Todos los capítulos de The Billionaire's Secret Bride: Capítulo 191 - Capítulo 200

Point of View: Elena"Elena," my father said, his voice thin. "Sit down. There is something I should have told you weeks ago, and I was too much of a coward to say it."I had promised myself in the car that I would not cry in front of him again, and I broke that promise before I had even fully crossed the threshold of his room. He looked smaller than he had that morning, propped against the pillows with an IV line taped to the back of his hand, and when he saw me his face did something complicated, relief and guilt tangled together in a way I did not understand until he spoke again."Dad, whatever it is, it can wait until you are stronger," I said, pulling the chair close to his bed anyway, my hand already finding his, cool and papery beneath my fingers."It cannot," he said. "Not anymore. Marcus came to see me three weeks ago. The same week he resigned from the board."The room seemed to narrow around those words, the machines beeping softly in the background suddenly too loud, each

Point of View: Elena"Thank you for coming," Vanessa said, sliding into the seat across from me. "I imagine this is the last place you wanted to be this morning."I had rehearsed a hundred versions of what I would say if Vanessa Cole ever asked to see me alone, and every single one of them evaporated the moment she actually walked through the cafe door. She looked tired in a way I had never seen on her before, the polish she usually wore like armor slightly dulled at the edges, her coat still buttoned as though she had not decided whether she meant to stay."You imagine correctly," I said. "So say what you came to say, Vanessa. My father is still in the hospital, and I do not have patience for games today.""I am not playing one," she said, and something in her voice made me believe her, at least for now, some rawness beneath the careful poise she usually carried like a second skin. "Marcus knows I have been feeding information to Alexander. He confronted me last night, after your din

Point of View: Elena"You do not have to do this," I said before Alexander could speak, surprising myself with how steady my voice came out. "Whatever you think this press conference will fix, it will not fix it, Marcus."I had expected him to look triumphant, to wear the particular smugness of a man about to win, and instead he looked like someone standing at the edge of something he was no longer certain he wanted to jump into, his fingers tight around the folder pressed against his chest. "It will only make everything harder to repair afterward," I added, when he did not answer right away."Repair," Marcus repeated, something bitter twisting his mouth. "That is an interesting word coming from the woman who married into this family for money and somehow ended up its most passionate defender.""I married into this family to save my father's company," I said. "I stayed because I found something worth staying for. Do not pretend you understand my choices well enough to mock them, Marcu

Point of View: Elena"You look like you found a ghost," Priya said, appearing in the doorway of the study with two cups of tea, setting one carefully beside me.I found the second clue by accident, three days after Marcus walked out of that hotel office a different man than the one who had walked in, while I was looking for something else entirely in my mother's old blueprints for the Delancey Theater. The renovation crew had asked for the original architectural drawings again, some question about load bearing walls in the east wing, and I had spent the better part of an afternoon buried in the storage boxes my mother left behind, sheets of yellowed paper that smelled faintly of the cedar chest they had lived in for over twenty years."I might have," I said, smoothing the blueprint flat against the desk, my fingers careful against the brittle edges of the paper. "Look at this margin note. My mother wrote it in pencil, so faint I almost missed it entirely."Priya leaned over my shoulde

Point of View: Elena"Margaret," Alexander said again, his voice barely steady. "And beneath that, a family name. Hale."Some names carry so much weight that saying them out loud feels like lighting a fuse, and I watched him hesitate at the edge of that fuse for a full three seconds before he finally let the second half of it fall into the quiet room. The tin box seemed to grow heavier in the silence that followed, though none of us had touched it again since I had set the photographs down on the dusty floor between us.Voss made a small, broken sound beside me, one hand pressed against his mouth as though he could physically hold back whatever he was feeling. "Hale," he repeated, the word barely audible. "Marcus's family name.""It is not proof of everything," Daniel said carefully, ever the voice trying to slow us down before we ran too far ahead of the facts, his flashlight still trained steadily on the letter. "But combined with the birth record I found, and Marcus's own account o