THE WRONG BRIDE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

“Too late for what?”Amelia’s voice cracked on the words, her thumb hovering uselessly over the photograph as though staring at it hard enough might change what it showed her. Olivia’s face, gaunt and pale in the flash of whatever camera had taken it. Adrian took the phone from her trembling hands, studying the image with the same cold precision he'd used on the wrecked apartments upstairs. “There’s a timestamp,” he said quietly. “Forty minutes ago.”“Forty minutes.” Amelia’s stomach dropped. “Adrian, that's not enough time to…”“It's enough time to get to the mill.” His jaw tightened. “If that's where they are.”“We don't know that for certain,” Amelia said, even as every instinct she had told her he was right. “It could be anywhere. A warehouse, a…”“It's the mill.” Adrian’s certainty didn't waver. “Everything about this family’s twenty-five years silences back to that property. It's not a guess, Amelia. It's the only place that makes sense. Margaret pushed herself up from the sofa

Delphine froze the Instant the flashlight beam caught them, her own light swinging up too fast, catching all three faces at once…Amelia, Adrian, Margaret. For a long moment, nobody moved. “Well,” Delphine said finally, her voice unsteady in a way Amelia had never once heard from her. “This is not how I imagined this conversation going.”Adrian stepped forward first, putting himself slightly between Amelia and his aunt, his voice low and controlled in a way that didn't match the fury Amelia could feel radiating off him. “Where is she, Delphine?”“Adrian…”“Where is Olivia?”Delphine’s flashlight trembled slightly in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder, back the way she’d come, then back at the three of them, some internal calculation playing out behind her carefully composed features.“Deeper in,” she said finally, quietly. “There's a room they've been keeping her in, off the old grain floor. I wasn't….I didn't come here to hurt anyone. I came to try to stop this before it went f

The gunfire came from everywhere and nowhere at once, muzzle flashes strobing through the darkness like lightning, each burst freezing the grain floor into a fractured snapshot, Richard’s men diving for cover, Olivia thrashing against the ropes binding her to the chair, the inspector’s terrified face lit white for half a second before vanishing again into black. “Get down!” Adrian’s arm wrapped around Amelia, pulling her to the floor as something shattered above them, glass raining down through the beam of a flashlight that swept the room in short, controlled arcs, not panicked. Practiced. “That's not Richard’s men,” Delphine's voice came from somewhere close by, breathless, right with fear. “Richard’s men don't move like that.”Amelia pressed herself flat against the cold concrete, her heart slamming against her ribs, every instinct screaming at her to reach her sister and knowing, with sick certainty, that moving right now would get her killed. Through the chaos, she caught glimps

Adrian found her an hour later in the Villa’s east conservatory, sitting exactly where Delphine had once told stories about a marriage neither of them had chosen, starting a garden that had somehow, impossibly, stayed the same through a night that had changed everything else. “You should be resting,” he said quietly, settling in across from her.“I can't,” Amelia’s hands were still faintly trembling, wrapped around a cup of tea gone an hour ago. “Every time I close my eyes I see that vehicle lulling away. I see her face in the window before it disappeared.”“Delphine and Margaret got Walter and the guard settled,” Adrian said, watching her carefully. “The guard’s stable. Delphine’s doctor says he’ll keep his silence for the right price, which unfortunately seems to be the only currency anyone in my family’s orbit trusts anymore.”“And Margaret.”“Sitting with Walter at the cottage. She hasn't said much since the car.” Adrian’s jaw tightened. “I think tonight cost her more than any of

“Don't trust who?”Adrian repeated the question for the third time, pacing the length of the safehouse Delphine had arranged on the far side of the city, his composure fraying at the edges in a way Amelia had rarely seen from him. “Amelia, think. Was she looking at someone? Gesturing toward anyone?”“I don't know.” Amelia pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, exhaustion and terror tangling together until she could barely think straight. “She only got two words out before he stopped her. It could have been Desmond. It could have been the guard. It could have been…”She stopped. “What?” Adrian crossed to her immediately, crouching in front of the chair where she sat, his hands coming to rest on her knees. “Amelia, what is it?”“It could have been about someone who isn't there,” Amelia said slowly, the thought crystallizing even as she spoke it aloud. “Someone she thinks I might trust without questioning. Someone close to us.”Adrian went very still. “You think this goes deep