All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE: Chapter 271 - Chapter 280

The twins had discovered stacking blocks with a seriousness Emma found almost unbearably funny, Thomas building a tower only for Eleanor to knock it down with the flat of her hand, delighted every single time, and Thomas rebuilding it without complaint, as though the whole exercise existed purely for his sister's satisfaction."He's going to let her get away with everything," Ethan said, watching from the doorway with his tie already loosened, briefcase abandoned somewhere in the hall where it had landed the moment he walked in."She's going to let him think that's his idea," Emma said. "I give it another year before the balance of power shifts entirely."Elias came thundering down the stairs with a folded piece of paper clutched in both hands, breathless in the way only a six-year-old delivering urgent news could manage."I got a gold star," he announced. "For my dragon story. Miss Whitfield read it to the whole class.""Which dragon story?" Emma asked, crouching to his level."The o

The lace smelled faintly of lavender, exactly as Theodore had promised, and Rosalind stood in front of the mirror turning slowly while Vivian adjusted the final pin at her collar."I keep expecting to feel like a fraud in it," Rosalind admitted. "Wearing a dress that belonged to a family I only just learned I was part of.""You're not wearing a stranger's dress," Vivian said. "You're wearing your own grandmother's dress. Say it until it sounds true, if it needs to."Rosalind met her own eyes in the mirror and tried the sentence quietly. By the third repetition, something in her shoulders finally eased.A knock sounded at the door, light and brief. "Five minutes," Maya called through it. "Theodore's already downstairs, refusing to sit down in case it wrinkles the coat."Downstairs, Theodore waited in the front hall in his good coat, cane set aside entirely for the occasion, one hand resting against the newel post for balance he was determined not to need."You look terrified," Richard

Olivia could no longer see her own feet, a fact she announced to the kitchen at large as though it were breaking news."Eight months," she said, easing herself into a chair with Adrian hovering uselessly behind her. "I haven't seen my feet in six weeks. I miss them. We were close once.""They're still there," Adrian said. "I checked this morning.""That's not the same as seeing them myself."Emma set a plate of toast in front of her sister without being asked, an old habit from years of knowing exactly when Olivia's blood sugar was about to become everyone's problem."Have you settled on names?" Emma asked, pulling out the chair across from her sister and sitting down properly, the way a conversation about names clearly deserved."We have a list," Olivia said, sliding the paper across the table with visible exasperation. "Adrian keeps adding ones from his family. I keep crossing them out. We've been at this for a week.""They're perfectly good names," Adrian said, retrieving the list

Elias had exactly one line, and he had been reciting it to anyone who would listen for two straight weeks."I am the sun," he announced, again, over breakfast. "And without me, nothing grows.""That's a big responsibility for a Tuesday morning," Ethan said, buttering toast with the exaggerated focus of a man trying not to laugh."I practiced it in the mirror," Elias said. "Miss Whitfield says I have good projection. I don't know what that means but she said it twice, so it's probably good."The school hall filled with folding chairs and the chaos of thirty sets of parents attempting to locate their own child among two dozen cardboard costumes, programs fanning overheated faces despite the autumn chill outside, and Emma spotted Theodore near the front, in his good coat again, Audrey's wheelchair parked beside him with a blanket she'd clearly stopped arguing about."You didn't have to come," Emma told him, sliding into the seat beside his."I wrote it on my list," Theodore said. "Elias'

The manor was quiet in the way it had started to feel lately, not the held breath before a storm but simply an evening settling into itself, dishes drying by the sink, a baby monitor crackling faintly upstairs between the twins' room and Elias's.Ethan found Emma on the terrace with two cups of tea instead of their usual wine, the night air cool enough to want something warmer in her hands, a blanket already draped over the back of her chair before he'd even sat down."Long week," he said, sitting beside her and stretching his legs out toward the low table between them, his shoulders finally dropping from wherever they'd been carrying the day."Good week," Emma corrected. "Long and good aren't always the same thing, but this one managed both."They sat for a while without speaking, the kind of silence that had taken this family the better part of a year to earn, comfortable rather than braced, the last of the day's heat still rising faintly off the stone beneath their feet."Theodore'