All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

"Whoever it was," Emma said, "you know how it was done. Even if you don't know who."Desmond's hands stayed flat on the table, steadier now that the worst sentence had already left his mouth. "I know exactly how it was done. I built the how myself, thirty years ago."Richard's grip on the edge of his chair tightened. "You've been paying for her care yourself. This whole time.""Not myself," Desmond said. "I never had that kind of money, and I was never meant to. I was only ever the man who knew where a small amount could disappear without anyone counting it twice.""The Sentinel account," Emma said slowly. "The one Theodore signed to Julian Renshaw after the fire.""Long before that," Desmond said. "Sentinel has taken small, quiet disbursements for decades, structured so they never looked like anything but ordinary maintenance. A private nurse's fee folded into a property expense. A house's utilities paid a year in advance. I was the only person alive who understood the ledger well en

Theodore lowered himself into the chair on Audrey's other side without asking permission, his knees protesting loudly enough that a nurse two tables over glanced up."I'm ninety-four," he told Audrey, by way of introduction. "I've earned the right to sit down wherever I please."Audrey studied him with the same careful searching she'd given Richard, though something in her mouth twitched toward amusement. "You're too old to be flirting with me.""I'm not flirting. I'm sitting.""That's what all the old ones say."Richard laughed, wet and unsteady, and Emma understood watching them that whatever else this woman had lost, her humor had survived the stroke intact, tucked somewhere the fear hadn't managed to reach."Do you remember the house?" Emma asked gently, once the tea had been poured a second time and the nurse had drifted off toward another table. "Cadogan Row."Audrey's cup stopped halfway to her mouth. "The curtains were yellow. I hated them. I never said so, because someone had

Dolores answered her own door this time, cardigan buttoned correctly for once, and looked past Emma at the man standing awkwardly by the gate before she said a word to anyone."You brought him," she said."He asked to come," Emma said. "I didn't make him.""Nobody's ever made that boy do anything in his life," Dolores said. "That was always half the trouble."Gabriel took it without flinching, hands jammed in his coat pockets, standing the way a man stands in the rain after deciding not to look for shelter.Gabriel stayed by the gate until Dolores waved him forward with the same brisk impatience Emma remembered from the kitchen table weeks earlier."You look thin," Dolores told him, once he'd crossed the yard. "Are you eating.""Sometimes," Gabriel said."That's not an answer.""It's the honest one."Dolores studied him a long moment, then stepped back to let him through the door, which Emma understood, watching, was as close to forgiveness as the woman was going to offer on the doors

He'd had three weeks in custody to think of a better answer, and he still gave the same one when Nolan asked his name a second time."Marcus," he said finally, when pressed. "Marcus Reece. Julian was never meant to stick. I chose it because I wanted your husband to hear his own family's name come out of a stranger's mouth.""It worked," Ethan said, from the observation glass, though only Nathan heard him say it.Theodore sat across the table from him, the tin absent for once, his hands folded instead on bare wood."Reece," he repeated. "I've never heard that name in my life.""You wouldn't have," Marcus said. "My grandfather was erased more thoroughly than you were. At least your brother left a photograph hanging in a study. Mine left nothing at all, except a torn half of one I had to buy back from a stranger's storage unit.""Anthony," Theodore said slowly, the shape of the memory arriving before the name did. "My mother said a name once, at the edge of something. Anthony.""Anthony

The new facility sat closer to Kingsley Manor than the old one, forty minutes instead of two hours, and Emma had insisted on choosing it herself rather than leaving the decision to anyone who'd only ever known Audrey as a case file."Real gardens," she'd told the director, touring the grounds with Richard the week before. "Real visitors. Whatever it costs.""It always costs," Richard had said, and smiled for the first time in days when he said it.Audrey settled into the new room without complaint, though she made her opinion of the curtains known within the hour."Yellow again," she said, eyeing them with real suspicion. "Somebody in this family has a peculiar attachment to yellow curtains.""We'll change them," Emma said. "Whatever color you want.""Blue," Audrey said immediately. "Like the sea I've never once been allowed to actually see.""Then you'll see it," Richard said. "Properly, once you're settled. I'll take you myself.""Bring a hat," Audrey said. "And a sandwich. Nobody e