All Chapters of The Discarded Heiress: Married To My Ex Fiancé’s Brother: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

EliasI woke before dawn out of habit, the way I always did, except this time there was someone else's warmth beside me instead of the empty half of the bed I'd stopped noticing years ago. Lenora was still asleep, one hand curled loosely against my chest like she'd fallen asleep mid-sentence, and for exactly four minutes I let myself do nothing but watch her breathe and pretend the rest of the world could wait.It couldn't. My phone started buzzing at six sharp, and I already knew before I looked that it was Dominic."He's meeting with Marcy Whitlock at two," Dominic said, no greeting, straight into the crisis the way he always did when the crisis was real. "Financial Ledger. She's the one who broke the Kessler embezzlement story last year. If Jackson's handing her that report, it's not a threat anymore. It's a headline."Lenora stirred beside me, awake now, watching my face with the particular stillness she'd learned somewhere in five years of reading a room before it turned on her.

Lenora She picked up on the second ring. “Sinclair,” Marion said, like the name still tasted the same after five years, like she’d been waiting for me to need her again and hating that she was right. “I heard you got married. I heard a lot of things, actually.” “I need ten minutes, and I need them to be off the record until I say otherwise.” “That’s not usually how this works.” “It is today.” I glanced at Elias, who was watching the road like it owed him money, his knuckles pale on the wheel. “I have a toxicology report, an ER attending willing to go on record, and a two o’clock deadline I can’t explain to you yet.” Silence on the line, the particular kind that meant she was already reaching for a pen. “Send me what you have,” she said. “I’ll read it in the car. I’m twenty minutes out.” I hung up before she could change her mind, before the version of me that used to answer to that last name could catch up to what I’d just done with it. For a moment, I stared at my phone, my t

LenoraThe gap on the shoulder wasn't big enough. I knew it wasn't big enough. Elias took it anyway.Metal shrieked against the guardrail, my body slammed sideways against the seatbelt hard enough to steal the breath out of me, and then we were through, fishtailing onto a side street with the lead sedan already correcting behind us, too slow, too late."Are you hurt?" Elias's voice was low, controlled, but his hand found my knee for half a second like he needed to confirm I was still there before he could trust the mirrors again."I'm fine. Drive."He drove.My phone was still clutched in my other hand, and it was ringing before I'd even registered the screen lighting up. Marion."Sinclair, wherever you are, turn on a television." Her voice was pure adrenaline, none of the careful skepticism from an hour ago left in it. "We went live four minutes ago. Toxicology report, the ER attending's statement, all of it. I had a second source corroborate independently this morning—someone from V

LenoraI stared at Marie's message for a long time before I finally called her.Elias watched me do it, arms crossed, leaning against the kitchen island like he had every intention of listening to both sides of the conversation whether I wanted him to or not.She picked up on the first ring, like she'd been sitting with the phone in her hand."Lenora." Her voice was warm in a way I didn't remember from the handful of times I'd met her as a teenager, back before I'd left the city and mostly forgotten she existed. "I wasn't sure you'd actually call.""You said you had things I should know.""I do." A pause, careful, like she was choosing each word before she let it out. "Look, I know this is strange. We were never close. Your mother and my side of the family haven't spoken much in years, not since before you left. But I've been watching everything happening in the news, and I couldn't just sit here and say nothing.""Then say something.""Your family didn't cut you off because of Liam,"

LenoraPenelope's invitation sat between us for the rest of the night like something radioactive, and Elias made it clear we weren't walking into that meeting until Dominic had turned up whatever he could find first. Which left me with time on my hands I didn't know what to do with, and a restlessness under my skin that had nothing left to burn itself out on.So I did the thing I'd been circling for weeks without letting myself actually reach for it."I want to start something," I told Elias over breakfast, before I could talk myself out of saying it. "A business. Something that's actually mine, not something I inherited or married into or got handed because of who I'm attached to."He looked up from his coffee, and I braced myself for the polite deflection, the gentle redirect toward something safer.Instead, something in his face opened up, unguarded in a way I was still getting used to seeing."What kind of something?""I don't know yet. That's the terrifying part." I turned my mug