All Chapters of Married To The Devil's Heir : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Ivy shoved the folded wire transfer record into the lining of her coat just as footsteps stopped hard outside the door, the sound freezing her mid motion, breath caught halfway in her throat. Her fingers fumbled clumsily with the fabric, heart slamming hard against her ribs, the paper crinkling loud enough in her own ears that she was certain it could be heard clear through the wood of the door. She smoothed her expression flat a half second before the door swung open. Kade stood filling the doorframe entirely, arms crossed tight, studying her with the exact look he reserved for people who were hiding something from him, a look she'd already learned to dread over these past weeks. "Where were you?" "I went for a walk." The lie slid out fast, too fast, and she hated how practiced it sounded even to her own ears as she said it. "I needed air after everything with the investigation this week." "For two full hours, Ivy. Two hours." His voice stayed level, but his eyes tracked her

Kade slid the last interview transcript across the table and stopped cold, one finger still pressed against the page. "Read that one again," he said, tapping the page twice. "Out loud this time." The enforcer across from him, a broad shouldered man named Dario who answered to Kade directly and no one else, picked up the sheet and scanned it slowly. "Housekeeper says she was in the east corridor stocking linens between eleven and midnight. Heard nothing unusual, saw nothing unusual and went to bed at half past, same as always." "Now read me the one before it." Dario flipped back a page. "Kitchen staff, same window exactly. In the east corridor restocking supplies. Heard nothing. Saw nothing. Went to bed by half past, word for word almost." "And the one before that one, too." Dario's brow furrowed as he worked backward through the stack page by page, checking each account against the last, and Kade watched the realization land on his face the same way it had landed on his own twen

Kade stopped at the door and turned back around, the answer already forming before she'd finished asking the question."You think I don't already know?"Ivy's face shifted, just slightly, confusion bleeding through the careful composure she'd managed to hold since he first showed her the photograph. He watched it happen and felt something harden further in his chest, not satisfaction, nothing close to it, just the cold confirmation of a suspicion he'd hoped, briefly, might prove wrong."Know what?" she asked, guarded, refusing to hand him the reaction he was clearly waiting for."The black SUV outside your apartment the night the collectors came for your brother's debt. The same SUV that followed you to a bookshop three streets from here two days ago." He crossed back into the room, closing the distance between them until she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. "Registered to an associate of the Reyes family. My people traced the plates before you ever sat down across from

The scream cut through the east wing before Ivy even reached the corridor, sharp enough to pull her out of her room and into a dead run.She rounded the corner fast, breath catching hard at the sight waiting for her. Priya stood pinned between two of Vincent's men, a small packed bag knocked sideways at her feet, her voice raw from shouting something Ivy had only caught the tail end of on her way here. Kade arrived from the opposite direction at nearly the same moment, faster than Ivy had ever seen him move before, and for one suspended second the entire corridor seemed to hold its breath along with her."Let her speak." Kade's voice cut through the noise, low and absolute, immediate authority in every syllable, and the guards' grip loosened just enough for Priya to straighten."I have proof." Priya's eyes darted between Kade and the men flanking her, desperate in a way Ivy recognized from her own reflection weeks earlier, back when the men had come for Leo demanding what he owed. "

"Sit." Vincent didn't look up from his tea. Ivy stopped in the doorway of the sitting room, Marcus's earlier instruction still ringing in her ears, delivered with no room for questions or delay. Vincent wants to see you. Alone. He hadn't offered anything more than that, and she hadn't asked. She sat across from him, hands folded neatly in her lap, and waited, refusing to be the one who spoke first. "You've been in this family for weeks now, Ivy." Vincent finally set down his cup, studying her the way a man might study a horse he was still deciding whether to buy or send back. "Long enough to have formed opinions of your own. I'd like to hear them." "About what, exactly, would you truly like to know?" "About us. My son. This house. Whatever you've quietly concluded since you stopped being a stranger here and started being a wife." His cane rested against the arm of his chair, untouched, though his fingers drifted toward it every few seconds out of old habit rather than any real ne