All Chapters of Faking his wife, carrying his child.: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

42 Chapters

Chapter Eleven: Running Into Walls

He didn't come in.That was the thing I kept returning to the next morning. Damien had stood in my doorway with the marriage certificate in his hand and a red circle around a signature that wasn't quite Lyra's, and he had looked at me for a long moment with those unreadable grey eyes, and then he had said "We need to talk" and I had said "Alright" and he had said "Not tonight" and walked back down the corridor.Not tonight.I hadn't slept. I'd lain in the dark replaying those two words until they stopped making sense and started making too much sense. Not tonight meant there was a tonight coming. It meant he was choosing when. Choosing the moment, the setting, the terms of whatever conversation was about to end everything.Damien Cross didn't react. He planned.Lyra had told me that on the burner phone and I hadn't needed her to.I already knew.Isolde arrived at the library at nine the next morning with a document and an expression that said she had not come to make my day easier."T

Chapter Twelve: You're Not Who You Said You Were

I hadn't slept.Not after finding my name on that document. Not after sitting on the library floor for forty minutes turning it over and over in my hands like it would eventually make a different kind of sense.Nova Chen. My full legal name. On a supplementary addendum attached to a marriage contract that had been signed before I ever agreed to any of this.Someone in this house — or connected to it — had known I was coming before Lyra made that midnight call. Before I said yes. Before I practiced a signature in my bathroom mirror.They had put my name on paper and waited.I'd gone to bed at two and stared at the ceiling until five and then given up entirely and come downstairs at six.That was when I'd seen the folder.Damien's study door slightly open. The lamp still on inside. And on the desk, visible through the gap — a plain manila folder with two names written on the tab in his handwriting.Lyra Chen.Nova Chen.Both.I'd stood in that corridor for a long time.Then I'd walked t

Chapter Thirteen: Vesna Infiltrates The Estate

"I'm here for Mrs. Cross's styling appointment." Vesna stood at the front door with a large tote bag on each shoulder, natural coils pulled up high, wearing an expression of complete professional authority that would have convinced anyone who didn't know her. Mrs. Aldren looked at the bags. Then at Vesna. Then at me, standing three steps behind her in the entrance hall. "I arranged it yesterday," I said. "I should have mentioned it earlier. I'm sorry." Mrs. Aldren considered this for two seconds exactly. "The north sitting room is available." "The library," I said. "Please." She nodded and walked away and the moment her footsteps turned the corner Vesna grabbed my arm and pulled me close. "You look terrible," she whispered. "Thank you for coming." "Nova. You look like someone who hasn't slept since last Tuesday." "Keep your voice down." She looked around the entrance hall. At the portraits. At the high ceilings. At the general architecture of controlled intimida

Chapter Fourteen: The Weight of What She Knows

I woke up the morning after Vesna left and made one decision.Get through the day.Not fix anything. Not solve anything. Not sit with the image of Damien Cross in a magazine photograph at the same gala, same venue, same night, looking to his left with those pale grey eyes while I stood in a courtyard thirty feet away and told myself it was just one evening and it didn't have to mean anything.Not think about whether he found me there on purpose.That question had kept me awake until four in the morning and it would keep me awake again tonight and I could not afford to carry it through every hour between. So I put it down. Set it in the corner of my mind where I kept things I wasn't ready to look at directly.Got dressed. Pulled my hair back. Went downstairs."The Foundation lunch is at one," Mrs. Aldren said when I reached the kitchen. "Mr. Cross has already left. He asks that you attend in his place and represent the family.""Of course," I said.She set my coffee down and walked awa

Chapter Fifteen: What Pax Rancour Wants

I woke up thinking about the doorway.Not about the pregnancy. Not about Rowenna's certificate request or the residency clause or Lyra's silence on the burner phone. All of that was still there, still waiting, but the thing my mind kept returning to at six in the morning with the Halvenmoor light just starting through the curtains was Damien Cross standing in my studio doorway last night.Looking at my sketchbook.At the page I hadn't meant to leave open.Four pencil lines that looked more like him than they had any right to.He had stood there long enough to see it. Long enough to understand what he was looking at. And then he had walked away without a single word and I had sat in my studio alone and understood something I hadn't wanted to understand.You do not draw someone's face from memory with four lines and have it look like that unless you have been paying more attention to them than you meant to.He knew that now.And I had spent the night working out what he would do with it

