I Married The Wrong Brother のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

The House on Rowan StreetMarcus’s POVI closed on the house Tuesday morning, while Daniel was still in Chicago and Natalie still thought she had until Thursday.Daniel had been in Chicago since Sunday. An investor dinner. A two-day stretch that always turned into four when he wanted it to. Natalie had said he was due back Thursday night. That gave me a window. I used it.I should have felt clean about using that window. I didn’t. Using his absence was still using him. The difference was I was using it to get her out, not to get closer.The money came out of my account. Not Whitmore’s. Not a relocation fund. Mine. Wire sent. Keys collected. Title in a folder on the passenger seat. I left the folder in the car. She did not need to see her name on those papers today. If she asked later, I would deal with it later. Today I needed her to walk through a door that locked.I called her from the front step.“Can you get away for an hour?” I asked. “I want to show you something.”“Show me what?

Two Cars, One DrivewayMarcus's POVI pulled into my mother's driveway at the exact moment Daniel did, our two cars arriving from opposite directions like something choreographed by a universe with a cruel sense of timing, and for one suspended second we just sat there, engines ticking, staring at each other through two windshields.He got out first. I got out second, slower, giving myself a moment to settle whatever was about to happen into something I could control rather than something that controlled me."What are you doing here?" Daniel asked, already walking toward me across the gravel, his jacket unbuttoned, tie loosened in a way that told me he'd come straight from somewhere without stopping to think about how he looked doing it."I could ask you the same thing.""I'm looking for my wife." The word landed with a bitterness that hadn't been there a month ago, back when he still said it like something he took for granted rather than something slipping through his fingers. "She ha

On the RecordNatalie’s POVI read the sentence twice.Then a third time, as if the words might change if I gave them one more chance.Respondent asserts that Petitioner’s relocation and change in circumstance were substantially influenced by an inappropriate relationship with Respondent’s brother, Marcus Whitmore, CEO of Whitmore Group, raising further concern regarding the stability and motivation behind Petitioner’s decisions regarding the minor child.The letters stayed where they were.Instability. Relationship. Minor child. They had taken the week I packed a life into boxes and written it up as a scheme.I set the folder on his desk. My hands looked steady. They did not feel steady. Marcus’s office was the same quiet glass box it had been the last time I stood in it. Same city outside the window. Same expensive calm. It was the wrong room for my son’s name in a motion.I could still hear Noah from this morning, asking if his other shoes were in the bag. I had said yes. I had pack

The Whole of ItNatalie’s POVMaya got the floor quiet.She did it with one look and a hand on a designer’s elbow. People went back to their desks like the show had ended. It had not ended. It had only moved.“I’ll be two floors down,” she said at my door. “If you need me, you call. Not later. Now.”“I need the room.”She nodded once, squeezed my wrist, and left.Marcus shut the door.The window was still there. The sun was still there. None of it felt like a first day anymore.My mouth still tasted the hallway. People had heard Daniel say house. They would say it again at lunch. I would have to walk back through that tomorrow and sit down anyway.I did not sit. He did not come closer.“Say it,” I said.“Natalie—”“From the beginning, i want to hear it.”He stood with his back to the glass, hands at his sides, like the desk might help him if he touched it and he refused to take that help.“I bought the house,” he said. “My money. Not the company’s. I put the title in your name so Dani

What Money Cannot BuyMarcus's POVI did not text her.That was the first useful thing I had done in days. I sat in my own kitchen with a glass I did not drink and let the phone stay face down. Space, she had said. No car. No night check. No Rowan Street unless she asked.I asked nothing.I kept coming back to her voice on that one word. Space. Not loud. Not even angry by the end of it, which was worse. She had said it the way she used to say fine to Daniel, except this time it was true, and it was aimed at me instead of him. I had spent four years learning the difference between her fine and her actual fine. I did not have four years to learn this one. I had two weeks.The urge to write I'm sorry sat in my thumbs like a habit. Sorry was not a fact. She had asked for facts yesterday and I had arrived late with them. A text would only be me asking to be let back in.The house I had bought so she would have a lock was two miles from here. I had walked it before the papers were signed, al