บททั้งหมดของ The Wife They Wanted Dead : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

CHAPTER 42 He didn't answer for long enough that I stopped expecting one. That was the thing about Caius — when he went quiet it was never empty. There was always something happening in it. I'd learned to wait him out rather than fill the silence for him, because whatever came after the waiting was always more honest than what came before it. This particular silence had a different quality. Not the controlled pause he used when he was deciding how much to say. Something more uncomfortable than that. Something that sat in his body differently — the set of his shoulders, the way he'd dropped his hand from my face when the question landed and hadn't found anywhere else to put it. I'd touched something. I just didn't know what yet. "You don't have to answer today," I said. "I know." He said it quietly. "That's not why I'm not answering." "Then why?" He looked at the thin line of light under the passage door. Not avoiding my eyes — more like he needed somewhere to put hi

CHAPTER 44 I kept staring at the name.Adrian Ravaryn.Caius's cousin.The man who had sat across from me at breakfast the morning after my wedding.The man whose hand I'd shaken at the reception.“Work backward,” I said quietly. “From the wedding guest list. Cross-reference the name on the screen with everyone who was there.”“I already did.”I pointed to the register.His name was there.Adrian Ravaryn.The same man.The first breakfast came back to me.Valen at the head of the table, composed and watchful. Isabella across from me, with her smile that never reached her eyes and her warnings about truths that destroy the people who uncover them.And Adrian.Caius's cousin.Sitting slightly apart, watching me with an expression I'd filed away as calculating.I'd noticed him.I'd simply decided he wasn't important.Now I wasn't so sure.“He was at the first breakfast,” I said.“Yes.”“He was at the wedding.”“Yes.”“And now he's the director of the company at the top of those shell st

CHAPTER 46The words hit something loose in my chest, and for a second nobody moved.Then Caius stood.He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. He crossed the space between himself and his father in three steps, and something in the way he moved made me push back my chair too, like my body already knew this wasn't going to stay calm."Say that again," Caius said.Valen didn't. He just held his ground, hands still resting on the back of the chair he wasn't using, like the wood was the only thing keeping him upright."You heard me the first time.""I want to hear you say it to my face. Not hers. Mine."Something passed between them — old, worn smooth from use, the kind of thing that only exists between people who've been circling each other for years. I stayed where I was. I didn't think either of them remembered I was in the room."Ask him what happens to people who talk," Caius said. "That's not a warning about Alaric. That's a warning about you."Valen's mouth pressed into a thi

CHAPTER 48 — What He Traded "Valen." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Say it." "It wasn't one thing," he said finally. "It was never one thing. That's not how it works. They don't ask for a file and let you walk away. They ask for something small first. Then something smaller than that feels wrong to refuse once you've already given the first." "What did you give them." "Where you worked. Which shifts. What time you left at night and which route you walked home." His voice didn't rise, didn't shake. That was almost worse than if it had. "The name of the diner two blocks from your apartment. Which nights you closed alone." The room tilted, just slightly, though nothing in it had actually moved. "You knew all of that," I said. "Before we ever met. Before my father was arrested." "Yes." "For how long." "Years." "Not like this, not at first," he added, before I could ask. "For most of it, there was almost nothing to give. A school record. A general address. The kind of th

CHAPTER 50 "Something more valuable than information," he said again, like the words deserved to be repeated slowly. "Do you know what that could mean, Sparrow?" "Don't call me that." "It was hers to give you. I'm only saying it back." "You're saying it to watch what it does to me." Something flickered at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. "Perhaps both things are true at once. People rarely have the luxury of doing only one thing at a time." Caius's hand tightened slightly around mine under the table, a small, steady pressure that asked nothing and gave everything. "You said she trusted you," I said. "With what." "Patience." He folded his hands again, unhurried, a man who had clearly spent his whole life letting other people arrive at conclusions on his schedule instead of their own. "I want you to understand something first. I am not your enemy. I understand that everyone in your life right now has told you otherwise, and I understand why. But hatred is a si