Chapter Sixteen: A Husband Who Doesn't Add Up

I woke up with Pax Rancour's words still sitting in my chest.Tell your husband his father said hello.I'd read that message eleven times before I put the burner phone back under my mattress. Eleven times and it hadn't made more sense with repetition. Just sat there getting heavier. A dead man's name used like a key card. Slid under a door by someone who knew exactly which door to slide it under.I lay in the grey morning light and made a decision.I didn't have enough information to move. Not about Pax. Not about Marcus Cross. Not about what any of it had to do with a marriage that should never have happened and a pregnancy that nobody in this house officially knew about.What I had was access to the man at the centre of all of it.So I was going to use it.I was going to watch Damien Cross the way I'd been trained my whole life to watch things — carefully, quietly, without letting him know I was doing it.Starting at breakfast.He read the financial pages first. News second. Corresp

Chapter Seventeen: Sixteen Weeks

Stop asking questions your sister can't answer. She doesn't know everything. But I do. And we should talk.Fourteen times.I had read that message fourteen times since last night and I still hadn't replied and I still hadn't deleted it and it was still sitting under my mattress at six in the morning like something that knew I was thinking about it.Pax Rancour wanted to talk.The smiling man. The dead man's messenger. The person who had walked someone through a secured estate to leave a phone outside my door — that man had decided I was worth a direct conversation.I had two choices. Reply or don't. Both had costs I couldn't calculate yet.So I made a third choice.I got up. Got dressed. And dealt with the thing I could actually control today.Sixteen weeks.The change was still subtle. Easy to miss at a glance. But I had been studying myself every morning for three weeks and I could see exactly what a careful person would eventually notice — the slight shift at my waist, the way the

Chapter Eighteen: A Deal With Valour

"Walk with me," he said. "There are things you need to know. And this conversation cannot happen inside."I looked at him for a moment.The sonogram printout was still pressed against my chest inside my bag. Sixteen weeks and four days. Strong heartbeat. A baby that had moved on a screen two hours ago while I held everything together with both hands on a clinic table.I was still holding everything together.The difference was that my hands were shaking slightly inside my jacket pockets where nobody could see them."Alright," I said.And walked.We took the east path along the cliff edge. Valour moved beside me with his hands loose at his sides and said nothing for the first two minutes.Not uncomfortable silence. The silence of a man deciding where to begin something with multiple possible starting points.The sea was audible below. The estate visible behind us. Nobody else in the garden."I have a file," he said.I kept walking."Two weeks. Photographs. Movement records. Documentati

Chapter Nineteen: The Gala

"Don't be alone with him."Three days of carrying that warning.Three days of keeping Quill between us at dinner, Mrs. Aldren's schedule between us in the mornings, the studio door open so nothing could happen that required it closed. Three days of sitting across from Damien at breakfast wondering what he had heard standing on the other side of that hedge and watching his face give nothing back.Tonight there was no buffer.The Cross Foundation charity gala. Four hours. Halvenmoor's most observant social circle. And Damien's wife expected to stand beside him for all of it.I stood at the wardrobe and looked at Lyra's options. Structured. Neutral. Correct. Everything a Chen daughter presented to a room like this would wear.I pushed past them.At the back, still in Cora's garment bag, was the dress I had chosen myself. Deep green. Clean lines. Nothing Lyra would have selected in a hundred tries.I put it on.Cora's structured drape sat exactly right across the waist. Doing precisely wh

Chapter Twenty: What Thora Vex Decided

"How far along."Three words. Quiet enough that only I could hear them.I stood completely still and felt them land.My free hand moved to my stomach before I could stop it — one involuntary press of my palm flat against the structured drape — and I made myself stop and made myself breathe and made myself look at nothing in particular while the noise of the room continued around us like none of this was happening.I said nothing.Damien didn't repeat it.He looked at me for two seconds — not angry, not triumphant, just certain in the way he was always certain about things he had already finished calculating — and then a guest appeared at his elbow with an extended hand and Damien turned and the moment sealed over.Gone.Except it wasn't gone.It was the only thing in the room for the rest of the evening.I got through the remaining hour the way I got through everything. One exchange at a time. One smile layered on top of the last.Damien stayed nearby without staying close. Present en

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