All Chapters of My Fiancée Married My Sister: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Neither of us slept, despite the exhaustion still sitting heavy in every limb. We showered, changed, drank coffee we barely tasted, and made the drive out to the estate in a silence that felt entirely different from the hopeful quiet of the weekend before, sharper now, edged with something closer to dread than anticipation."Whatever it is," Noah said, somewhere past the halfway point, his hand finding mine over the console, "we handle it together.""I know." I kept my eyes on the passing green, my stomach a tight, anxious knot. "I just thought I'd have more warning. More time to prepare for whichever version of this turns out to be true.""You don't actually need preparation," he said gently. "You just need to survive the next hour. Everything after that, we figure out as it comes."Eleanor met us in the same sitting room as always, and I knew within seconds of seeing her face that whatever I'd braced for on the drive over wasn't quite what was waiting for us. She looked tired, not t

I stared at the message a long moment, the plum dress on the rack forgotten, Noah reading the screen over my shoulder with the same immediate, focused alertness I'd come to recognize as his default response to anything unexpected."The Voss estate," I repeated slowly. "What could she possibly have on the Voss estate? Eleanor's about as public as a stone wall.""I don't like this," Noah said, already reaching for his own phone. "Patricia doesn't chase stories that aren't real. If she's saying she has something, she has something."I called the number back before I could talk myself out of it, my pulse loud in my ears as it rang twice before connecting."Ms. Reed." Patricia's voice carried its familiar brisk confidence, though there was something more careful in it this time. "Thank you for calling back so quickly.""You said this was about the Voss estate." I kept my voice even, though my hand had tightened around the phone. "I don't understand what that has to do with me.""That's act

Eleanor called before nine the next morning, her voice tight in a way I hadn't heard from her before, not panicked, but sharpened, the sound of a woman recalibrating quickly around unwelcome news."Noah told me everything," she said, no preamble. "The message, the number, all of it. I want you to know I take this extremely seriously, Jasmine. I should have moved faster on the confirmation weeks ago. I let my own caution create an opening for someone else to exploit.""You couldn't have known someone would try to weaponize it," I said, though her guilt was audible even through the phone, and I found myself wanting to soften it despite everything."Perhaps not. But I've spent four years being careful, and careful has a cost too, apparently." A pause, papers rustling on her end. "I've moved up the timeline on the second test. My investigator is expediting the sample collection today. I want this resolved before whoever sent that message decides silence isn't working in their favor anymor

The days after Daniel Voss's threat fizzled into nothing settled into something quieter than I'd expected— not peace exactly, but a wary, watchful calm, like a storm that had passed close enough to rattle the windows without actually breaking them.Eleanor called every few days with updates that amounted, mostly, to patience. The second test was underway, moving as quickly as the lab could manage without compromising accuracy. Daniel Voss had gone silent entirely, whether cowed by the foundation's swift legal response or simply biding his time for a better opportunity. Noah's people kept a quiet watch on his movements regardless, unwilling to assume the danger had fully passed just because it had gone quiet."I keep waiting for the next thing," I admitted to Diana one afternoon, the two of us finally, blessedly, just enjoying a normal lunch instead of hunched over production schedules or crisis texts. "It feels strange, having an actual quiet moment. Like I don't know what to do with

I read the message three times before I trusted myself to show it to Noah, my hands cold despite the warmth still lingering in the car from the day's sunlight."He's not stopping," I said quietly, handing him the phone. "Even after the statement. Even after nothing came of the last threat."Noah's jaw tightened as he read it, his expression sharpening into the same controlled focus I'd seen the night of the burner phone. "'The second sample she almost used instead.' That's specific enough to be either something real, or something engineered to sound real. I don't like either possibility.""Should we call Eleanor?" I asked, already reaching for my own phone. "Tonight? Or wait until morning?""Tonight," Noah said firmly. "If there's any truth to this, even a fragment, I don't want her hearing about it secondhand or reading it in some half-formed article tomorrow."Eleanor answered on the second ring, her voice still carrying the warm exhaustion of the day's earlier conversation, which s