All Chapters of Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

215 Chapters

Chapter 161: Orange-ish Pine

Xena."You came without Cassandra this time," Herald said, before I'd even finished sitting down."I came on my own." I sat down across from Herald, the same bolted table, the same vending machine humming its tuneless note at the end of the room. "Robert Halloway told me to thank you properly. In person, not a card. I think he was right.""How is he.""Tired. Bruised. Insisting on making his own tea again, which the nurses have given up fighting him on." I let a small smile through. "He's exactly as stubborn as you'd expect a man of ninety to be about the small dignities."Herald's mouth curved, briefly, at that."Steady. Three more weeks, thanks to you." I folded my hands on the table the way he does. "He asked after you specifically. Said to tell you he'd remember it."Something moved behind Herald's eyes, quick and unguarded, gone before it could settle into anything I could name."Good." Something quiet and pleased crossed his face despite himself. "That's good.""You don't have t

Chapter 162: The Order

Xena."He went to your father first."Herald said it fast now, like a man who'd already decided the only way through was to stop circling."After Dante told him about the photograph, Victor didn't just say he'd handle it and leave it there. He went to Charles directly. Warned him what Gerald was building." Herald's hands stayed flat on the table, steadying himself as much as me. "Your father didn't thank him for it.""What did he do?""He said he was going to expose all of it. The schedule, the fourteen families, everything Elias had ever buried, starting that week, with no protection in place and no plan for what happened to you and your mother once it was public." Herald held my eyes, unflinching. "Victor tried to talk him out of it. Your father wouldn't be talked out of anything."I felt the room narrow to the small bolted table and nothing else."So Victor had him killed," I said, "to stop him.""Victor had him killed," Herald said, "to stop him."Neither of us spoke for a long mo

Chapter 163: No Conditions

Xena.My phone buzzed at seven the next morning, and I had it in my hand before I'd even opened my eyes properly.Stayed at the office. Needed the walk to turn into more than a walk. I'm sorry for last night. Not sorry for meaning it. Sorry for how I said it.I read it three times, sitting up on a sofa I'd fallen asleep on in yesterday's clothes, my neck stiff from the angle, the one working lamp still burning uselessly in the daylight.I didn't know how to answer it yet. So I didn't.I read the message a fourth time, looking for anger in it and not finding any, which somehow made it worse. Anger I could have matched. This was something quieter, and quieter things were harder to argue with.I let myself out of his flat with my own key, the one he'd given me two weeks ago without making anything of it, and I drove home to Wells feeling like a woman returning from somewhere she hadn't quite meant to be.The flat was cold and unlived-in, the way it always is after a night spent somewhere

Chapter 164: A Door Half Open

Xena."Will you come to Wolcott with me?"Adrian said it fast, the way people say things they've been rehearsing too long to trust their own nerve with."When?" I asked, already reaching for my coat though I hadn't decided anything yet."This weekend. I keep driving past the end of that street and turning around before I get there. Three times now." He was standing in his own kitchen doorway, phone still in his hand from the call he'd made to ask. "I don't think I can do it alone, and you're the only person who was in the room when I found out about it.""Not Dante?""Dante's the one who has to live with what happened there. I don't think it's fair to ask him to stand on that street and watch me have my reaction to it on top of his own." Adrian's voice had gone careful. "I know how that sounds. I promise it isn't about anything else.""I believe you.""Do you? Because I've spent the last hour rehearsing that exact sentence, trying to make sure it didn't sound like something else." He

Chapter 165: The Light Over The Door

Xena."That's it," Adrian said, before I'd even seen what he was looking at.Adrian stopped walking so suddenly I nearly ran into him, and he stood there on the pavement of Wolcott Street with his hands jammed in his coat pockets, staring at a building that looked like every other building on the block."You're sure?""There's a light over the door." His voice had gone very quiet. "I told you. I've had it in my head my whole life and thought it was a hotel."The light was there, exactly as Dante had described it. An ordinary porch fixture, glass gone slightly cloudy with age, burning uselessly against the grey afternoon the way it must have burned that night seventeen years ago for a woman who'd driven across the city with her son asleep in the back seat.A woman came out of the building two doors down with a dog on a lead and gave us a curious glance, the way strangers do when two people stand still too long on an ordinary street. Neither of us moved for her.We stood on the opposite

