All Chapters of The Billionaire's Secret Bride: Chapter 411 - Chapter 420

Point of View: Alexander“I let them erase him, Alexander. I stood in the hallway and watched a man take Gideon Marsh’s name off the wall. I was a boy, and I said nothing. I have said nothing for sixty years.”My father’s voice was as thin as paper. He sat in his study in the wheelchair, a wool blanket over his knees, a cup of tea going cold at his elbow. The morning sun lay across the carpet. Everything about the room looked ordinary, and that was what scared me.“Start from the beginning,” I said. “Please, Dad.”“Eleanor had a brother.”“I have never heard of him.”“Nobody has. That was the point.” Richard stared at his hands. “Gideon was a carpenter. A big, loud man who laughed with his whole chest. He built the stage of the Delancey Theater with his own two hands. Every board.”“Then why is his name gone?”“Because Aldric and Gideon were partners. In everything. And one winter, they stopped being friends.”“Why?”“I do not know.” He swallowed. “That is the honest truth, and I hate

Point of View: Alexander“My grandmother asked your grandfather for a receipt, Mr. Sterling. Three days later she was dead. Tell me how that is a coincidence, and I will leave this city tonight and never come back.”The words hung in the cold kitchen of number nine, Willow Street. It was a narrow brick house with a crooked door, a leaking tap, and a table covered in old paper. Iris Marsh stood by the stove with her arms crossed. Elena sat beside me, pale and silent, her hand locked in mine.I had promised to stay by the car. I had lasted four minutes. When I saw Elena and Iris standing under that oak tree, two women with the same hurt in their shoulders, I could not stand still. I walked over. Iris did not argue. She only said, “Come inside. It is easier to say it where nobody can hear.”“A receipt for what?” I asked.“Forty thousand dollars.” She pulled a photograph out of a biscuit tin and slid it across the table. “In those days, that was a lot of money. It was every penny my grand

Point of View: Alexander“Say it, Alexander. Say you do not trust me. I would rather hear the words than watch you pretend for another day, with that look on your face.”Marcus stood in the doorway of my study at six on Monday morning, wearing yesterday’s shirt. He had not slept. Neither had I. The house had been locked tight since Saturday, with new guards at the gates and a stranger parked outside our walls in a gray car that vanished whenever we looked at it.“I trust you,” I said.“Do not lie to me.”“I am not lying. I am trying.” I rubbed my eyes. “That is the honest answer. I want to trust you. I am working on it. Some days it is harder than others.”“Because of the photograph.”“Because of everything.” I leaned back in my chair. “You kept watching Oscar for months and told no one. You showed me a cropped picture and let me think the worst. You could have come to me weeks ago.”“I could have.”“Why did you not?”Marcus came in and sat on the edge of the sofa like a man waiting t

Point of View: Alexander“If he took it, Alexander, then I handed it to him. I chose him. If we lose it, the fault is mine, and I will carry it alone.”Elena sat in the back seat of the car with her wet hair stuck to her cheeks and her hands clenched in her lap. The windshield wipers beat slowly. Outside, the night rain smeared the streetlights into long gold streaks.“It is not your fault,” I said.“Then whose is it?”“Pruitt’s.”“And Marcus’s?”I did not answer. I gripped the wheel until my knuckles ached. In the mirror, Iris and Oscar sat very still, like two people watching a house burn.I wanted to say, Marcus would never do that. I wanted to say it with all my heart. But a small, cold voice in my head whispered, he was the man who sold secrets once. The man who stood in my office and lied. The man who looked me in the eye and said, trust me.And then I remembered his hand on my arm that morning. The plain shame in his voice. I hate that I even had to remind myself.“I do not bel

Point of View: Alexander“Daddy, Rabbit says you found it. Rabbit says now you can stop crying in the car. Is that true, or is Rabbit only trying to be kind?”Claire stood at the foot of my study chair at dusk, in her pajamas, holding her old stuffed rabbit by one floppy ear. Her hair stuck up on one side. Her feet were bare on the cold floor. She looked at me with the grave, patient eyes of a very small judge.I laughed. It came out cracked. “Rabbit is very wise.”“He is seven.”“I remember.”“So did you find it?”I lifted her onto my lap. She weighed almost nothing. She smelled of soap and warm cotton. I felt the whole long day, the library, the ledger, Eleanor’s letter, press down on my chest like a stone. And then I felt it lift, just a little, because of her.“We found something,” I said. “A book. It tells a true story, and some of it is not nice.”“Is the true story a lamp?”“Yes, my love.”“Did you put it on a table?”“We are going to,” I said. “Soon. We are going to let everyb