Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 81 - Chapitre 90

Damien’s POVI didn’t wait until the next day.As soon as the car dropped Sophia at Eleanor’s I turned around and went back into the city. Isabella had left the dinner early, but I knew where she would be. She always kept a suite at the same hotel when she was in town for board-related noise. It was predictable. She liked predictable when it worked in her favor.The front desk called up. She let me come.She opened the door in the same dress from the evening, shoes already off, a glass of something amber in her hand. No surprise on her face. Just that calm look she wore when she had been expecting the confrontation and had already decided how it would go.“I wondered how long it would take,” she said, stepping aside.I walked in but didn’t sit. The suite was all neutral colors and expensive quiet. She closed the door and turned to face me, still holding the glass.“You approached her alone,” I said.“I congratulated you both in public. Then I had a private conversation with the woman

Sophia’s POVHe didn’t tell me where we were going.Just sent a message late in the afternoon saying he’d pick me up at seven and that I didn’t need to dress for anything formal. I stood in Eleanor’s guest room staring at the clothes I’d brought and felt that familiar tight feeling in my chest. The last time we went somewhere together it had been the Meridian dinner with a temporary ring on my finger and Isabella watching from across the room. This felt different already. Quieter. More dangerous in a way I couldn’t name yet.I chose simple clothes. Dark jeans. A soft sweater. Nothing that looked like I was trying too hard. When his car pulled up outside I went down before Eleanor could ask questions I didn’t have answers for.Damien was driving himself. No driver. No security detail hovering. He leaned over and pushed the passenger door open for me.“Where are we going?” I asked as I got in.“Somewhere without an audience.”That was all he said. We drove out of the city in near silenc

Sophia’s POVI booked the appointment under my middle name.It felt ridiculous, but I did it anyway. The clinic was across the city from Eleanor’s place and far enough from Blackwood Tower that the chance of running into anyone who knew me was small. I told Eleanor I had a freelance meeting. I told myself the same lie until I was sitting in the parking lot with the engine off, staring at the low brick building and trying to make my hands stop shaking.Inside, the waiting room smelled like disinfectant and lemon cleaner. I filled out the forms with careful handwriting and kept my left hand in my lap so no one would notice the temporary ring I still hadn’t taken off. When the nurse called my name I followed her back without looking at the other women in the chairs.The doctor was the same one from the first visit. Calm. Direct. She didn’t ask why I had waited so long between appointments. She just went through the checks, the measurements, the quiet confirmation that everything was prog

Sophia’s POVIt started the week after I almost told him.Damien didn’t ask if I wanted to be included. He just began putting my name next to his. First a business dinner with two Meridian executives who had been on the fence about the next phase of the contract. Then a charity reception for a hospital wing his company had funded. Then a private gathering at a board member’s home where the conversations were quieter and the stares lasted longer. By the time the next gala came around, people had stopped looking surprised when I walked in on his arm.He never introduced me as staff.“This is Sophia,” he would say. Then, without raising his voice or making a speech of it, “My fiancée.”The word did the work. I watched it land on people’s faces in real time. Some smiled too wide. Some went carefully blank. A few looked at the ring and then at me like they were trying to solve a problem that didn’t quite add up.I felt the shift in how the room handled me.In meetings I used to sit along t

Sophia’s POVI didn’t sleep much after the argument.Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face when he said “You’re quitting.” Like the decision was already made and I was just supposed to accept it. The anger had cooled by morning, but the hurt underneath it hadn’t. I kept thinking about how easy it would be to let him take over. How comfortable the money and the protection could become if I stopped fighting for the pieces of myself that still felt like mine.I couldn’t do that.I found him in his office late the next afternoon. The floor was quiet. Most people had already left. He looked up when I came in, and I saw the same tension from yesterday still sitting in his shoulders.“Can we talk?” I asked.He nodded and gestured to the chair across from him. I didn’t sit. I stayed standing because sitting felt too much like giving ground.“I need you to hear me,” I said. “Really hear me. Not just wait for your turn to fix it.”“I’m listening.”“I don’t want to become the woman who depe