I Married The Wrong Brother のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

What It Would TakeMarcus’s POVI stayed in the office long after the board meeting ended.The Second Skin deck was still open on my laptop. I had closed it twice and opened it again both times, as if the credits page might rearrange itself if I looked hard enough. It did not. Daniel’s name sat at the top in clean, confident type. Hers remained at the bottom, smaller, almost apologetic.I had asked the question in the boardroom. I had made them look at her for half a second. I had sent the memo, and today I had told her the work was hers. It was not enough. It had never been enough.I pulled up the internal staffing files for the design division at headquarters. Open roles. Upcoming projects. Transfer protocols. I usually let Sandra take care of things like this, but tonight I did it myself. I didn't want to leave anything to chance.There was a senior design position opening in six weeks. Not a token role. Real authority. Real budget. The kind of seat that would let someone rebuild a

The FortressNatalie's POVThe legal office did not feel like a place where answers were kept. It felt like another room where I had to sit up straight and pretend the ground beneath my feet was perfectly level.The woman across the desk, Ms. Vance, had a voice that was entirely too smooth for the things she was saying. She turned over the printed text messages I had spent half the night collecting, her fingers moving across the paper with a practiced, indifferent rhythm. She stopped on a page from three nights ago—the explicit logs establishing that the affair hadn't stopped after the public scandal—and tapped a message sent from Daniel's phone to the other woman: "Don't worry about Natalie. She won't do anything. she knows her place.""The messages show a clear continuation of marital misconduct after the public leak," Ms. Vance said, looking up from the neat black ink. "In a negotiation, that gives us a leverage point. But a courtroom doesn't run on leverage points, Natalie. It runs

The Lie I Already ToldNatalie's POVI made it back to the office by nine."How was the clinic?" Priya asked, not looking up from her screen, the question so casual it barely registered as a question at all."Fine," I said. "Routine."I sat with my hands folded on the desk for a long moment before I let myself actually open my laptop, Marcus's offer still sitting in my chest like something swallowed too fast. A senior design role. An independent budget. Full coverage for me and Noah. A reporting line that went straight to him, which meant, in practice, a reporting line that went nowhere near Daniel at all.It should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of something with no railing.I thought of every woman I'd ever watched leave a marriage like mine—quietly, at dinner parties, in the careful third-person way people discuss other people's disasters—and how I'd caught myself wondering, privately, why they hadn't just left sooner, as if it had ever been that s

The Hard PartNatalie's POVDaniel was gone before Noah woke up. A note on the counter, his handwriting rushed and slanted, said he'd left early for a site visit and would see us tonight, as though the previous evening hadn't happened at all, as though a man hadn't stood in his own kitchen and threatened to burn down his brother's reputation to keep his wife in an apartment she no longer wanted to live inThat, more than anything else, was what finally settled it for me. Not the threat itself, though the threat had been real enough. It was the note. The absolute, practiced ease with which he could return to see you tonight, the morning after, as though nothing between us required acknowledgment in daylight.I made Noah his eggs. I packed his lunch. I did the small, ordinary chore, my hands moving on their own while my mind sat somewhere else entirely, turning the decision over like a stone I'd finally picked up after weeks of only looking at it."Are you okay, Mama?" Noah said, watchin

Ready To ProceedNatalie's POVI sat in my car outside the café for nearly ten minutes before I trusted myself to drive, Ms. Vance's text still glowing on my screen like something I couldn't quite bring myself to touch.Following up on your consultation. We have an opening this week if you're ready to proceed with filing.Ready. As though readiness were a single, clean state a person simply arrived at, rather than something built out of a hundred smaller decisions, each one costing more than the last.I thought about Eleanor's hand on my shoulder. Do it quickly. Daniel moves fastest when he thinks no one is watching.I called the office before I let myself second-guess it."Vance and Associates.""This is Natalie Reyes. I got a text about an opening this week.""One moment." A pause, some rustling on the other end, and then Ms. Vance's voice came through directly, brisk and unsurprised, as though she'd been expecting this call before I'd finished deciding to make it."Natalie. I take i