Todos los capítulos de Married To The Devil's Heir : Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

"Kade Cross." The voice on the other end was calm, unhurried, a man who'd rehearsed this. "I have your wife's brother sitting in a chair three feet from me. He's alive. Whether that stays true depends on what you do in the next two hours." Kade turned his back to Ivy, keeping his voice level so she wouldn't hear whatever was about to happen to his face. "Who is this." "Doesn't matter yet. What matters is you listen." A pause, unhurried, the sound of a chair scraping somewhere behind him. "Warehouse on Ninth, the old textile building. Two hours. You come alone, no car with a tail, no men on the roofline, nothing clever. You bring Marcus or anyone else, the boy stops being useful to me." "I'm not negotiating a location I haven't verified exists." "It exists. Ask your wife about the block. She used to walk past it with her brother when they were kids." Something in the man's tone shifted, satisfaction settling into it. "I know things about this family that took real patience to lear

Ivy heard the elevator before she heard anything else, that mechanical hum she'd learned to recognize in her sleep, and she was at the door before it opened. Leo came through first, jacket pressed to his forearm, blood soaked through the sleeve underneath it. Ivy's stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Oh my god." She grabbed his good arm, pulling him toward the kitchen island. "Sit. Sit down right now." "I'm fine." He wasn't. His face had gone gray, sweat at his hairline, and he sat like his legs had already made the decision for him. Kade came in behind him, jaw tight, phone still in his hand. "What happened to him." Ivy peeled the jacket back to look at the cut and had to breathe through the sight of it. "Kade. What happened." "A man named Silas Boone happened." Kade set the phone on the counter, face down. Same move as that morning. She noticed it this time and let it go anyway, because Leo was bleeding on her marble countertop and that mattered more right now. "He's

Marcus brought her in twenty minutes later, one hand loose around her arm, not gripping, just present enough to make clear she wasn't leaving on her own terms. "Dana Marsh," Marcus said. "Two years on the overnight security desk. Badge logs put her outside your study four separate times this month, all after midnight, all when you and Mrs. Cross were out." Kade didn't stand up from the desk. He wanted her looking down at him, not the other way around. "Sit." Dana sat. Her hands were steady, which told him more than if they'd been shaking. "Thirty seconds," Kade said. "Why were you outside a locked room in my private residence four times this month." "I was checking the hallway camera feed. It's part of my rotation." "The hallway camera doesn't require your hand on my study door." Ivy stood by the window, arms crossed, watching Dana's face closely. Three months in this family had taught her exactly what a lie looked like on someone trying hard not to tell one. Dana's eyes kept

Vincent didn't look up from his newspaper when Kade walked in. "You could have called first." "I could have." Kade crossed the study, Ivy a step behind him, and set his phone on the desk between them, screen up, Cormac's old employment photo pulled from records Marcus had dug out before dawn. "Cormac Ellis." Vincent's eyes moved to the screen. His face didn't change. He hadn't asked what this was about yet, hadn't needed to, which told Kade more than any reaction would have. "I haven't heard that name in years." "Funny. He's been dead for six of them, and someone's using his scar to pay off my security staff." Kade didn't sit. "You remember the scar." "I remember a man who worked for this family for fifteen years and then left." Vincent folded the newspaper, unhurried, precise. "People leave, Kade. It happens without conspiracy attached to it most of the time." "He didn't leave. He vanished. Same summer half the household staff turned over." Kade planted both hands on the

Silas was already at the grave when Kade arrived, hands in his coat pockets, no visible weapon, though Kade knew better than to read that as safety. "You came." Silas didn't turn around. "I half expected an empty gate and a very good excuse." "I said I'd come." Kade stopped six feet back, close enough to talk, far enough to move if he had to. "I don't waste words I don't intend to keep." "That's supposed to separate you from your father." "It does." Silas finally turned, and in the gray half light before sunrise he looked older than he had in the warehouse, tired in a way anger alone didn't explain. He glanced down at the headstone between them. TIMOTHY BOONE. Two dates too close together for the years they should have held. "Say it, then," Silas said. "You came all this way. Say his name." Kade looked at the stone instead of at Silas, because some part of this deserved to be said to Timothy and not just performed for his brother. "Timothy Boone took the fall for a shipment m