All Chapters of His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Two hundred people turned to look at me at once, and for one long, suspended second, I forgot how to breathe.Adrian stood in the doorway, folder raised like a weapon, security guards losing the battle to hold him back. The ballroom had gone silent in that particular way that happens right before something breaks, glasses paused mid-air, conversations dying, two hundred pairs of eyes swinging between Adrian and me like the room itself was choosing sides.“Adrian.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, though my hands had gone cold at my sides. “What are you doing.”“Telling the truth.” He shrugged off a guard, stepping further into the room, something wild in his eyes I didn’t recognize, desperation dressed up as righteousness. “Since you clearly weren’t going to.”“Security,” Damian said, low and lethal, but Richard’s hand landed on his son’s arm.“Let him speak,” Richard said quietly. “A scene stopped mid-scene only invites speculation. Let him finish digging his own grave.”Adria

Charlotte Reeves looked like she hadn’t slept in days when Damian called her into his office the next morning, and something about that exhaustion made my stomach twist with a guilt I hadn’t earned yet.I sat in the corner chair, close enough to watch but far enough to feel like an observer, while Damian stood behind his desk with Noah beside him, a manila folder squared neatly in front of them like evidence in a trial. Charlotte’s eyes flicked toward the folder the moment she walked in, and whatever color remained in her face drained out entirely.“Sit down, Charlotte,” Damian said, quiet, controlled, the voice of a man holding his temper on a very short leash.She sat. Her hands folded in her lap, knuckles white, and I watched her throat move as she swallowed whatever she’d planned to say first.“We know about the leak,” Damian said. “Noah’s traced the login timestamps to your account. We know about the university connection to Vanessa Sterling. What we don’t know yet is why.”Charl

Ethan Blackwood arrived unannounced on a Tuesday, the way I was starting to understand most Blackwood men arrived at anything, like the world owed them the element of surprise.“There she is.” He strode into my studio without knocking, dropping into the chair across from my drafting table like he’d been invited, which he most certainly had not. “The infamous wife nobody in this family can stop talking about.”“You must be Ethan.” I set down my pencil, amused despite the intrusion, something easy and familiar already threading through his voice that reminded me faintly of Lucas. “Damian didn’t mention you were visiting.”“Damian doesn’t know I’m visiting.” Ethan grinned, unbothered, glancing around the studio with open curiosity. “I prefer to surprise people. Keeps everyone honest.”“Or keeps everyone locking their doors.”“That too.” He laughed, easy and warm, and something in me relaxed slightly at the lack of pretense in him, a welcome change from the careful calculation that seemed

I stared at the text message until the words blurred, my thumb hovering over the screen like touching it again might make the sender materialize in front of me.*Ask your husband what really happened to Marianne Cole’s mother. He’s not the only Blackwood keeping secrets, Evelyn. Some of us just aren’t as good at hiding them as he is.*I read it four times before I moved, before some numb, mechanical part of my brain finally pushed me out of the chair and down the hallway toward Damian’s study, the phone clutched so tight in my hand the edges bit into my palm.He looked up the moment I burst through the door, whatever exhaustion had settled into his face after our earlier conversation sharpening instantly into alertness.“What happened.”I held out the phone without a word, watching his eyes scan the message, watching the color drain slowly from his face as he read it a second time, then a third.“Where did this come from,” he said, his voice gone dangerously quiet.“I don’t know. Unkn

Damian sat very still while his mother spoke, and I watched something break behind his eyes with every word she said, old grief resurfacing raw and unhealed despite thirty years of scar tissue.“You knew,” he said finally, when Isabella had finished, her confession spent and hanging heavy in the study’s quiet air. “You knew what he did to Marianne’s family, and you said nothing. All these years, watching me struggle to understand why the woman I loved just disappeared, and you knew.”“I didn’t know the full truth until years later,” Isabella said, her voice steady now despite the tears still tracking down her face. “I knew about the affair. I didn’t learn Marianne was his daughter until you did, Damian, I swear that to you. But I knew enough. I knew Richard was capable of cruelty I chose not to examine too closely, because examining it meant admitting I’d built my entire life on top of a man I couldn’t fully trust.”“That’s not an excuse.”“I know.” Isabella didn’t flinch from his ang