All Chapters of The Billionaire's Curvy Bride: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

"Back stairs," Renata said, already moving, the folder shoved into a canvas bag she grabbed off a hook by the door like she'd rehearsed this exact moment a hundred times in her head. "Freight elevator's faster, but it's slow to arrive. We don't have slow.""Where does it lead?" Ryker asked, his voice low, controlled, already thinking three steps ahead the way I was starting to recognize as second nature to him."Alley behind the building. My car's two blocks north." She was already three steps ahead of us, moving with the flat, economical speed of someone who used to do this professionally. "Move."We moved.The stairwell smelled like old paint and colder air, our footsteps echoing too loud against the concrete. Ryker's hand found the small of my back on the second landing, steadying me when my heel caught the edge of a step, and I didn't have time to think about what that touch meant before we were through the fire door and into the alley, the cold hitting hard enough to steal my bre

"Kane Corporation Shareholders Emergency Address, Friday, ten a.m." Ryker read the notice aloud, his voice flat with disbelief. "Marcus called this. Not my father. Marcus.""He's getting ahead of us." I set down my coffee, my appetite gone. "He knows we're building a case. This is him making sure his version of events lands first.""He's going to stand in front of every major shareholder in Havenport and paint himself as a victim." Ryker's jaw tightened. "And he's going to do it before we have anything solid enough to stop him.""Can we block it?" I asked. "Legally, I mean.""Not without admitting we're actively investigating him, which is the one thing we're supposed to be keeping quiet." He rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted in a way that had become familiar over the last week. "He's smart. He knows exactly what he's doing.""Then we go too.""Selene…""I'm your wife. I have every right to be in that room." I met his eyes, steady despite the nerves already coiling low in my stom

An alarm cut through the garage's silence, sharp and electronic, coming from somewhere inside the hospital.Ryker was moving before I'd even processed the sound, sprinting back toward the entrance, and I ran after him, my heels forgotten somewhere in my mind's priority list behind the sudden, sick certainty that something had gone very wrong upstairs. I kept pace with him easily, four flights of stairs taken two at a time, my lungs burning but my legs never once slowing, and some small, stubborn part of me noted, even in the middle of the panic, that nobody in that stairwell had time to comment on what my body could or couldn't do. It simply did what it needed to.We reached the fourth floor to find two security guards blocking a man in a delivery uniform outside Renata's door, a cart of flowers abandoned beside him, his composure slipping fast under their questioning."I have a delivery," the man kept repeating. "Room 214. That's all I know.""There's no delivery scheduled for that r

"You're the one who's been texting me," I said, my voice cutting through the stunned silence of the boardroom before anyone else could speak, every head turning toward the back of the hall in unison. "Since the terrace. Since the night after my wedding."The woman's expression didn't change, calm and composed despite every eye in the room now fixed on her."Yes," she said simply. "I am."Ryker's hand tightened around mine, sharp enough that I felt it, his whole body gone rigid beside me."Who are you?" he asked, his voice flat, controlled in the way I now recognized as the sound of a man working very hard to hold himself together in public."My name is Delphine Ashworth. I was a close friend of your mother's, many years ago, before either of you were old enough to remember her clearly." She let that settle, watching Ryker's face carefully. "I've held that trust on her behalf since before she passed. I imagine that surprises you."It clearly did. Ryker's jaw worked once, twice, before

I found him in the library, an old wooden box open on the desk in front of him, papers spread out like he'd been sitting with them for hours. He hadn't touched the dinner tray a maid had clearly left for him earlier, the food long gone cold beside the papers, and I recognized, with an odd little pang, the same habit I'd spent my whole life practicing myself, letting a meal go untouched while something more urgent consumed all the available space in your chest."What is it?" I asked, closing the door behind me, something in his posture already telling me the answer wasn't going to be simple."After the board meeting, I couldn't stop thinking about what Delphine said. About my mother keeping things quiet." He gestured at the box without looking up. "I had the estate staff pull anything of hers still in storage. Most of it was nothing. Photographs. Old letters from friends I've never heard of.""And?"He held up a single page, the ink faded but legible, handwriting that slanted hard to t