Todos os capítulos de They Buried Me a Bride. I Returned a CEO: Capítulo 71 - Capítulo 80

Darian's povMy mother summoned me to the house two days after the ruling, her voice over the phone carrying none of the fury I'd expected, replaced instead by something colder and more controlled that worried me considerably more than open anger would have. I drove over that evening bracing myself for whatever careful, calculated performance she'd prepared.She was in the study again, always the study, "You've made your position clear," she said, without any preamble, the moment I sat down. "Testifying against me. Handing over evidence. I hope whatever you've gained from Camila's gratitude was worth the cost.""This was never about gaining anything," I said. "It was about finally doing right by my daughter, something I should have done years ago.""Your daughter," she repeated, something bitter threading through the words. "A daughter who barely knows you, being raised by a woman who despises this family and a man who stole what should have been yours.""George didn't steal anything,

George's povThe days that followed settled into something close to what I'd hoped this trip could actually be, careful vigilance running quietly underneath the surface, but Cora's happiness at the center of everything kept pulling all of us back toward genuine warmth, genuine ease, despite the security team's discreet presence around the property's edges. She spent hours building increasingly elaborate sandcastles, insisting each one needed a moat, a tower, and what she called "a dragon door," a small opening she was convinced a friendly dragon might use to visit.By Saturday evening, the tension had eased enough that Camila and I finally let ourselves fully relax, sitting on the deck after Cora had gone to bed, the security coordinator confirming another quiet night with no unusual activity detected anywhere along the perimeter. Darian had gone to bed early himself, exhausted from two nights of restless, watchful sleep, leaving Camila and me alone with the ocean and the stars and a

Camila's povNeither of us slept again that night, adrenaline and fear keeping both of us wide awake long after the security team had secured both women and called in local law enforcement to formally take them into custody. Cora slept fitfully in our bed between us, waking twice with vague, confused questions about the game that had apparently ended so abruptly, and both times George and I managed calm, reassuring answers that seemed to satisfy her enough to drift back to sleep.The local sheriff arrived just after dawn, a weathered older man who took one look at the two women in custody and George's careful, detailed account of the night's events, and immediately understood this wasn't a simple trespassing matter. Formal statements took most of the morning, the women themselves refusing to speak beyond confirming their names, their lawyer arriving with suspicious speed given how remote the property was from any major city."They're professionals," the sheriff confirmed, once the wom

Darian's POVI read about the trust claim before he ever called to explain it, a brief mention buried in a financial newsletter that covered family trust disputes among the city's wealthier dynasties, the initials E.R. sitting there in print like a piece of a puzzle I still couldn't fully assemble. I'd been at George and Camila's house when I first saw it, waiting for Cora to finish a puzzle she'd insisted I help with, and I remembered having to excuse myself to the kitchen, my hands not quite steady enough to keep helping with tiny cardboard pieces while my mind raced through the implications.I called the unlisted number the moment I finished reading, my hands unsteady with a mixture of anticipation and something that felt uncomfortably close to dread."You saw it," he said, when he picked up, not a question."E.R.," I said. "Is that you. Is that finally you.""Meet me," he said, not answering directly, the same maddening pattern he'd kept up for six weeks now. "Tonight. There's mor

Camila's povI nearly missed him entirely, the man in the gray coat standing at the edge of the coffee shop's patio seating as I walked past on my way to a meeting with Priya, half-distracted by the folder of documents in my arms and the phone buzzing insistently in my pocket. Something about him made me slow, though, a familiarity I couldn't immediately place, the careful, watchful way he held himself, like a man who spent most of his time reading rooms instead of simply existing in them.It had been a fairly ordinary morning up until that point, the kind that had become almost unfamiliar over this past year, a genuine stretch of routine business, meetings and quarterly reviews and the particular satisfaction of running a company that was actually thriving despite everything else consuming my attention outside its walls. I'd allowed myself, walking down that street, to think about nothing more complicated than whether Priya's office had decent coffee, before the man in the gray coat