บททั้งหมดของ The Trapped Heiress: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Numbers and profit margins had never been her language, not really and not anymore. Somewhere during the last past sixteen months she had become an architect first and a businesswoman only by circumstance, because she had to carry her father’s legacy. She had already made peace with handing the company fully into Noah's hands; today was only ever meant to be a formality, a signature, a final official word. But she was still a board member on paper, still expected to track the numbers scrolling past on the screen, so she forced her pen to move, jotting down phrases she had to make sense of later.She had to admit, that he had done well. Whatever else Noah Knight was, he hadn't let the company fall apart, in her absence. He had pulled it back from crisis and pushed it further than she might have managed herself. That much, at least, she couldn't hold against him.Her attention wandered; minutes into some director's presentation on regional growth, she caught herself simply watching him

"What answers do you want?" The words tore out of her, shaking all the composure she had been holding together since the boardroom finally gave way. "Do you want me to say it out loud? You were the one who humiliated me, Noah; you who humiliated me, Noah, you who blamed me for everything that fell apart back then, while I was too exhausted to even argue anymore. Your favoritism toward Sherry has no bottom to it; you believed her over your own wife every single time, without hesitation." Her voice cracked, but she pushed through it anyway, sixteen months of silence finally breaking lose all at once. "I thought that once we had marked each other, we might actually build something: a real marriage, a real life." But every time I took one step toward you, you were already there, pushing me two steps back." She drew in a breath that shuddered on the way out. "Noah, let's end this. I can't keep doing this anymore.""End this?" His voice came out low, trembling in a way she recognized instan

"Laurel, I am sorry."She went completely still.For a moment she genuinely thought she had misheard him, that her mind, exhausted from the day's endless activity, had simply spoken the words she had spent sixteen months wishing he would say and dressed them up as real. Noah Knight did not apologize, not like this, not without an audience to perform it for, not with his voice stripped down to something so bare."What did you say?" The question came out barely above a breath, half afraid that asking would make the moment dissolve entirely.His hands had gone still at her waist; when she finally lifted her eyes to his face, she found none of the possessive certainty that had carried him through the entire day, not the smirk from the boardroom, not the playful arrogance from the elevator, not even the quiet resolve from a few minutes ago. An expression that was raw and unguarded appeared on his face, something she hadn't seen since long before everything between them had gone wrong."I a

Laurel woke slowly, and the first thing she felt was the cold.The space beside her was empty. The sheets had lost their warmth, and for a moment she lay still, staring at the ceiling while the night came back in pieces: his hands, his voice, and the way her body had betrayed every word she had said. It felt like a dream, one of the ones you wake from with your heart still racing, but the faint ache in her limbs told her it wasn't.He is gone. Of course he is; what was she even expecting?The thought should have hurt less than it did.Then another memory cut through it, sharp and cold. "Stay calm; avoid further stress and intimacy for a year," her breath caught. She pushed herself up, one hand flying to her stomach, and with trembling fingers she lifted the edge of the blanket, her eyes searching the sheets, terrified of what she might find."You are awake."She froze. Noah stood in the bedroom doorway, hair still damp, a towel slung around his neck. Before she could gather the blanket

Laurel had walked out of that cottage dizzy and half-afraid, but over the following weeks, Lula had become something she hadn't expected, a steady presence in a country where she knew almost no one. The old healer had offered to keep watch over both mother and son for as long as they stayed in Moldova, and she had never once asked for anything in return.The wind off the hills carried the smell of wood smoke, and when Wyatt's rental car had finally arrived at her cottage, it was three weeks after Laurel's plane had landed, and in that time he had told himself a hundred different reasons for staying away.She asked for space. Her father's people are watching the house. She doesn't need him hovering around.None of them had held; every night he had lain awake staring at his ceiling, hearing the click of the hospital monitor and seeing her face on that pillow, her cheek bruised, her hand over her stomach. He had stood at the foot of that bed with his fists clenched so tightly that his na