Todos os capítulos de The Substitute Bride Of The Blackwood : Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

POV: DamienShe asked me, a few evenings later, what Blackwood Empire actually meant to me, beyond the obligation of running it, beyond the numbers and the board meetings and the careful management of a public image I’d spent my whole adult life maintaining.We were in the library, the fire going, the same chess set from a few nights earlier still sitting half abandoned on the side table between us, neither of us having found the energy to finish the game we’d started.“My father built it from almost nothing,” I said. “Not entirely from nothing, there was capital, there were connections, but the company that exists now is barely recognizable as the one he started with. He turned it into something that mattered far beyond just making money.”“What was he like? ” she asked. “Your father. You don’t talk about him much beyond the board meeting story.”“Disciplined. Demanding. Occasionally kind in ways he wasn’t very good at showing.” I considered how to describe him properly. “He believed

POV: CharlotteSomething shifted at some point, quietly enough that I didn’t notice it happening until it had already happened.I stopped thinking about the marriage as something I was managing and started thinking about it as somewhere I actually lived. It wasn’t a decision I made. It was more like something I looked up one morning and realized had already been true for a while without my permission.We had breakfast together most days now, not because either of us had arranged it that way but because we both simply ended up at the table at the same time and neither of us left quickly. He read things on his phone and I read whatever book I’d brought down and occasionally one of us said something that turned into a conversation and occasionally it didn’t and both versions were fine in a way I hadn’t expected sharing a meal with someone to ever feel.He remembered things. Still. Consistently. Without making a production of it. A particular tea I’d mentione

POV: CharlotteHe explained the phone call from the library the next morning, briefly, over breakfast.“Board matter,” he said, not looking up from his coffee. “Nothing that couldn’t have waited.”I didn’t push. I’d learned the difference between him being evasive and him simply being done with a subject, and this felt like the second one.The charity event that week was Eleanor’s foundation dinner, and I told Damien I wanted to go, which surprised him slightly in a way I found quietly satisfying. I was learning, slowly, to want things out loud.I used the car ride to tell him about the four pages I’d written that morning, the most I’d managed in one sitting since picking the notebook back up, and he listened the way he always listened, fully, without interrupting, asking one question at the end that cut to the center of what I’d been trying to say better than I’d managed to sa

‎POV: Sebastian‎The report said four medical appointments in six weeks.‎I read that line twice, not because I hadn’t understood it the first time but because there was something almost satisfying about seeing it confirmed In writing after months of piecing it together from smaller, less conclusive things. A pattern of rescheduled meetings. A driver who waited outside certain buildings for periods of time that didn’t match the cover explanations. A man who had always moved through the world like someone who believed his body would simply cooperate because he needed it to, suddenly gripping the edge of things.‎I set the report down on my desk and looked out at the tower.‎I’d chosen this office specifically for that view, three years ago, when I was still in the earlier stages of deciding what I was going to do and how long I was willing to take doing it. Some people might have found it masochistic, spending your working days looking at the thing you intended to claim. I found it cla

POV: CharlotteLucas Sterling arrived at the mansion on a Thursday afternoon with a folder under one arm and the particular energy of someone who had already had four meetings before noon and considered that a slow morning.I was in the library when Helen showed him in, and I heard him before I saw him, his voice carrying down the corridor in the easy, unhurried way of someone entirely comfortable in a space he’d been visiting for years.“Charlotte.” He appeared in the doorway, smiling the way he always smiled, like he was genuinely pleased to find whoever he was looking for exactly where he expected them to be. “I didn’t know you were home. I’ll find Damien and get out of your way.”“Damien’s on a call,” I said. “He should be done in twenty minutes. Helen’s getting you something.”“She already offered.” He glanced at the library with the look of someone deciding whether to leave or stay, and then, apparently deciding, came inside and sat down in the chair a