All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S APPRENTICE BRIDE: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

"Found her where?"Damian didn't answer. He turned the guard's phone toward the window light, like that would make the screen load faster, and for a second, the only sound in the room was the guard's breathing and the tick of a clock I hadn't noticed until now."Turn on the feed," Damian said. "Now."The guard fumbled with the phone, and then a livestream filled the screen, shaky and vertical, clearly filmed by someone standing in a crowd.A woman stood on the steps of what looked like a courthouse, a coat pulled tight around her even though it wasn't cold. Her hair was darker than mine, cut shorter, but something about the way she held her shoulders made my stomach twist.Guarded. Braced.Like she already knew whatever she said next was going to cost her something."That's her," Damian said.His voice had gone flat in a way I hadn't heard yet."That's Lena.""Bride number two," I said.It wasn't a question.He didn't correct me.On the screen, a reporter shoved a microphone toward he

I spun around, my heart slamming so hard I felt it in my throat.It wasn't Damian.A woman stood a few feet away in the hallway, somewhere in her fifties, wearing a cardigan instead of a uniform, a set of keys hanging from one hand. She didn't look alarmed to find me there. She looked like she'd been expecting to find someone there eventually and had simply been waiting to see who."You're Mira," she said.Not a question."And you are?" I said, still catching my breath, my back nearly against the locked door behind me."Rosa. I keep this place running: laundry, groceries, the parts of Mr. Cole's life he doesn't have time to think about."Her eyes flicked to the locked door behind me, then back to my face, quick enough that I almost missed it."That room stays closed. Has since before I started working here. I wasn't told why, and I've learned not to ask.""Someone's texting me about it," I said before I could stop myself. "Telling me to ask about a fire."Something crossed Rosa's face

"Sophia," Damian had said two days ago, as the name cost him something to hand over. He hadn't said anything else about her since, and I hadn't pushed... not because I'd stopped wanting to know, but because I'd learned by now that pushing only ever bought me silence dressed up as an answer.Tonight, I had a different plan.I was done waiting for a stranger's texts to hand me the story one fragment at a time. If there were answers in this world, I was going to find them myself.The Whitmore ballroom looked exactly like Genevieve had described it: chandeliers, marble, a string quartet playing something that sounded expensive.The car had barely stopped moving before the flashes started, a wall of light through the tinted glass that made my pulse spike despite four days of practice standing still for exactly this.Damian's hand found mine before the door even opened."Chin level," he said quietly. "Not for them. For me.""That's not what Genevieve told me.""Genevieve's not the one who h