Chapter 166: Cost

Xena."Adrian called me an hour ago," Dante said, before I'd even got the door fully open.Dante was standing on my doorstep when I opened it, still in his work clothes, a stillness in him that I'd learned by now to be afraid of."Can I come in," I said, my voice already shaking, "or is this happening on the step.""I don't know yet." His eyes were red-rimmed, though his voice stayed steady, the two things fighting each other for control of him. He came in anyway, and I shut the door behind him, and the flat felt suddenly too small for whatever was about to fill it. "He told me what he said to you at Wolcott. About still being the person you go to first. About the two of you standing close enough that neither of you noticed."My stomach dropped straight through the floor, and for a moment I couldn't get a single word out."Dante . . .""He told me because he's decided he's done keeping things from people who deserve better, apparently, which I find almost admirable, except it means I

Chapter 167: Nothing At All

Xena."You've alphabetised my spice rack," Diana said, from the doorway, before I'd even heard her come in."It needed doing." I didn't look up from the cumin."Xena, I have never once in my life alphabetised a spice rack. I'm seventy-one years old and I've made do perfectly well without cumin being anywhere near coriander." Diana stood in her own kitchen doorway with her arms folded, watching me refold a tea towel that was already folded. "You've been here three hours already. You reorganised my bookshelf yesterday. The day before that you drove Hannah's dry cleaning across town because, and I quote, it seemed like something that needed doing.""I'm being useful.""You're being avoidant, which in this family we like to dress up as useful because it's less embarrassing to admit to." My mother came and took the tea towel out of my hands and put it back exactly where it had been, unfolded. "How long has it been since you've heard from him.""Four days.""And how many times have you chec

Chapter 168: The Condition

Xena."I read your message eleven times before I could make myself reply to it," Dante said, before I'd even fully opened the door.Dante was standing in my doorway at nine in the morning, unshaven, a paper coffee cup in each hand that had clearly been bought as something to do with his hands rather than because either of us wanted coffee."You could have replied at any point in those eleven readings," I said, something like relief already threading through the words."I know. I didn't trust what would come out if I answered too fast." He held one of the cups toward me, and I took it, and neither of us moved from the doorway for a moment. "Can I come in properly this time. Not for a fight. I think we're past the fighting part, or at least I hope we are."I stood back and let him in.He sat on the arm of the sofa rather than the sofa itself, the same spot I'd sat in four days earlier when I hadn't known what I wanted to say to him yet, and I realised I still didn't fully know what I wa

Chapter 169: Twenty Minutes

Xena."You came without calling first," Adrian said, before I'd even stepped through the door."I didn't trust myself to call first. I thought I'd talk myself out of it before I got here."Adrian stood back to let me into the flat on Roscoe, the buzzer still broken, and something in his face told me he already knew, in the way people know weather is coming before the first drop falls."Sit down," I said, my voice already unsteady. "I need to say something, and I'd rather say it properly than let it happen standing in a doorway."He sat. I sat across from him, close enough to see his hands go still in his lap the way they do when he's bracing, the same stillness he'd had on the porch on Roscoe, waiting for whatever came next to land."I need to close something." My hands were shaking in my lap. "What's been sitting open between us since Wolcott. I think you already know that's why I'm here.""I had a feeling."I made myself keep going before I could soften it into something less true.

Chapter 170: Talking To Each Other

Xena."In the matter of Halloway."The clerk's voice carried flat across a courtroom that had filled up more than I'd expected for a case this quiet, and the whole gallery seemed to lean forward at once.Three weeks had passed since the emergency motion.Three weeks in which Okafor had built something real instead of something rushed, full briefing, medical experts, a proper record instead of nine handwritten pages faxed through the night.Cassandra sat beside me in the second row, gloved hands folded on her lap.She watched the front of the room with the particular stillness of a woman who has sat through worse and knows how to wait.Robert Halloway sat where he always sat.Same coat.Michael was two seats down from him again.This time the distance between them felt different.Less like a boundary. More like a man giving his grandfather room to breathe, the way you give a wound room to close on its own in

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