Alle Kapitel von My Ex Called Me Fat, Now His Father-in-Law Wants Me: Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

Chapter 22: What Clara Wants POV: Clara I locked my bedroom door before I called him, which told me something about my own state of mind that I didn't particularly want to examine too closely. Beckett picked up on the fourth ring, background noise bleeding through the line, some sports commentary droning low, the clink of ice against glass, the particular ambient hum of a man lounging comfortably in an apartment I'd helped decorate with my father's money. I curled up against my headboard, phone pressed to my ear, and felt the familiar, exhausting cocktail of affection and resentment settle over me the way it always did lately when I heard his voice. "Hey, babe," he said, distracted, not quite present in the conversation yet. "What's up?" "She's still here." I didn't bother with preamble. "Odette. Living in my house. Tutoring Cai. Four days now, and my father won't even discuss getting rid of her." "Mm." A pause, the commentary volume dipping slightly, a small concession to actual

Chapter 24: Ask the Wrong Question POV: Odette I found Greta in the kitchen an hour later, elbow-deep in flour, a fresh batch of something Cai would probably refuse to eat until she disguised it as something else. I hovered in the doorway a moment, the folder of photographs still tucked under my arm, weighing the wisdom of the question I was about to ask against the small, insistent voice reminding me that curiosity in this house had already been flagged as a liability once. I asked anyway. "Greta." I set the folder down on the counter beside her, careful not to get flour on the fragile old paper. "Can I ask you something about Sofia?" Her hands stilled over the mixing bowl. It wasn't dramatic, no gasp, no dropped spoon, nothing so obvious as that. But I'd spent four days learning to read the small, involuntary signals people gave off in this house before their words caught up to their fear, and I watched every muscle in Greta's shoulders go rigid, her spine straightening a fract

Chapter 26: Accidental on Purpose POV: Odette I didn't go to his study that first night after all. By the time I'd talked myself down from the doorway sound and back into some semblance of composure, I'd lost my nerve for anything so direct, bursting into his study with coffee and an unbuttoned collar felt, on reflection, like exactly the kind of obvious opening move that a man as perceptive as Nikolai would clock in under a second. If I was going to do this, I needed subtlety. I needed him to believe he was catching me by accident, not walking into something staged. So I started smaller. ...... The next morning, I wore an old pair of running shorts I'd found buried at the bottom of my duffel bag, leftover from a life where I used to jog before work to clear my head, back when clearing my head was a luxury I could still afford, paired with a loose, oversized t-shirt that had a habit of sliding off one shoulder if I moved a certain way. Nothing overt. Nothing that screamed effort.

Chapter 28: Borrowed Fabric POV: Odette I couldn't sleep. It was well past midnight, the estate settled into the particular thick, muffled quiet that only comes once every last light on the ground floor has gone dark, and I lay in my narrow bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the hallway encounter from two days ago on an unhelpful loop. His jaw ticking. The rough edge that had crept into his voice when he said I don't mind. The way he'd walked away too fast afterward, like a man putting distance between himself and something he didn't trust himself around. I told myself it meant progress. The plan was working. That was all that mattered. I told myself that so many times it started to feel less like reassurance and more like an argument I was losing. Eventually I gave up on sleep entirely, pulled on the same oversized shirt of his I'd worn before, laundered now, though I hadn't returned it, some small, deliberate choice I refused to examine too closely, and made my way down to t

Chapter 30: Two Feet of Desk POV: Odette He requested the meeting himself, which I noted right away as its own small victory. A folded note on my breakfast plate, his handwriting sharp and economical: Study, 6pm. Progress update. Two lines, no please, no signature, and I'd smoothed it flat against the table and thought, good. Let him be the one initiating contact for once instead of me engineering another accidental hallway. I dressed for it carefully. Not obviously, nothing he could point to and call deliberate, just a soft green sweater that happened to be the exact shade Maya once told me made my eyes look like something worth staring at, sleeves pushed up past my forearms, hair loose instead of tied back the way I usually wore it for lessons with Cai. I told myself it was armor. I think some part of me knew it was closer to bait. His study at six looked different than it did at one in the morning, lamps on instead of just the desk light, the heavy curtains still open to a sky b