Alle Kapitel von HIS ONE NIGHT MISTAKE: Kapitel 11 – Kapitel 20

CLARA'S POVThe ropes were too tight.I pulled at them, feeling the rough fibers scrape against my skin. The harder I struggled, the tighter they seemed to become. A low moan escaped my throat, muffled by the gag in my mouth.Come on. Come on, you can do this.I twisted my wrists, searching for any space in the knots, but they were tied tightly. There was barely any room to move.Then the nausea hit.It rose suddenly from my stomach. My throat burned, my head started spinning, and cold sweat broke out across my forehead.Not now. Please, not now.I bent forward as much as the ropes allowed, my body shaking. My stomach twisted painfully, and I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the feeling would pass.I breathed slowly through my nose, trying to settle my stomach. The minutes dragged by.Breathe. Just breathe.After a while, the nausea eased. It was still there, but it wasn't as bad. I could think again.I opened my eyes and looked down at the ropes around my wrists.They were still tight.

Clara's POV I woke with a dull ache behind my eyes and a heaviness in every part of my body. For a few seconds, I didn't remember where I was, and when I shifted toward the edge of the bed, my hand brushed against something warm beside me. I froze, my heart jumping into my throat as I turned slowly and saw a man lying on the other side of the bed. Lucien. The memory of the previous night came rushing back, the road, the headlights, his arms around me, and being carried into this room. I pushed the blanket away and stood quickly, desperate to get out before he woke. “Clara.” His voice stopped me before I reached the door. I turned and found him sitting against the headboard, his dark hair disheveled and his eyes heavy with sleep, but somehow he still looked completely alert. “It’s late,” he said quietly. “Why can’t you wait until morning?” I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly aware that I was standing in his bedroom wearing clothes that still smelled faintly of the forest a

Clara's POV The passage was narrower than I expected.I stood at the entrance, staring into the darkness while Eleanor walked ahead as if she had done this a hundred times before. The soft click of her heels against the stone floor echoed around us.I hesitated.Every instinct in me told me not to follow this woman into a hidden passage beneath a mansion where I was already being kept against my will.But curiosity won.I stepped inside.The wall closed behind me.I turned sharply.The library was gone.For a second, my heart raced.“Relax,” Eleanor said.I looked at her.“i just stared at her.”She gave me a small smile and continued walking.The passage opened into another room.I stopped.Pictures covered almost every wall.Hundreds of them.Old photographs. Newspaper clippings. Family portraits. Business documents. Pictures of buildings, people, cars, and places I didn't recognize.The room smelled old, like paper that had been kept away from sunlight for years.I slowly walked f

Lucien's POVSomething is wrong with my computer.I noticed it halfway through reviewing the financial reports, when a set of numbers that had been refusing to balance for hours suddenly made sense. I stopped scrolling and went back to the beginning of the report, checking every figure carefully. The problem I had been trying to find all morning was gone. I sat back in my chair and stared at the screen.That is not possible.I had been working on the same accounts since last week , trying to find the weakness that had allowed several transactions to pass through the system without triggering any of our security alerts. I had checked the account structures, payment records, internal controls, and transaction history, but nothing had given me the answer. Now, somehow, the exact problem I had been searching for had been identified and corrected.I opened the system history.Someone had touched my computer, who could that be?My eyes narrowed as I went through the activity logs. There wa

Marcus POVThere was one thing about Zara's story that had gnawed at me since yesterday. She claimed she’d gone to the east-wing room for something, but whenever I pressed her for details, her answer seemed to disappear before she could finish it. She had given me a story about a ransacked room, but no name, no clear reason, and no explanation for why she had been there in the first place.The locked door itself never bothered me as much as everything around it. It was the combination of the details she couldn't provide and the fear that had been obvious on her face when I questioned her. She wasn't acting like someone who had simply wandered into the wrong room, and that was what kept bothering me.My years in security taught me that people rarely hand you the truth in a neat package. They give you fragments, sometimes without even realizing that those pieces don't fit together. Zara had left a pile of fragments on the table, and the more I looked at them, the less they seemed to mak