All Chapters of REBIRTH OF THE SUBSTITUTE BRIDE : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Chapter 71KADE LANNISTER I stared at her across the table, my jaw working in silence as the cold reality of her corporate maneuver settled over the space between us. I had come here expecting to back my runaway wife into a corner, only to realize she’d spent the last five years building a fortress I couldn't breach with money.Beside her, Maguire casually brought his glass to his lips, taking a slow, insufferable sip.The fucker. The man was sitting in my place, shielding her, acting like he belonged at her side while I was treated like an uninvited trespasser. Every primal instinct in my chest urged me to tear the table apart, to grab Maguire by the throat and force him out of the room. But looking at the woman sitting across from me, I knew brute force would achieve nothing. The quiet, fragile girl who used to flinch when I raised my voice was nowhere to be found. In her place sat Camille Sterling—cold, unyielding, and completely untouchable.I swallowed past the bitter knot in

Chapter 73I entered the car and slammed the door shut with a bang.I leaned my head back against the leather headrest, closing my eyes as the engine hummed to life. Outside, the rain had turned the streetlights of the city into long, blurry smears of yellow and white. Inside, the quiet was so thick it felt like water filling up the cabin, rising past my knees, my chest, my throat.I got it wrong.Every single piece of it. Every assumption I clawed at after pulling those old surveillance files, every bitter, venomous thought I threw at her across that restaurant table—it was all built on a foundation of absolute garbage.When I first tracked her down, when I saw the CCTV footage from five years ago and found the records of a bloody, shattered car on the highway, my brain twisted it into the only narrative that made sense to a man who had been ghosted by a ghost: They all planned it together. I thought Camille, Victoria, and Bella had conspired to fake her death, bleeding the asphalt j

Chapter 75KADE LANNISTER I just wanted to know.I just wanted the damn truth, and I was entirely sick of chasing shadows, pulling wire-transfer reports, and digging through five-year-old garbage when I could just drive out here and ask her straight to her face.My knuckles were white against the steering wheel as the sedan crawled down the dark, tree-lined lane toward her private mansion. The engine hummed a low, steady note against the 2:00 AM silence, vibrating through the floorboards while the rest of the city slept. I hadn’t told Frank I was leaving my suite. If I had, he would have spent twenty minutes reading me the riot act about the absolute stupidity of driving to your ex or dead wife's house at this ungodly hour. A wife that hates my guts. But common sense had officially abandoned me the moment Camille sat across from me at that restaurant table, looking like her entire world had just been detonated by a bomb she didn’t set.I needed to clear the air. I needed to look at

Chapter 77"Get the hell away from her!"Before Kade could even react, Alex stepped between us like a human shield, slamming his forearm straight into Kade’s chest. The sheer momentum sent Kade stumbling backward across the wooden deck, his leather dress shoes scraping hard against the timber until he caught his footing near the top step.Oh, sweet mercy. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, each thud ringing loud in my ears. I stood there, frozen, my back practically pressed against the front door panel. My mind was spinning out of control—a messy, panicked tangle of raw adrenaline and sheer terror. Ethan. My sweet, innocent four-year-old was sleeping upstairs in his bed, blissfully unaware that two grown men were currently on the verge of tearing each other apart on our front porch at two in the morning. If they started shouting, if a fist flew, if Kade shoved his way past Alex—the noise would wake Ethan up. I couldn't let my son see this monster. I couldn't l

Chapter 79"What is going on here?"The tiny, skeptical voice sliced right through the heavy, dead-bolt silence of wherever I was.I blinked my eyes open, wincing against the harsh morning sunlight slanting through the blinds. My brain felt like it was swimming through wet cement. For a second, I had no idea where I was—only that I was unusually warm, completely comfortable, and buried under a heavy, solid weight.Then my sensory system violently rebooted.A heavy, muscular arm was banded securely around my waist, pinning me tight. A very familiar, intoxicating blend of cedarwood and cold air—Alex’s signature cologne—was pressed right against my face. And worst of all? Long, heavy male legs were casually, intimately tangled right in the middle of my own.Oh, sweet mother of mercy!We hadn't just stayed up talking on the couch. Apparently, at some point in the early hours of the morning, high on adrenaline and hot chocolate, we had curled into each other and fallen fast, deeply asleep