Lahat ng Kabanata ng Marrying The Wrong Brother: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

"Why is your office playing the worst music I've ever heard in my life?"I looked up from my laptop.Sloane stood in the doorway looking personally offended by the existence of sound.For a second, I just stared.Not because of what she'd said.Because of what she was wearing.Plaid pajama pants and an oversized Reed Industries hoodie with bare feet Her hair was twisted into a bun that had clearly started the evening with ambition and steadily deteriorated over the course of the night.She looked nothing like the woman who spent her days intimidating board members and negotiating billion-dollar deals.She looked... cute.The realization annoyed me.Sloane pointed toward the speakers."This."I blinked. "This what?""This song."The music blasted through the office. It was bright, cheerful and extremely upbeat..It was the kind of song that felt like it had been manufactured specifically for dancing around a bedroom with absolutely no witnesses.I frowned. "What about it?""What about

"I picked up something for dessert." She said it like she said most things. In a matter of fact manner. She was already pulling containers out of a paper bag on the kitchen counter. I looked up from the email I was reading and watched her arrange them with more care than the statement warranted. There was a tiramisu from the Italian place on Fifth and something with chocolate I didn't recognize and a small container of what looked like lemon tarts. "You said you wanted something dessert-adjacent after dinner," she remarked, not looking at me. "I didn't know what that meant exactly, so I got several somethings." "Several somethings?" I looked at her with a small smile of amusement on my face. "Don't make it weird." She answered, fighting back her own smile. I wasn't going to make it weird. I was, instead, quite impr

I knew the second I looked at her face.And I'd seen panic before in my line of work. It was common in boardrooms during hostile takeovers, hospital corridors. It was that look of someone whose body had started reacting before their mind caught up. Sloane's eyes had gone distant and it looked like it had everything to do with the room around her, her breathing was visible now in short, shallow pulls. I didn't ask what was wrong because asking would have wasted seconds I didn't have.I got her out.The valet had the car at the curb before I'd finished crossing the lobby, and I had her in the passenger seat with the door closed before she'd said a single word.She was shaking.Now, I wouldn't have been worried if it were just small tremors but it was not. Her whole body was shaking and she had her hands pressed flat against her thighs like she was trying to hold herself together through sheer physical pressure.Her breath was coming in sharp and uneven pulls that didn't seem to be bri

Tomorrow won't be easy.Four words. Four words that communicated a very ominous warning Zane gave me that I spent half the night mulling over, trying to extract some additional meaning that wasn't there, and the other half failing to sleep because of it.I got up at six anyway.Because if I was walking into something, I was going to walk in looking super professional so people would think I belonged there.I acted like it was a business meeting because that's the only kind of situation I knew that involved a lot of people in a room who might not want me to do well.I put on a charcoal gray suit that made me look capable without seeming like I was trying too hard to impress. I made my hair like I did when I went for shareholder presentations and my makeup applied with the same exacting hand I used before facing a hostile board.It didn't help.What am I doing? This isn't a freaking board meeting!I exhaled, knowing that even as I told myself otherwise, even as I went through every mot

Everyone took their seats with careful precision like pieces arranging themselves on a chessboard, ready to play a deathly competitive game.I tried to figure out what would make me feel less like an outsider in a room full of strangers who all shared blood I didn't have. Then I looked around properly and understood something that helped, marginally. It was the fact that nobody else looked comfortable either.This lookedlike hell for everyone too.The worst part of being here was having to meet Cole again. There was still some anger in me left towards him. He just sat there and stared angrily at me but I couldn't care less. The last I checked I was the victim not him.I decided to focus on something, erasing his existence from my mind. I chose to focus on the other part of the family.Roman sat with his hands folded, composed, but his jaw worked slightly when he thought no one was watching. The cousins along the side of the table kept glancing at each other, then away,like they were