บททั้งหมดของ THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE : บทที่ 111 - บทที่ 120

JADEN’S POVEthan arrived within forty minutes.I had the folder open on the desk when he walked in. I had been through it four times by then. Each time looking for a different thing. First for the factual record. Second for the gaps, the places where the documentation stopped short or required inference. Third for the legal implications. Fourth for the specific name that Olivia had told me at the end.The fourth read was the one I kept returning to.Ethan sat across from me.I slid the folder across the desk without a preamble.He read it.I watched him do it. Ethan read carefully for someone who processed quickly. He went through the transfer records in three minutes and the names list in two and then he reached the correspondence record and slowed down the way I had slowed down.He read it twice.Then he set it down.Look at me.“Where did this come from?” he said.“Elena Cross,” I said. “She found it in Leonard Cross’s private office during a renovation. She has been holding it fo

JADEN’S POVIt started as a normal enough breakfast.Sunday morning. Clara had made something with eggs and herbs that smelled better than most things had a right to smell at seven thirty in the morning. The coffee was ready when I came downstairs. Olivia was already at the table, both hands around her mug, looking out the window with the particular quality she had on Sunday mornings of being somewhere slightly internal while also being present.I sat across from her.We ate.The conversation moved through its ordinary Sunday version. Her father, who had been asking about the investigation with the specific curiosity of a man who understood more of its significance than he let on. Something Clara had said the previous day about a market she wanted to visit. The gardener’s plans for the south wall of the grounds.Ordinary things.And then.I do not know exactly what prompted it. Something about the quality of the morning, perhaps. The specific ease of the conversation. The fact that Th

JADEN’S POVIt went live at six AM on Friday.Not one piece. Everything.The full investigation. Sarah’s comprehensive report built from fifteen months of documentation. The transfer records with their original figures. The correspondence record with its three signatures. The regulatory filings showing the Friday afternoon pattern documented across eight years. The names of every intermediary who had processed payments and looked away from discrepancies and kept quiet about what they had seen.Elena’s materials. The originals she had removed from Leonard Cross’s private office and the photographs of what had remained. The documents that connected intent to execution in the specific language of people who had believed they were writing for an audience of one and had turned out to be writing for history.All of it.In one release.Coordinated across three major financial outlets, two general news platforms, and a regulatory submission filed simultaneously that ensured the documentation

OLIVIA’S POV We ended up in the sitting room. Not by design. Adrian followed me in and Jaden followed Adrian and the sitting room was the first space we reached and it became the space for this conversation by default. The fire was not on tonight. The room had the specific quality of an evening that had not been prepared for company. Ordinary and unperformed. Adrian sat in the armchair near the window. I sat on the couch. Jaden stood. He positioned himself near the entrance to the room. Not hovering. Not performing guard. Just standing in the way of a man who had chosen where to be in a room with the direct awareness of someone who understood exactly what the room contained. His presence was solid in the way of things that did not require announcement. I looked at Adrian. He looked back at me with the desperate quality he had brought to the doorstep. Up close it was more specific. His eyes were tired in a way that went beyond not sleeping. The exhaustion of someone wh

OLIVIA’S POVI was still in front of my mirror, I couldn’t just stop thinking about what had happened an hour ago. Jaden, I and Adrian in the same space was what I didn’t imagine would happen.The house was very quiet.Not the anxious quiet of something unresolved. The other kind. The specific quiet that arrived after something that had been pending for a long time finally finished. Like a held breath released. Like a window opened in a room that had been closed too long.I was still sitting on the couch.My hands in my lap. My eyes on the empty armchair across from me.I heard Jaden move.Not toward the door. Not toward the study.He went to the sideboard near the window. I heard the soft sound of water being poured. Two glasses. Then his footsteps crossed the room.He set a glass on the table in front of me.Then he sat down.Not across from me. Not in the armchair Adrian had just vacated. Beside me. On the same couch. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him in the space be