Todos los capítulos de FAKING IT WITH THE ALPHA CAPTAIN RIVAL : Capítulo 61 - Capítulo 70

Neither of us said much on the drive back to my apartment. Aiden's jaw stayed tight the entire way, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror more than once, checking for headlights that might be following us, and I sat there with my own chest still raw from crying, replaying his father's message over and over until the words had worn a groove straight through my thoughts.I've been watching Elena a great deal more closely than you realize, for a great deal longer than you think.I didn't know what that meant, exactly, and something about not knowing scared me more than a direct threat would have.Aiden pulled up to the curb outside my building and cut the engine, but he didn't move to open his door, didn't reach for the handle the way he usually did before circling around to let me out. He just sat there, hands still loosely on the wheel, staring out at the quiet street ahead of us."You're not getting out," I said quietly."Neither are you.""I noticed."He was quiet for a long momen

I went. I didn't tell Ryder, didn't tell anyone, and whatever Aiden showed me in that records room that night, copies of Naomi's blackmail file, three years of manifests, a name his father had never once let him hear until now, sat heavy in my chest for days afterward, another weight added to a pile already too large to carry steadily.I didn't have room to process all of it at once. Some things, I was learning, had to wait their turn.Life kept moving in the meantime, insistent and ordinary in the small ways it always did, no matter how much else threatened to collapse around the edges of it.The lock on my apartment door had been sticking for months, a small, stubborn thing I'd learned to work around, jiggling the key at exactly the right angle, throwing my shoulder against the frame if the weather had swollen the wood too much. I'd meant to fix it a dozen times. There was never money for a locksmith when Martha's bills came first, always first, and eventually the sticking lock had

The Council results came back early. I need you to sit down before you read the rest of this.I sat down right there on the curb outside my building, Aiden crouching beside me, both of us staring at my phone screen while the rest of the message loaded, my heart pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.Confirmed. You are Marcus Hart's biological daughter. Victoria is not. The Council has scheduled a formal hearing in five days to determine what happens next — and Elena, I need to be honest with you. Nobody I've spoken to knows exactly what "what happens next" actually means yet. This hasn't happened in generations. There's no clean precedent to follow.I read it twice, the words landing with a strange, hollow finality after two months of fragments and half-confirmed suspicions."It's real," I said quietly, mostly to myself. "It's actually real now.""It was always real," Aiden said gently. "This just makes it official.""Five days," I said. "Naomi says the hearing is in

ElenaHe's the same man who attacked Marcus.I stood frozen in that kitchen for a long moment, Naomi's words looping over and over, before some instinct pushed me into motion. I needed to see Victoria again. Needed to understand exactly how deep this actually ran before the dinner tonight buried her behind another performance of composure.I found her an hour later, moving toward the study with a stack of papers under one arm, her phone already pressed to her ear.I didn't follow her openly. I told myself I was simply passing through the hallway on my way to help set the dining room, the same route I'd have taken regardless, and it was only coincidence that brought me close enough to hear her voice through a door she hadn't quite managed to pull shut all the way.I stopped anyway. Some things you can't unhear once you're close enough, and I was close enough."—I told you, it's coming," Victoria was saying, her voice low and strained, none of the composed brightness she wore for every

ElenaRyder found me the next afternoon in the small courtyard behind the estate's library, a stolen ten minutes neither of us had planned for, the kind of quiet space we'd learned to claim when nobody else was tracking either of our schedules closely enough to interrupt."You look distracted," I said, the second he sat down beside me on the stone bench."I heard something this morning," he said, his voice low, careful, glancing toward the library windows like he wasn't entirely sure the walls themselves weren't listening. "I can't stop thinking about it.""What?""My father's been asking questions all week. Quiet ones. The kind he only asks when he's genuinely worried about something and doesn't want anyone to know he's worried yet." Ryder ran a hand through his hair, exhaustion evident in every line of his posture. "I overheard him with Harold this morning, going over the accounts. There's a discrepancy, money moving somewhere it shouldn't, has been for years apparently, and informa