All Chapters of The Substitute Bride's Twins: chasing his ex wife back: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The doors slammed shut behind her.The lock clicked. It sounded like a full stop.Seraphina stood frozen, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The room was almost completely dark. Heavy curtains blocked out the moonlight except for one thin silver thread.The air smelled like whiskey and cologne. Underneath that, something heavier. Something charged.The figure in the center of the room didn't move.He just stood there, shoulders squared, filling the space the way a storm fills a sky—not by moving, but by existing.Then he laughed. It wasn't a real laugh. There was no warmth in it."So the Voss family actually had the nerve to show up," he said.His voice was rough, blurred by alcohol, but it still carried weight. The kind of voice used to being the last word in any room.Seraphina felt a shiver move through her. She pressed her hands flat against her skirt to keep them from shaking.She wanted to rip off the veil. She wanted to scream her own name into the dark and expose every lie her pa

The silence after his accusation wasn't empty. It was heavy, soaked in whiskey and the smell of something about to break.Seraphina sat frozen at the edge of the bed, clutching the sheet to her chest like it could protect her.Sebastian's eyes had changed.Hours ago they'd been soft with drunken delusion. Now they were hard. Sharp as flint.He didn't just look angry. He looked violated.To him, she wasn't a bride. She was an intruder. Something that had slipped into his life through deceit and a whiskey-blurred night.He shoved her.It wasn't a strike, but it sent her back into the pillows. His hands, the same hands that had touched her hours ago, now gripped her shoulders and threw her off before he scrambled out of bed."What the hell is this?" His voice started low and climbed fast. He paced the floor, fists clenched white. "You are not Clara! How dare you trick your way into my bed."Seraphina's back hit the headboard. She pulled the sheet higher."Sebastian, please—just listen to

The suite emptied within minutes.The silence that followed was different from before. The night had been suffocating—full of things being done to her. This silence was just empty. Cold.Seraphina sat on the edge of the bed and stared at a fixed point on the floor.Disowned.The word moved through her mind in a slow loop. Not sharp anymore. Dull. Heavy.Beside it, quieter but somehow worse, was the other word Sebastian had left her with.Invisible.The doors opened again.An older woman stepped in. Iron-gray hair pulled into a severe bun. A charcoal housekeeper's uniform. The kind of blank face that came from decades of serving powerful people.Two younger maids stood behind her in the hallway, holding a plain canvas bag."Get up." The woman's voice was flat. "My name is Mrs. Hargrove. Mr. King has given his instructions. You're to vacate the master wing immediately. Follow me."Seraphina didn't move at first. "And if I refuse?"Mrs. Hargrove's expression didn't change. "Then I'll hav

Sebastian stepped out of the room without a word.The door didn't slam. That was almost worse. A slam would have been emotion. What he gave her instead was the quiet, deliberate click of a man who had already moved on to the next calculation.Seraphina sat down on the edge of the narrow bed.The divorce papers were gone. He'd taken them with him.She didn't know whether that was better or worse.She could hear them in the hallway, low voices, tight and urgent, the kind of conversation that happened between men who were used to controlling outcomes and had just discovered one they couldn't. She couldn't make out the words. She didn't need to.She already understood the shape of what was happening.The alliance mattered more than the marriage. It always had. The question was simply how much it mattered, and how much of her life would be rearranged to protect it.The voices stopped.Footsteps. One set, returning.The door opened.Sebastian walked back in alone. Richard hadn't followed hi

The first day was the quietest.Nobody came. Nobody knocked. Nobody slid anything under the door or left anything on the step outside.By noon, Seraphina understood that the meal schedule Mrs. Hargrove had mentioned was either a courtesy that hadn't been communicated properly or a deliberate oversight designed to remind her of her position.She suspected the latter.She sat at the small desk and watched the light move across the floor and thought about chemistry.Not about her parents. Not about Sebastian. Not about the contract sitting somewhere in his jacket, signed and sealed and entirely on his terms.Chemistry. Molecular structures. The way certain compounds behaved under pressure, how heat changed the nature of a thing without destroying it, how some of the most complex and valuable fragrances in the world came from materials that smelled like nothing individually until they were combined correctly.She had always found it calming, the logic of it. The way it rewarded patience a