THE CONTRACT BRIDE’S REVENGE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 50

JADEN’S POVShe was in the sitting room when I came home.Not reading. Not watching the television. Just sitting in the armchair by the window with her legs tucked underneath her and her phone face down on the armrest. Looking at the grounds outside with the particular quality of attention that meant she was not really seeing them.Thinking.I had been back from the office for twenty minutes. Changed out of the jacket. Come downstairs for something I had not fully decided on yet. Water perhaps. The kitchen. Some version of stepping away from the proposal and the filings and the eleven years of momentum that had been building toward a moment I could now see clearly on the horizon.I had not expected to find her in here.I stopped in the doorway.She did not hear me immediately. She was still looking at the window. At the evening light moving across the grounds. Something in her expression was softer than her public face. More open. The version of her that existed when she thought no on

OLIVIA’S POVI noticed them the way you noticed changes in weather. Not in one dramatic moment but in the accumulation of small signals that told you something had shifted without announcing itself.I was standing at the kitchen counter reading something on my phone and he came in from the study and went to the coffee pot and filled his cup and then without pausing filled mine and set it back where it had been and went to the table.He did not comment on it.I did not comment on it.I picked up my cup and drank my coffee and pretended it was the most ordinary thing in the world.It was not the most ordinary thing in the world.It happened again on Thursday.I had been in the library until late. Later than I intended. The book had finally caught me properly after weeks of sliding off the page and I had followed it deep into the evening without noticing the time. When I finally came out the ground floor was quiet and most of the lights had been turned down to their night setting.I walk

OLIVIA’S POVI did not hear the conversation. I was not trying to hear it. I was in my room with the door closed reading the same page I had been reading for forty minutes when I heard his voice briefly in the corridor. Low and deliberate. The particular tone that meant a conversation was being ended rather than had.One minute. Maybe less.Then silence.Then his footsteps moving away toward the penthouse level.I set the book down on my chest and looked at the ceiling.I thought about Camille at the entrance hall. The cream coat and the practiced smile and the eyes that moved over me like inventory. The way she had said it is a beautiful house and meant something entirely different.I thought about Ethan in the kitchen.Just be careful He had said it weeks ago and I had filed it away and today had been the first time I had fully understood what he meant. Not a warning about danger exactly. A warning about the particular kind of woman who smiled at you while measuring the distance be

OLIVIA’S POVI was in the sitting room when it came through. A notification from an account I did not recognize at first. Then I looked at the profile picture and went still.Elena Cross.Adrian’s wife.She looked different in the profile picture from the woman I had seen at the gala. She looked less polished. More like a person and less like a presentation.I stared at the message for a long time before opening it.“Mrs Parker. I know this is unexpected and I understand completely if you do not respond. I am not writing on Adrian’s behalf. I am writing as myself. I think we have more in common than either of us would like and I would value the chance to speak with you. Woman to woman. No agendas. Just coffee. I understand if the answer is no.” _Elena.I read it three times.Then I read it a fourth time looking for the thing that would tell me it was a trap. The false note. The sentence that rang slightly wrong. The evidence of Adrian’s hand in the phrasing.I did not fi

OLIVIA’S POVI was in the library with a book I had not been reading properly for twenty minutes when my phone buzzed on the armrest and I looked at the screen and saw Millbrook Medical Center and was on my feet before the second buzz finished.“Hello.”“Good morning Miss Olivia.” The nurse’s voice was warm. Warmer than the clinical careful tone they used when the news required preparation. “I am calling to let you know your father is awake. He is alert and responsive and asking for you.”I pressed my hand flat against the bookshelf beside me.“I will be there within the hour,” I said.I was already moving before I ended the call.I did not tell Jaden I was leaving.He was in his study with the door closed and I could hear the low rhythm of a call through it and I did not want to interrupt and I did not want to wait. I left a message with Clara to pass on and grabbed my bag and was in the car in under ten minutes.The driver took the motorway.I sat in the back with my hands in my lap