All Chapters of CONTRACT WIFE, SECRET MOTHER : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: EmilyI sat very still with the phone against my ear."He called you," I said again. Not a question this time. I needed to hear myself say it a second time because the first time had not fully landed."This morning," my father said. "Around nine. I didn't recognise the number at first. He introduced himself very properly. Alexander Kane. Said he was calling to confirm you were safe and that all financial arrangements remained in place." A pause. "He was very polite about it."I pressed my free hand flat on the table."He said the arrangements remained in place," I repeated."His exact words, more or less. That your departure from the property didn't affect anything on his end. That whatever had been agreed would be honoured." My father's voice was careful, the way it got when he was navigating something he didn't fully understand but knew was important. "Emily, what does that mean? What arrangements?""It means the debts are still cleared, Dad. You don't have to worry about that.

POV: AlexanderThe car hit a stretch of clear road and my assistant took the opportunity to speak."The PR team wants a response window," she said. "They're saying if we don't put something out by noon it looks like confirmation."I was reading the article on my phone. I finished the last paragraph, closed it, and put the phone face-down on my knee."Tell them to stand down," I said. "No statement. No engagement.""They'll push back.""Then let them push." I looked out the window at the city moving past. "Clear my afternoon."She stopped typing. "You have the Meridian presentation at three and the..""Move it."She moved it. Across from me, my PR director had been texting with the rapid and slightly panicked energy of a man watching a small fire decide whether to become a large one. He looked up when he heard the exchange."Alexander," he said carefully. "This piece is already being picked up. Three outlets in the last hour. If we don't shape the narrative..""Daniel Marsh wrote it,"

POV: EmilyThe flat was on the third floor of a narrow building on Birch Street, above a bakery called Emmett's that had been there, according to the landlord, since before either of us was born.He said it like a selling point. I took it as one. The flat itself was small. One bedroom, a living room that doubled as a workspace if you were creative about furniture arrangement, a kitchen where two people could stand if they were friendly about it, and a bathroom with a window that looked out onto the back alley and the top of a chestnut tree that had pushed itself up through whatever gap it could find between the paving stones below.I signed the lease on a Tuesday. I moved in on Thursday with two suitcases, a box of books, and my laptop bag. Inside the laptop bag, tucked flat inside a notebook so it wouldn't bend, was the scan.I made three trips from the car. On the last one I stood in the middle of the empty living room with the afternoon light coming through the window at a low angl

POV: DominicI had been carrying it for a long time. That was the honest thing, the thing I had never said out loud to anyone, not even to myself in the direct and unambiguous way that truth requires. I had dressed it in other language for years. She's my best friend. The timing was never right. She has enough going on. All of that was true. None of it was the whole truth.The whole truth was simpler and more inconvenient. I had loved Emily Carter since we were twenty-two years old and sitting on the floor of a university library at two in the morning, surrounded by her notes and my coffee and the specific quiet of a building full of sleeping books, and she had looked up at me mid-sentence and laughed at something I said and I had felt something shift in my chest that had never fully shifted back.We had drifted toward each other that year and then both pulled back, almost at the same time, with the unspoken agreement of two people who cared about something too much to risk it on bad

POV: AlexanderMy father called at seven in the evening. I was still in the office. I had been in the office since seven that morning and had not noticed the hours passing, which was normal. I noticed time passing only when something interrupted the work, and the work had been sufficient today to fill every available space.I answered without looking away from the document on my screen."Father.""Put down whatever you're reading," he said.I put it down. Not because he told me to. Because the quality of his voice was different. Structured in a way that was distinct from his usual precision. Richard Kane was always deliberate but there were gradations, and this particular gradation meant he had prepared for the call before making it.I leaned back in my chair. "What is it?""I received some photographs this evening," he said. "Through a private channel. I'm going to tell you what they show and I need you to listen without interrupting.""Go ahead.""Emily Carter," he said. "On a stree