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All Chapters of Married to My Enemy's Son: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

177 Chapters

Chapter Twenty-One: The School Visit

Tuesday morning, second period, Year Twelve Literature. Nadia had been teaching the same exam text for three weeks. This group was right on the edge; she could feel the lesson hanging in the balance. The students near the windows were tracking with her, but the back row had settled into that practiced look of attention that really just meant they were waiting for the bell. She knew how to handle it. The trick was to make the back row impossible to ignore. Moving away from the whiteboard, she walked down the center aisle and stopped near the third desk from the back. Instead of directing her question to the front row, she aimed it straight at a student named Tobias, who had been staring intensely at his notebook while thinking about something else entirely. "Tobias. The speaker in this stanza is describing a loss. What kind of loss is it?" Tobias looked up. He hadn't been paying attention, and they both knew it, which meant his response carried a sudden weight. "Something s

Chapter Twenty-Two: Cullen's Progress

By the fourth week, the tutoring sessions had become routine. Cullen arrived on time. Nadia was usually already there. Neither of them mentioned it, but the sessions had become the easiest part of the week. He complained about the reading material in the specific, vocal way that meant he had actually done it, because students who hadn't done the reading tended to complain in much vaguer terms. Cullen's complaints were precise. He had opinions about specific passages, specific word choices, and specific moments in the argument where he felt the author had made a decision he disagreed with. This was, as Nadia had learned, the clearest possible sign that he was engaged. What she had not fully appreciated until now was how methodically he was also extracting information about her. It had started subtly. A question about whether she had always wanted to teach, slipped in between two annotations. A comment about the estate that was phrased as an observation but was actually a question ab

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Library

Nadia heard the car at exactly nine-forty-seven. She was sitting at her desk, deep into a stack of Year Twelve practice papers, when the low hum of tires on gravel reached her through the window. She did not look up immediately. Her pen hovered over an unpunctuated sentence in Tobias's essay, but she noted the time automatically. In a house this quiet, every sound carried. Nine-forty-seven was late. On evenings when Caiden had board commitments in the city, the car usually rolled down the driveway by seven-thirty. A two-hour delay was unusual. She did not stand up to peer through the curtains. She simply waited. Downstairs, the heavy front door opened and shut with a dull, muffled thud. There was the low murmur of Mrs. Park’s voice, and then the house settled back into silence. Footsteps crossed the marble floor of the grand hall. Nadia held her breath, listening to the cadence of his stride. They didn't turn toward the west wing, where his study was. Instead, the steady, unhurrie

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Jacket

The temperature dropped overnight. By six-fifteen, every surface on the estate was edged with frost. The gravel on the driveway was frozen solid. Nadia looked out her bathroom window, thinking briefly that she should find her heavy coat before going downstairs. She didn't look for it. She had been awake since five-thirty, turning over a name she had seen on a board paper Caiden left on the kitchen counter three days ago. She hadn't meant to read it—she had put the paper back the moment she realized what it was—but the name stayed with her. By the time she showered and dressed, she was running behind. The coat was in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. She left it there. She told herself the car and the school were both heated. The walk between them was less than a minute. She gathered her bag, her lesson folders, and the stack of marked Year Twelve papers, and went downstairs. The kitchen was empty. Caiden was usually at the counter making coffee by six, but he was already gone. Na

Chapter Twenty-Five: Marcus

Marcus had been careful ever since the announcement in the staffroom. He hadn't been cold. He hadn't been overly warm, either. He had settled into a scrupulous neutrality that was far more comfortable than the alternative. Nadia had no desire to manage his feelings about her marriage; she had enough to manage already. For six weeks, the arrangement held. A polite good morning in the corridor. A brief conversation about the exam timetable. A nod across the staffroom. Nothing required either of them to address the day Caiden had walked into the room and said *my wife, Nadia*, with the flat certainty of a man stating an absolute fact. It was a Wednesday. She had a free period at eleven, her marking spread across a corner table in the staffroom while her tea went cold beside her laptop. The room was quiet. Two teachers stood at the far end, talking in low voices about an administrative matter she wasn't following. Marcus came in at eleven-twenty. He made a coffee, then sat at the tabl

