Todos los capítulos de One Night With My Fiancé Ruthless Uncle : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

Carter’s eyes opened fully for the first time just after three in the afternoon.They were still clouded with residual sedation, the sharp steel-grey dulled to something softer and disoriented, but they found Jennifer immediately. Recognition flickered there, followed by a faint crease between his brows as pain began to register.Jennifer leaned closer, her hand still wrapped carefully around his. “Hey. Easy. You’re in the hospital. You’re safe.”His throat worked. A rough, barely audible sound emerged—her name, broken in the middle. She reached for the cup of ice chips the nurse had left and carefully slid one against his lower lip. He accepted it, the simple act somehow intimate enough to make her chest tighten.“Don’t try to talk yet,” she murmured. “You lost a lot of blood. They had to operate. The bullet missed everything vital, but you’re going to feel like hell for a while.”Carter’s gaze drifted over her face, cataloguing details with the same focused intensity he used in boar

The afternoon light had turned heavy and gold by the time Carter woke again.Jennifer was still in the chair, though at some point she had pulled it so close to the bed that her knees brushed the mattress. A half-finished cup of cold coffee sat on the rolling table. Gerald had stepped out twenty minutes earlier to take a call from the detectives; the room felt both larger and smaller without him in it.Carter’s eyes found her immediately. The pain medication had been reduced, and the cost of that decision showed in the tight line of his mouth and the faint sheen of sweat along his hairline. Still, the focus in his gaze was sharper than it had been all morning.“You’re thinking too loud,” he said, voice low and rough.Jennifer gave a soft, tired huff of air that was almost a laugh. “Someone has to. You’re busy not tearing your stitches.”His free hand moved across the sheet until it found hers. The contact was deliberate. Warm. She felt the now-familiar current move up her arm and sett

Morning came too quickly. Jennifer stood in the small hospital bathroom down the hall from Carter’s room, staring at her reflection under harsh fluorescent light. The scrubs she had been living in for two days were gone, replaced by clean dark jeans and a soft grey sweater Gerald had arranged to have delivered before dawn. Her hair was still damp from a hurried shower. The woman in the mirror looked pale, hollow-eyed, and older than she had any right to be at twenty-six.She pressed her hands against the edge of the sink and forced a slow breath into her lungs.Today she would sit in a police station and put the truth on record. Margaret’s lawyers were already moving. The bond hearing loomed. Everything Carter had bled for—and everything her mother had died for—depended on the clarity of the words she chose.When she returned to the room, Carter was awake and visibly fighting the residual pain of a night spent on reduced medication. Gerald stood near the window, phone in hand, speaking

The package sat on the security desk like a threat that had already been made.Jennifer stood between Carter’s hospital room and the small administrative office near the elevators where two detectives and a hospital security officer had gathered. Gerald remained close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed hers. Carter had refused to stay in the bed. Against every medical protest, he had insisted on being helped into a wheelchair and brought as far as the doorway of his room so he could see her. A nurse hovered behind him, clearly torn between protocol and the look on his face.The box was ordinary. Brown cardboard. No branding. Jennifer’s full name printed in clean black marker. No return address. It had been left at the main reception desk by a courier who had already vanished into traffic by the time anyone thought to ask questions.One of the detectives—the same sharp-eyed woman from the station—pulled on a pair of gloves.“We’re going to open it here,” she said. “If there’s anyth

Morning arrived with the hard clarity of fluorescent light and the knowledge that nothing about the day would be gentle.Jennifer stood in the small hospital bathroom for the second time in three days, staring at a version of herself she barely recognized. Dark trousers. A structured cream blouse that Gerald’s assistant had delivered before dawn. Hair pulled back into a clean knot. She looked composed. She did not feel it. Beneath the careful exterior her pulse still carried the residual heat of the night before—Carter’s mouth on hers, the weight of his arm, the absolute certainty in his voice when he told her the board would try to manage her.She returned to the room to find Carter already dressed in the clothes Gerald had arranged: dark trousers, a charcoal button-down left open at the collar to accommodate the bandages beneath. He was pale, and the act of standing had cost him, but the look in his eyes was pure steel. A wheelchair waited by the bed. He ignored it on principle unti