All Chapters of The Billionaire's Curvy Bride: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

His head went under, and it didn't come back up.I didn't pause. I didn't hesitate. I kicked off my shoes, stripped away my pride, and hit the ice-cold surface before anyone on the shore had even drawn a breath to scream.I was ten years old that summer, already the tall, sturdy girl in a family that treated physical substance like a design flaw. Meridian Lake was a dark, bottomless abyss, cold enough to shock the air straight out of my lungs, but my body had always been forged for endurance. I possessed the broad-boned, unyielding frame my relatives whispered about at summer barbecues…sturdy in the way that made my mother wince every time she presented me to polite society. "Selene's built like a boy," she’d murmur, offering it as an apology before strangers had the chance to judge me themselves. I had spent years after that trying to shrink into the background…slouching my spine, wrapping myself in oversized clothes, desperately hoping I could fold my frame into whatever delicate sha

"Ryker, the lights...""They'll come back on." His voice was a low, jagged rasp, vibrating against my jaw in the pitch-black room. "Everything comes back eventually. Except her."The wind slammed against the tall leaded glass of the study, rattling the heavy dark wood. I could hear the harsh, unsteady cadence of his breath…thick with the heat of aged bourbon and dark, suffocating despair. He was standing too close. So close that the broad, imposing wall of his chest was practically brushing against the front of my dress, trapping me between his towering height and the heavy mahogany desk behind me."I should go find a candle," I whispered, my pulse hammering in my ears. "Or check the fuse box in the hall.""Stay."It was a single word, spoken in a dark, velvet command that seemed to freeze the blood in my veins. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to shove past him, to run out into the storm and never look back. But my feet remained rooted to the rug, paralyzed by the sheer, magn

"Who is this?"I typed the words again, my thumbs trembling over the glass screen, my entire body humming with the strange, cold shock of a stranger knowing more about my forced marriage than I did.The reply came instantly, almost too fast…like they were hovering over the line, waiting for me to take the bait.Ask Ryker about Northgate Holdings. Ask him why his cousin's name keeps showing up on wire transfers nobody in that family has bothered to notice yet.My stomach dropped into a cold abyss. Why should I trust you? I typed back, my pulse hammering against my ribs.You don't have to trust me. You just have to look.Then, nothing. The line went dead. My further replies failed to deliver, leaving me standing on the darkened terrace with a cryptic warning that felt like a ticking bomb planted directly into my lap."Selene." Elise's sharp, discerning voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. "You've gone completely pale, child. What is it?"I hesitated, the cool night air biting at my b

It was only Marcus's car, tires screeching too fast out of the front gate, headlights swinging wild across the wet driveway before disappearing into the dark."He's running," I said."He's not running. He's regrouping." Ryker's voice had gone flat again, all business, the warmth from a moment ago sealed away somewhere I couldn't reach anymore, a door closing so quietly I almost missed the exact second it happened. "Lock your door tonight.""Ryker…""I mean it, Selene." He didn't look at me when he said it, already crossing to his desk, already pulling his phone out to make a call I wasn't invited to overhear. "This isn't a conversation. It's an instruction.""Ten minutes ago you were admitting things to me. Now I'm getting instructions.""Ten minutes ago was a mistake." He said it without looking up, and something about the flatness of it landed harder than if he'd shouted, a small precise wound instead of a large messy one. "I don't have the luxury of mistakes right now. Neither do y

"Do you have a name yet? For the investigator?""Not yet. My assistant's still working on it." Ryker rubbed a hand over his jaw, exhaustion carved into every line of his face. "Why do you look like you're about to say something you don't want to say?"He wasn't wrong. I'd been standing in that hallway working up the nerve for the better part of a minute, my arms crossed tight over my chest, my feet rooted to the same spot they'd been rooted to since I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again twice."Because I need to say something out loud, and I need you to actually hear it instead of getting defensive." I met his eyes. "The second Vivian walks back through that door, everything between us resets. You told me that yourself, back when none of this had happened yet. I haven't forgotten it, even if you have."Something flickered across his face, guilt maybe, or the closest thing he let himself feel to it. "I remember what I said.""Then you understand why I need to be careful a