Chapter Twenty-Six: Amara Again

The call came on a Thursday evening, just after seven.Nadia was in the small sitting room on the second floor, her legs tucked beneath her, a stack of Year Eleven practice essays balanced on the arm of the chair beside her tea. The house was quiet. Cullen was studying, and Caiden was in his study.Her phone lit up on the cushion beside her.*Amara.*Nadia picked up already suspecting this wasn't a social call."Hey," she said."Hey." Amara’s voice had that careful quality Nadia recognized immediately. It usually meant she wanted something. "Are you busy?""Marking," Nadia said. "What is it?"The pause told her exactly where this was going."I need a bit of help," Amara said. "It’s not much. I just need to cover something until the end of the month, and then I’ll be completely fine.""How much?""Three thousand."Nadia set her pen down on the essay she had been annotating. The student had made the same mistake three paragraphs in a row. Not carelessness. Just a misunderstanding they h

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Blake Returns

Caiden was in Singapore for three days.Leo had informed her on Monday morning with his usual clean efficiency. *Mr. Wolfe will be travelling Tuesday through Thursday, Mrs. Wolfe. The household schedule remains normal.*She had not required anything. She taught her classes, held her tutoring sessions with Cullen, marked papers, ate dinner with Cullen on Tuesday and alone on Wednesday, and finally finished the mock-exam planning she had been putting off. The house functioned exactly as it always did. She noticed Caiden's absence anyway.The gallery event on Wednesday evening had been in the diary for two weeks. A private foundation reception, the kind that Nadia had learned to navigate with the specific competence she had been developing since the first gala. Leo had checked in the previous Friday about whether she still intended to attend, given that Caiden would be travelling. She had said yes. She was Caiden's wife at these functions whether he was there or not, and Caiden's wife di

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Possessive

The business dinner was on a Friday.Leo had sent the details on Tuesday: seven-thirty, a private room at Alden House, eight guests, corporate. By now, Nadia understood the format. She chose a charcoal dress—formal, understated, and completely functional. She came downstairs at seven to find Caiden already in the hallway, reviewing something on his phone.He looked up when she came down. His eyes moved over her in his brief, assessing way,a look that lasted less than a second and gave nothing away—before he pocketed the phone and moved toward the door.The car was quiet on the way there. She had long since stopped trying to fill the silence. It suited him, and eventually, it had become natural for her too.Alden House was an old private members' establishment in the older part of the city. The private dining room was on the first floor, panelled in dark wood, set for eight. The other guests were already present when they arrived: two men she recognized from a previous event, a propert

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Appointment

The appointment had been in the calendar for two weeks. Nadia had booked it herself on a Tuesday morning during her free period, sitting in the empty staffroom with her phone angled away from the door, her voice quiet.She had not told Caiden.It wasn't deliberate. She just kept putting the conversation off. Ever since the morning she’d sat on the bathroom floor with the test in her hand, she had told herself she would find the right moment. But the right moment never arrived. He was travelling, or she wasn't ready, or the evening felt too balanced to disrupt with something this heavy.Still, she had put it on the shared household calendar. Leo managed it, which meant Caiden saw it. She had simply typed prenatal appointment, twelve-thirty, Caldenmere Central—she wasn't hiding it. She just couldn't say the words out loud.On the morning of the appointment, she came downstairs at six and found him in the kitchen. Usually he was in his running kit; today he was already dressed for the da

Chapter Thirty: Side by Side

They did not speak much in the elevator on the way down or in the lobby as they crossed toward the exit. The hospital hummed quietly around them. People passed in both directions, speaking in lowered voices, as though the building itself expected it. Nadia carried her bag on her shoulder and kept her pace steady. The photograph stayed where she'd put it.Outside, the February air was cold and clear, the kind of afternoon that was bright without being warm. The hospital sat on a wide avenue in the west of the city. The pavement outside was broad enough that even the steady stream of visitors never felt crowded.The car was in the parking structure across the avenue. Caiden had said so on the way in. They came through the hospital's main doors and he turned right, toward the pedestrian crossing at the corner, and she turned with him.They walked side by side often enough. This time, something felt different. It took her half a minute to realise what it was. He had slowed down. She had s

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