All Chapters of THE HEIR'S UNWANTED BRIDE: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

CELESTE'S POVI stood there with my palm pressed to my cheek and looked at him.He was looking back at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before, something between shock and anger, like he was surprised by what he had just done.I was surprised too, never in the past twenty three years had he ever layed his hands on me.Nobody in the kitchen moved.I did not give anyone the satisfaction of watching what came next.I turned and walked out, heading straight to the balcony.Because the last thing I was going to do was let any of them see me break apart in that kitchen with the staff watching and Vivienne's lipstick still smeared from her champagne glass and Margaret standing there with her hands folded like she had just watched something she had been waiting on for a long time.I made it to the corridor before the first teardrop fell from my eyes.I made it to the end of the corridor before I stopped being able to see properly, everywhere became blurry.The balcony door a

CELESTE'S POV "No," I said, pushing the key back across Nadia's kitchen table. "I can't accept this. It's too much." Nadia did not push it back toward me. She just left it sitting there between us, small and ordinary looking, a plain metal key on a blue keyring, and looked at me with the expression she used when she had already made up her mind about something. "It's a guest room," she said. "It's been empty for eight months. My parents use it twice a year when they visit and the rest of the time it just sits there collecting dust and reminding me that I need to buy better curtains." "Nadia..." "I'm not doing you a favour," she said. "I'm solving a problem. The room needs someone in it and you need somewhere to be that isn't that house. Those two things fit together very neatly." "It's not that simple." "Why not?" I opened my mouth and closed it again. The key sat on the table between us catching the morning light and I looked at it and thought about my bags in the rain

CELESTE'S POVMy hands hit the railing, and then there was nothing under my feet.I was falling but my mind could not even catch up with what was happening. One second I was standing there. The next, the whole world turned upside down while the garden lights below me spun in circles.Without thinking I reached out and caught hold of something, the edge of an old piece of wood from the garden frame.The rough edge tore my palm, while my body reacted to it. For one second, I was just hanging there in the air with my legs dangling freely.Hold... Please hold.The wood held..then it broke, leaving me to fall to the hedges. The branches broke below me, one after another while leaves and dirt filled my mouth. The bushes were not soft but it was better than landing on the hard ground, which was probably the reason I was still alive.For sometime I lay down there, thinking I was dead, until my body began to hurt while my back rested against the branches. I didn't feel anything was broken or

Nobody spoke for a while after Damien said it.The silence in that bedroom felt heavier than anything Margaret or my father could have filled. There was nothing left to argue once a man like Damien Chen had already decided something in front of everyone. "Excuse me?" Margaret found her voice first, the way she always did, after being silenced in a conversation. "This is her home, Mr. Chen, whatever you saw tonight does not mean you can remove her just like that from this family, where she has lived her whole life." "She has not lived in this house," Damien said, without raising his voice, "She has worked in it. There is a difference, and I think you know exactly what it is, because you have spent seven years making very sure she never forgot it." My father stepped forward then, one hand raised like he could physically hold the conversation in place, and his voice came out lower than Margaret's, more careful, the voice he used when he thought reasonableness alone could talk his way

CELESTE'S POV Four days after the fall, my palm began itching due to the stitch done on it and the doctor told me it was a good sign of healing. My ribs only ached when I turned too fast or laughed, which made me even more careful. As I was seated by the window in the suit, the phone by the bed rang twice which signified to me that it was the security calling from the lobby instead of those from the front desk. "Mr. Chen is on his way up," the voice said. "He asked me to tell you he'll only need twenty minutes and he will be gone" Twenty minutes, like he was scheduling a meeting instead of coming to see the woman he had carried out of a hedge four nights ago. Almost immediately I sat up properly in the chair, then adjusted the hotel robe given to me because in the hurry of things, my clothes were left behind. When the knock came, you could see a woman who had comported herself instead of looking like she was recovering from sickness. He came in already talking, a folder und