Alle Kapitel von CONTRACTED TO MY EX-HUSBAND’S ENEMY : Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSEHOLDZoe sat in the passenger seat of her own car, her cheeks still warm from crying into a man's shirt she wanted to use as a weapon for her revenge.Nathaniel adjusted the rear view mirror without being asked, the way a man does when he has decided a space belongs to him now, whether on paper or just temporarily."You know how to drive a Lamborghini Urus?" Zoe asked, more to fill the silence than out of real doubt."I own three cars more expensive than this one." He grinned at her when he said it. “Put on your seat belt."Zoe rolled her eyes but still clicked her seat belt into place, her eyes falling to her lap.“That’s not what I meant.”“Hmm? What did you mean then?”Nathaniel smirked, pulling out of the underground garage.Zoe bit her lip, her eyes darting outside the window.“I wanted to get the Mercedes Maybach S 680 4MATIC but Emery said No.”Nathaniel glanced at her from the corner of his eye.“He said that the car was too masculine and I shouldn’t

The house was painfully quiet when they arrived, the annoying kind of quiet that meant something was about to go terribly wrong.Zoe's front door was unlocked, which meant Emery had used his key to enter.Zoe made a mental note to change her locks. Asking for her keys back could make Emery turn vengeful and break into her house.He was very unpredictable, but should she care?Zoe filed it under urgent and important things in her head.Nathaniel's hand found the small of her back as they walked past her little corridor, his gesture which had become, in the space of a handful of days, closer to habit than performance.Zoe threw him a curious look over her shoulder."You don't have to come in" "You hired me to be your shield against Landon, didn’t you?” Nathaniel’s lips thined into a line.Zoe’s steps stopped in place, directly in front of the glass separating the corridor from the living room.Zoe could see Emery typing furiously on his phone and his mother seated next to him, with a c

Eunice stuttered.“What ---” “You can’t ---”“Stop telling me what I can or cannot do. You are not my mother.” Zoe countered.“And in the same vein …”“Zoe. I know you are frustrated but you don’t want to do what you will regret. I have a lot of ladies messaging me, around me, wanting to be the next Mrs. Landon but I chose you and …..”“My eyes are opened. Remaining as Miss Beckett is more promising than being Mrs. Landon.”“No woman wants to forever remain in her father’s house!”Zoe smiled, “As you can obviously see. The house you are standing in is mine not my father’s.”“That is not what I meant. If you are young, then you should be on with the times, not just having a lack of understanding because of your young age.”“You need to be taught discipline.” Eunice adds.Emery stands next to his mother, not saying anything but his stance clear as day.Zoe rolled her eyes indifferently, but was fuming inside.“You lack social etiquette. As the older generation …”Zoe laughed, her head

Even Nathaniel bristled beside her.His hand holding his fountain pen tapping in a rhythm paused methodically in the air before resuming a second later.The pause was very short, yet Zoe could feel everything he did not say in that pause.Emery's face had gone from bright red to a strange pale washed out grey, the color of a man doing quick arithmetic in his head and not liking the sum."Evidence?" he repeated, and his voice cracked slightly on the word, betraying him before his mouth could catch up."Yes. Evidence." Zoe folded her arms, letting the silence stretch, letting him sit inside it the way she had once sat inside years of his silences without complaint. "The Cascade Hotel, room four eleven. You booked it under Rosie's name because you thought it was clever, since nobody would think to check your assistant's assistant.”“You paid in cash the first three times and then got lazy and used the card ending in seven four two three, the one your father set up for you before he died

Zoe did not watch the video twice.Her thumb hovered over the screen, her own foot connecting with Emery's jaw frozen mid motion on the tiny rectangle of glass.She looked around her living room.The video was taken from where Eunice sat.Zoe scoffed.Eunice must have done this to force her hand, ruin her prospects, and turn Emery into the publicly adored one.In her past life, she used her own hands to transfer her adoration to people who cared only about him.This time she would let him have it.He was about to find out how fast the public can change their tune and turn against you.Unlike the other day she panicked the blogs were spewing trash about her, this time Zoe did not care one bit. She grabbed her tired body to her bedroom, set the phone face down on her nightstand and went to sleep.By morning it had eleven thousand views and a hashtag she refused to search.She woke instead with a different kind of clarity, the kind that settles into the body after a storm has finally p