All Chapters of The Billionaire's Curvy Bride: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Nobody moved. The shattered teacup lay in pieces at my mother's feet, and every eye in that garden had turned toward us, waiting."Not here," my mother said, her voice thin, barely audible. "Selene, please, not here.""You've had fourteen years to tell me somewhere private." I didn't lower my voice. I was done making myself smaller so other people's comfort could survive intact. "I think you've earned whatever discomfort this causes you.""You're embarrassing us both.""I'm asking a question, Mom. That's all this is." I held her gaze, refusing to let the old, familiar guilt pull me back into silence, refusing to let it shrink me the way it always had at that exact table. "If the truth embarrasses you, that's not something I did to you today."Elise rose from her seat at the head of the table, calm and deliberate. "Perhaps we should all step inside.""No." My mother's hands were shaking, but something in her expression had shifted, resignation replacing panic. "She's right. I've hidden

We reviewed the airport footage together in his study late that night, the grainy black-and-white feed looping over and over across his laptop screen, the room lit only by the desk lamp and the pale glow of the monitor."There," Ryker said, pausing the frame. "That's her. Maybe."The woman on screen wore a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses despite the indoor lighting, her face angled carefully away from every camera she passed, moving with the deliberate ease of someone who'd clearly done this kind of thing before."She knows where the cameras are," I said slowly, leaning closer to the screen. "Look how she times her turns. Nobody walks like that by accident.""No. They don't." Ryker's jaw tightened. "Which means either Vivian spent the last year learning things she never knew before, or someone taught her.""Someone with resources. Someone patient."We looked at each other, the same name hovering unspoken between us. Marcus's face had already crossed my mind twice, though something abo

"Delphine again," I said, turning the phone so Julian could read it himself, my thumb hovering nervously over the screen. "Warning me that Marcus already knows about the photograph."Julian's jaw tightened as he scanned the message. "How would he know that? Only you, Ryker, and apparently Delphine have seen it.""I don't know. That's what worries me." I pocketed the phone, my appetite for the rest of the afternoon suddenly gone. "Someone's leaking information somewhere, and I can't tell if it's coming from inside the estate or from Delphine herself testing how much she can trust me.""You think she'd do that? Manipulate you deliberately, for her own reasons we haven't figured out yet?""I think everyone in this story has an angle I haven't fully seen yet. I've stopped assuming anyone is exactly who they present themselves as." I managed a tired smile, though it didn't quite reach my eyes. "Present company excluded, obviously.""Obviously," Julian said, though his eyes stayed serious.

His father was waiting in the study when we arrived, the same room that had witnessed nearly every difficult conversation this family had ever had, a decanter of scotch untouched on the desk in front of him, the fire burned down to embers like he'd been sitting with it for hours already."Sit down," he said, his voice unusually rough, gesturing at the two empty chairs across from him. "Both of you."We sat. Elise stood near the window instead, arms crossed, watching her son with an expression that gave nothing away."I don't know how to start this," Ryker's father admitted, staring at his own hands like they belonged to someone else, his voice smaller than I'd ever once heard it. "I've rehearsed it a dozen different ways over the past week, and every version still feels inadequate.""Just start," Ryker said. "Please."His father nodded slowly, then drew in a long breath.My stomach dropped. Ryker's hand found mine under the desk, gripping tight."It was nearly fifteen years ago now, a

The twin headlights of Ryker’s matte-black SUV sliced through the dense, midnight fog as we climbed the winding mountain road toward Meridian Lake. Inside the high-end leather cabin, the air was warm, thick with an electric charge that had nothing to do with the climate control and everything to do with the man sitting six inches to my left.He drove fast, his massive hands gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, the muscles of his forearms taut beneath his rolled-up sleeves. Every time he shifted gears, his knuckles brushed the fabric covering my outer thigh.A few months ago, I would have pulled my leg inward, tucking my knees together to make myself smaller in a seat built for someone far less solid. Tonight, I stayed exactly where I was. My hips filled the plush seat comfortably, my shoulders broad and squared against the headrest. I took up space because it was mine to take, and I watched the sharp, blade-like profile of his jaw in the faint gre