole night with eyes that didn’t match his polite smile. I smiled back, chose every word carefully, and gave him nothing he could use. Yet, he studied me as he had already decided he would figure me out. On the ride back to the estate, I kept telling myself it went well, and I handled it. The city lights blurred past the window while I tried not to think about the way Dominic had paused before answering my second question, or how Adrian had observed the way his father was watching me. The Tao estate sat at the end of a long private driveway lined with old trees. The house was three floors of pale stone and dark glass, surrounded by gardens that were neatly trimmed. I stepped out with two suitcases and my laptop bag. Before I unpacked my things, I walked around the space and mapped it in my head. Both the exis

Chapter 4: Public Debut

I hadn’t slept. I sat in the dark until four in the morning, thinking over the same question repeatedly in my head. What if someone already knew who I was? What if letting me in had been the plan all along? By the time the sky turned gray, I still couldn't come up with answers. I showered, dressed, and told myself to stay focused. Three years of work had taught me how to keep moving even when things felt uncertain. One footnote wasn’t enough to throw me off. I needed more facts, and the only way to get them was to stay put and do what I came here to do. I went downstairs, and Adrian was already at the kitchen table with coffee and a newspaper, reading quietly. He glanced up when I walked in, and studied me for a second, then continued with his paper. I brought out a cup and filled it, and sat across from him. “The charity dinner is tonight,” he said. “I know.” “A stylist is coming at two.” “Alright.” He turned the page. “She’ll have suggestions.” “I’m sure she will.

Chapter 5: First Crack

I heard the sound of footsteps approaching quietly in the west wing, a door opened, and the steps headed toward the stairs. I finally made my choice and deleted the message, cleared it completely, set my phone face down, and I sat at my desk with my laptop open by the time Adrian reached the bottom of the stairs. My laptop screen was blank. Someone in this building knew exactly who I was. And they had chosen to warn me privately instead of exposing me. That meant they wanted something. “We have an invitation from Dominic at ten.” Adrian passed the message to me briefly, without an explanation. His father wanted to see us on the 40th floor right away. I had never been above the 38th floor in three years. The executive level felt different. Some minutes later, I was done and ready. Dominic stood up when we walked in, smiling as if we had done him a great favor. The photo from last night had exploded online, and the press was running the exact story he wanted: The Tao heir was fina

Chapter 6: The Performance Deepens

I didn’t sleep after the second message dropped. I stayed at my desk until morning Someone was feeding me information. Two messages from two different numbers, each one arriving right when I found something new. They were watching me, and the only question I couldn’t answer was the motive behind it. I closed my laptop, got ready, and told myself to stay focused. I had a name, two signatures, and dates tied to the worst time in my father’s life. That was enough to work with, it was more than I had yesterday. I went downstairs. Adrian was already loading bags into the car himself. There was no sign of his driver or staff around. He tossed the last one in and looked up when he saw me. “Ready?” he asked. “Yes.” We left the estate and I let the silence sit because I needed it. Adrian drove with one hand loose on the wheel. The usual tension in his shoulders had eased. He looked different out here, like he could finally breathe. I turned toward the window and kept my thoughts to m

Chapter 7: The Gallery

I didn’t sleep after that email. Someone up there had sent me a warning. Stop looking. Leave now. Though, it didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like someone who knew what was coming and didn’t want me in the middle of it. The next day at seven in the evening, Adrian left the estate for dinner in the city. He had mentioned it briefly earlier that day at breakfast, he didn’t give details, I nodded and we left it there. Ten minutes after he drove out, I sat at my desk weighing whether what I was about to do was smart. But I needed to know the full layout of the estate, every room and corner. That was part of the job, I wasn’t just curious. Then, I crossed into the west wing, It was calmer than the rest of the house. I checked a sitting room, then a study room with its door half open. Nothing useful on the desk. At the end of the corridor, I found a door I had missed earlier. I opened it and stopped. The room was long and narrow, lit by soft fixtures that pushed the lights upward al

Chapter 8: Nathaniel’s Suspicion

The lights snapped back on forty seconds later. Every bulb in the east wing lit up at once. The footsteps in the west wing stopped, and the house was quiet again. I checked the door, the window, and the hallway to see if someone was out there, nothing was there. Then, I walked to the ground floor quickly and found Mrs. Delacroix in the kitchen. “Power fluctuation,” she said. “It happens in the older wing sometimes.” I nodded and went back upstairs. Power fluctuations don’t make footsteps. I said to myself. I didn’t sleep. Nathaniel Cross showed up the next morning, his car pulled in at ten forty-five. He hadn’t sent a message before coming. I was in the sitting room pretending to read when Mrs. Delacroix brought him in. I had been expecting him since that phone call. I just didn’t know how much he already had. Adrian greeted him in the hall with easy warmth and a real laugh. Then Nathaniel stepped into the sitting room and looked straight at me. “I was hoping to borrow Harpe

Chapter 9: The Gala Circuit

By the third week, the story had started spreading across the media. That single photo from the charity dinner had given the press everything they needed. The playboy who had finally settled down. The unknown woman who had somehow caught him. A romance that felt real because sixty thousand people had decided it was. The city wanted a love story. Dominic’s team gave them one. We were booked into events almost every night. Charity auctions, board dinners. At the long reception, I sat beside Adrian, and people who had known him for decades watched us closely, searching for any weakness. I didn’t slip. But the constant performance was starting to wear on me, sustaining two versions of myself in the same room, night after night, was getting harder to handle. The careful wife on the surface. The investigator underneath. The space between them took more focus than I wanted to admit. The magazine interview was Dominic’s idea. His team set it up without asking us. Silverton Social wanted

Chapter 10: The weight of it

My father picked up on the fourth ring. “Harper.” His voice still carried that same warmth. Eleven years since everything fell apart, and that part of him had never changed. Every time I heard him say my name, it reminded me exactly why I was doing this. Right here, I sat on the chair in a room that cost more than he earned in a month. I kept my voice light, and asked about his week. He told me about the neighbor’s dog that waited at his gate every evening. A TV show he had started watching, and a recipe that went wrong when he tried making a dish, which he described with the dry humor I grew up with. For a few minutes, it felt like the most honest conversation I’d had in weeks. Then he asked, casual as always, if I had met anyone. I laughed before he even finished the sentence. I gave him the usual answer about being busy and Silverton men being too in love with themselves. He chuckled and let it go. We talked a little longer, said our normal goodbye, and I hung up. I sat in the

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