All Chapters of The NHL Captain's Fake Girlfriend : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

ELARA.I knew something was wrong before we even turned onto the street.Noah’s car was in the driveway. June’s water bottle still sat by the outdoor tap and a white SUV I didn’t recognize was parked tight behind them like it belonged there.Iris’s fingers tightened on the wheel. “Who the hell is that?”My stomach had already started the slow, ugly drop. “If you say Jessica, I’m going to lose my mind.”We didn’t have to wait long for confirmation.The front door opened as we climbed the steps and Jessica stepped out with a glass of water in her hand and Kyle’s hoodie hanging off her shoulders like it was hers. She stopped when she saw us, surprise flickered first then something smoother settled over her face.“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”Iris laughed once, sharp enough to cut glass. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”I looked past Jessica into the house. Kyle was on the couch, upright, ice pack abandoned on the table, jaw tight. He looked caught between standing and explaining, and the

ELARA.The campus lawn looked almost offensive in its normalcy. A tour group moved past the fountain and I walked with my phone burning a hole in my pocket.Twice I almost called Iris. Twice I put the phone away because if I started talking on a sidewalk I was going to fall apart in public, and I had done enough falling apart for one lifetime.By the time the bus dropped me near the house, my pulse had settled into something calmer.Iris was in the living room with her legs over the arm of the chair and a bowl of cereal she had clearly forgotten about. June was stretching on the floor like his body still believed in practice schedules. Kyle sat at the kitchen island with a glass of water and a half-concentrated look, pretending the concussion was a mild inconvenience. Noah came out of the hallway with laundry in his hands, saw my face, and stopped mid-step.Iris sat up first. “Why do you look like that?”“Like what?”“Like you just found out something terrible.”I set my bag down car

ELARA.For a second I could not hear anything except the blood in my ears.My name was on the screen in ordinary black text, as if it had always belonged there, as if some version of me I did not remember had calmly funded the same kind of men who put Kyle to the ground. Dean Collier watched me without blinking. Dr. Tran had gone so still beside me that I could feel her attention like heat.“I do not know anything about that account,” I said. The words came out thinner than I wanted, so I said them again, harder. “I did not open it, I did not authorize a payment. I did not hire anyone. The first time I heard those men use my name was when the police put cuffs on me.”Collier’s eyes moved over my face the way people studied evidence, not emotions. “You understand how this looks.”“I understand how it was built to look.” My hands had started shaking, so I pressed them flat against the folder until the cardboard bent. “I was useful. If the attackers got caught and needed a payer, an acco

ELARA.I did not remember standing up, only that the chair was suddenly empty behind me and Patel was watching me with the cautious attention of a man who had just watched a data field turn into a weapon.“Yes,” I said again, because once did not feel solid enough. “I recognize it. That is Jessica’s number.”Patel did not ask who Jessica was, which somehow made it worse. He only turned back to the screen and began tagging the line, his clicks neat and bureaucratic while my pulse tried to claw out of my throat. On the monitor, the recovery contact sat under my stolen name like a signature someone had been arrogant enough not to hide better.“Is this enough to prove she opened the account?” I asked.“It is enough to make her unavoidable,” Patel said. “Recovery contact is not a full confession in court, but it is not nothing. Combined with the creation timeline, the false email, and the neighborhood access point, it becomes a pattern. Dean Collier will want this immediately.”“I want it

ELARA.By late afternoon the house had stopped feeling like a triage ward and started feeling like a place where people might actually live with purpose.It began with an argument about food that was, thank God, only about food. Noah wanted steak because he had decided protein could fix morale. Iris wanted pasta because pasta was a love language and also hard to ruin completely. June voted for anything that could be eaten with one hand while he controlled the remote. Kyle, who still moved like his ribs had opinions, said he would eat whatever as long as nobody expected him to stand over a stove for forty minutes like a contestant on a recovery challenge. I sided with Iris, not only because pasta was sensible, but because boiling water felt like a manageable relationship with fate.We split tasks almost immediately. Noah claimed the cutting board. Iris seized seasoning rights and dared anyone to comment. June was banished to table setting after nearly adding sugar to the sauce through