All Chapters of The Bride They chased Away: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 32: Page Six"I read that contract. I swear to God I read every page."Lila said it three times before Victoria Lang looked up from the table.It was seven in the morning, and the security office on the lowest level of the Marlow Street garage had been turned into a war room. A metal desk. Four folding chairs. A wall of dead monitors. Dana had set up an IV pole in the corner, and Damien sat beneath it in a camp chair with a bag of fluids running into his arm and a gray wool blanket over his knees. He was pale and hollow-eyed, but he was upright. Dana had given him an hour of rest and a lecture, and he'd taken the first and ignored the second.Conrad sat on a stool near the door with Kai standing over him. Victoria had walked in, taken one look at the old man, and said, "I'll deal with you later," in a voice so cold that Kai actually straightened.Now she stood at the desk with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, a paralegal named Theo hovering beside her, and a stack of documents

Chapter 34: What Mrs. Pell Remembers"Your mother didn't fall, Damien. And you were in the room."Mrs. Pell said it into her teacup.She was sitting at the oak table in the old kitchen with her hands zip-tied in her lap and the chipped cup with the blue ring in front of her. Marcus's men had come through the back door ninety seconds after Damien opened the pantry. They'd taken the vial out of her pocket, bagged it, taped it, and written a time on the label. They'd done everything very politely, and Mrs. Pell had let them, the way she'd let the whole world move around her for thirty years.She didn't look up. She didn't cry. She stirred the cold tea with one finger, slowly, and her voice came out quiet and clear."You were fifteen. You came down for a glass of water. You weren't supposed to be awake."Damien stood in the middle of the kitchen like a man who had been struck.Lila was at his elbow. She could feel him swaying. She slid her hand into his and he gripped it so hard her knuck

Chapter 36: The Briefcase"I have a photo of your husband handing a dead man a briefcase, and a U.S. Attorney who wants a warrant by Friday."Reyes said it in the fourth-floor corridor at twenty to six in the morning, with a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. She said it the way she said everything. Flat. Tired. Without any decoration at all.Lila stood in front of her in a borrowed set of scrubs and a pair of Dana's sneakers, one size too big. Her hair was tied back with a rubber band. Her eyes felt like sandpaper.Forty minutes ago she'd been certain the worst thing that could happen that night had already happened.It had gone almost the way Ward wanted. He'd stood in the doorway of her mother's room with his transfer order, his kind face, and his two silent guards, and he'd waited for Lila to break. And she'd almost broken. She'd felt it in her knees.Then her mother had pushed herself up on one elbow, tubes pulling at her arm, and said in a voice

Chapter 38: Cross-Examination"Dr. Ward, how long have you been engaged to the plaintiff?"Victoria asked it without looking up from her notes. She stood at the lectern with one hand resting on a legal pad and her voice pitched so low and even that the question seemed to slide into the room rather than land in it.Dr. Julian Ward, back on the witness stand, blinked.It was only half a second. His mouth stayed relaxed. His hands stayed folded. But Lila, watching from the defense table, saw the muscle at the corner of his jaw tick once, like a pulse in a wire.Twenty minutes earlier, the courtroom had come apart.Hobbs had said she's wearing white, and for three full seconds nobody had moved. Then Vance had shot to his feet bellowing objections, and half the gallery had leapt up with him, and Judge Moss had cracked his gavel until the walnut handle splintered. It had taken the bailiff and two deputies to restore order. When the noise finally dropped, Serena was still sitting exactly as

Chapter 40: A Single Signature—Sign it, little sister. You've done it before.Serena's voice came through Lila's phone at 2:14 that afternoon, calm as if she were talking on any ordinary Sunday, from a number that didn't exist. In the background, there was a faint but unmistakable sound: the deep drone of jet engines starting up.By then, Damien had been unconscious for forty minutes.It had all happened too fast. One second he'd been standing in the courthouse hallway, one hand against the wall, saying something about the floor. The next, he was lying on the marble floor, his head in Lila's lap, his lips turning blue. Dana was kneeling beside him, two fingers digging into his neck, her round face contorted with fear."The pulse is slow," he had said. "Thirty-eight. And you can barely feel it."—What does that mean?"It means his heart is slowing down." Dana yanked open her purse. "It means we don't have time to argue. Marcus!"Marcus was already moving. With Kai's help and using his