All Chapters of He married me to ruin my husband : Chapter 81 - Chapter 87

Ivy did not answer. She let the quiet stretch until the clock in the hall had ticked off most of a minute, long enough for Damian to mistake it for the beginning of surrender. She had watched Adrian do this to junior partners for five years. Say nothing, look out the window, and let the other man's hope do the negotiating.Then she reached out, for the first time since she'd sat down, and turned the cold cup a quarter turn on its saucer."That's a lot to ask of a person in one afternoon," she said."True." One corner of his mouth lifted. "And I understand."She was aware of her own pulse, steady and a little too fast, and of how little of it was reaching her face. She had understood one thing about people like Damian. They believed in momentum. If she refused outright, he would adapt. If she hesitated, he would keep talking, and if he kept talking, he was giving her evidence."If I'm going to consider it, I need the details, not bits. I've signed up for things before without knowing

The search team reached the lake house at ten past five that evening and found it exactly as Denise had predicted."Empty," she told them the next morning, standing at the kitchen island with a thermos in her hand. "The doors unlocked, nothing taken, nobody in it. On the drying rack in the kitchen, two teacups, washed and upside down. The photograph on the sunroom windowsill is gone. That's the only thing he took."Ivy looked at the legal pad in front of her, where she had written Friday and underlined it twice. It was Wednesday. She didn't mention that her mother had written her last entry on Wednesday."He's gone," Xavier said. "As he said he'd be, if she agreed.""I haven't agreed to anything." Ivy kept her eyes on the pad. "Denise, I need this to be done quietly, and I need you for it. Not the police.""Why not?""Because every time we've gone after something loudly, we've found an empty compound." She turned the pad around. "My mother's death certificate says ‘natural’. There was

Richard was waiting at the kitchen table when they came in a little after half past eleven, still in his coat.The kettle on the stove had gone cold. Ivy had called him from the plane. She laid the envelope in front of him and sat down across the table. Xavier stayed by the counter, close enough to hear, far enough to let her do it herself."Read the one in the middle," she said.Richard took out the photocopy and held it at arm's length, the way he had since his eyes started failing. She watched him find the circled number. His lips moved on the words ‘not on digoxin per husband’, and then they stopped."She asked me," he said slowly. "That Friday morning, in the ambulance. No, that's wrong. I wasn't in the ambulance. They'd already..." He pressed the paper flat against the table with both hands. "The doctor asked me in the hallway if she'd ever taken heart medication. I said no. I thought it was a form..""It wasn't a form, Dad.""No." He looked at the number for a long time. "Eigh

The grand jury voted at nine on Wednesday morning, and Denise called Ivy at ten past with the result."Indicted," she said. "Murder in the first degree for your mother. Conspiracy, kidnapping, extortion, evidence tampering. Eleven counts." She exhaled, and for a moment Ivy heard the brittleness go out of her voice. "I wanted you to hear it from me before the cameras started. It's real, and it's on paper now.""He's sick.”"He's sick, and he's indicted, and he's missing, and I don't know which of those worries me most." The edge came back. "Xavier's already called me about security. I'd do everything he's about to ask you to do."He asked her at breakfast. Ivy listened, her coffee untouched, as Xavier laid it out like a merger, one item at a time. Ruiz's team on the penthouse around the clock. A second team in Richard's house. A driver for Ivy, a driver for Elena, a third man who would trail whichever of them left the building. No walking anywhere alone, no unfamiliar couriers past the