All Chapters of My Ex Husband Chose My Sister: Now he wants me back Too Late: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

DECLANThe second shot told me everything I needed to know, and none of what I actually wanted.I kept Milly pinned against the stone wall of the balcony, my body angled to take whatever came through those doors before it reached her, and I forced my mind to do the thing it always did in moments like this, which was to stop feeling and start calculating exits and distance.Who was armed and who wasn’t. Whether the shooter was inside the ballroom or somewhere closer.“Declan.” Her voice was muffled against my chest, shaking in a way I’d never heard from her before. “What’s happening?”“I don’t know yet.” I kept my arm locked around her. “But we’re not staying here to find out.”“We can’t go back through there.”“We’re not going through there.”There was a service exit near the far end of the balcony, the kind of thing rich people built into their mansions so staff could move without being seen. I’d noticed it the moment we walked out here, because noticing exits was something I did in

ISAACThe moment I heard Milly had been at that gala when the shooting started, something in my chest went cold in a way that had nothing to do with Kara, or the wedding, or any of the mess I’d made of my own life.I didn’t call her. I knew better than that by now. Instead I sat in my office long after everyone else had gone home, pulling up every article I could find on the Halloway shooting, reading them twice, three times, looking for her name buried somewhere in the chaos.She wasn’t mentioned directly. Declan Laurent’s name was everywhere instead, photographed leading her away from the building, one hand at her back, the press already speculating about what the two of them had been doing on that balcony before the first shot rang out.I should have felt satisfaction watching him scramble to protect his image. I didn’t feel anything close to that.I felt afraid. Not for myself but for her.That realization sat wrong in my stomach for the rest of the night, because I’d spent months

KARAI couldn’t remember the last time I read an article about myself that didn’t mention her.Not directly, sometimes. Sometimes it was subtler than that, a comparison buried in the third paragraph, a photograph placed side by side without commentary, the readers left to draw their own conclusions. But the conclusion was always the same. It was always her.I sat on the edge of my bed at two in the morning, phone inches from my face, scrolling through comments on a video of Milly leaving some charity dinner in a cream gown that probably cost more than my entire closet.She carries herself like royalty now.Compare this to Kara’s desperate try-hard energy. No comparison honestly.Milly really glowed up after leaving that whole family behind.I read them three times each. Then I kept scrolling, because stopping felt worse than continuing, the way picking at a wound felt worse than leaving it alone and somehow you did it anyway.Isaac hadn’t touched me in two weeks. Hadn’t really looked

MILLYHe never answered me. Not that night, anyway. He’d stood there for a long moment after I asked, something moving behind his eyes that looked almost like panic, and then he’d mumbled something about an early call with Adrian and disappeared into his room before I could push further.I lay awake a long time after that, staring at the ceiling of my own room, replaying the way his fingers had felt against my cheek. The way he’d pulled back like touching me had cost him something he hadn’t budgeted for.I didn’t have an answer either, if I was honest. I just knew I hadn’t wanted him to stop.Neither of us mentioned it over breakfast. We sat across from each other at the small table by the window, coffee steaming between us, and the silence wasn’t uncomfortable exactly. It was heavier than that. Loaded, like both of us were carrying the same sentence around and neither of us wanted to be the one to say it first.“Adrian booked us a table tonight,” Declan said finally, not quite look

MILLYThe living room looked exactly the way it always had. Same portraits on the wall. Same expensive furniture arranged for photographs rather than comfort. It should have felt familiar. It felt like walking into a stranger’s house wearing my own memories like a borrowed coat.“Sit down,” my father said, already pouring himself a drink even though it wasn’t even six in the evening. “We’ll discuss this calmly.”“I don’t want to sit down.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, but I didn’t care anymore. “I want the truth. All of it. Right now.”My mother sank onto the edge of the couch, her hands twisted together in her lap. She wouldn’t look at me directly. That alone told me more than anything she’d said on the porch.“Milly, you have to understand the position this puts our family in,” my father said. “If this story gets any bigger…”“I don’t care about the family’s position.” I stared at him, something breaking loose in my chest that I’d been holding down for twenty-five ye