All Chapters of MARRIED TO THE MAN MY EX CALLS UNCLE : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Maya was still shaken from the boardroom hours later, curled into the corner of the mansion library with a book she wasn't reading, when Elias appeared in the doorway holding two glasses of wine and saying nothing at all. He crossed the room and held one out to her. She took it, watching him settle into the armchair across from hers instead of retreating to whatever wing of the house he usually disappeared into after a day like today. "I thought you'd want to be alone," she said. "I thought about it." He turned his glass slowly by the stem, watching the wine catch the lamplight. "I decided I'd rather not be." They didn't talk about Richard. Didn't talk about the locked room, or the boardroom's careful cruelty, or the way his hand had tightened on her shoulder the moment Richard mentioned it. Instead the conversation drifted somewhere smaller, quieter — the books lining the shelves around them, a childhood memory of hers about a library card she'd worn thin with use, and slowly, in

Two a.m., and Damien's apartment looked like the inside of a conspiracy board — printouts taped across every available surface, employment records spread in overlapping fans across the table, his laptop glowing in the dark with three browser tabs open to archived county databases he'd had to pay a contact more than he'd like to admit to access. He'd started with the badge number the leak had given him weeks ago — the one tied to the deactivated staff credentials still somehow functioning inside the mansion's system. It had taken longer than expected to trace, buried under two decades of turnover and half-digitized records, but he'd finally found the name attached to it an hour ago, and he hadn't stopped moving since. A woman. Employed by the Carter family as household staff, decades back. Vanished from every record shortly after Victoria Hart's death — no resignation letter on file, no forwarding address, no severance payment logged anywhere in the accounting archives he'd managed to

Maya stretched up on her toes, fingers grazing the spine of a book three shelves too high, cursing softly under her breath, when she felt the warmth of Elias behind her before she heard him move. "You're going to fall," he said, close enough that she felt the words more than heard them. "I've got it." "You don't." His arm reached past her, easy, unhurried, plucking the book free before she could argue further, and he didn't step back once he'd handed it to her. Maya took the book, but neither of them seemed to notice it anymore. His fingers had brushed hers, barely a touch, yet she felt it travel all the way up her arm. She hated that she noticed things like that now—the warmth of him, the clean scent of his shirt, the way his attention made the rest of the room feel suddenly smaller. Neither of them had spoken about the security update from the car ride two nights ago — the woman from the badge footage, alive, somewhere in the city. Elias had insisted he'd handle it, had gone qui

The story broke before Maya had even finished her coffee — splashed across every entertainment site at once, the kind of coordinated timing that told her this wasn't an accident. Screenshots of old texts she didn't remember sending, private details from her relationship with Damien twisted just enough to make her look calculating instead of naive, headlines that reduced two years of her life into a single, ugly narrative: social climber, manipulator, the woman who traded up from nephew to uncle. She sat frozen at the kitchen table, phone in hand, watching the story multiply across platform after platform, the details too specific, too intimate, to have come from anywhere but someone who'd actually known her. Someone with inside knowledge. Not gossip. Planted information. By the time Elias found her, she'd stopped scrolling and started shaking, the phone loose in her lap, her vision blurred with something she refused to let fall. He didn't offer empty comfort. He sat down across fro

Maya woke to sunlight and a blanket she didn't remember pulling over herself, a folded note sitting on the coffee table in Elias's careful, controlled handwriting: Didn't want to wake you. Back by evening. — E. She sat up slowly, the ache of a night on the couch settling into her shoulders, and spent most of the day replaying everything in pieces — the almost-kiss in the library, the note, the half-heard phone call with Margaret that Elias still hadn't explained, the raw admission in the car that he was finding it harder to remember why this was supposed to be temporary. By late afternoon, standing in front of her bedroom mirror, the pieces had started arranging themselves into something she could no longer avoid looking at directly. She had noticed his absence more than she wanted to admit. The house had felt different without him in it. Too quiet in some places, strangely empty in others. She'd caught herself listening for his footsteps twice that afternoon before remembering he