All Chapters of The Billionaire's Secret Bride: Chapter 441 - Chapter 450

Point of View: Elena“They printed the fire and left out the forgiveness, Elena. By breakfast the whole city will call me a monster, and my granddaughter will read it before she finishes her cereal. Tell me how to stop it, because I cannot.”Richard Sterling said it from a hospital bed at one in the morning, with his voice as thin as paper. He lay against three pillows in room 614 of St. Anne’s Hospital. His white hair was flat on one side. A young nurse stood at the foot of the bed, holding her phone out like a guilty child. The screen glowed with a black headline. HOW RICHARD STERLING BURNED HIS OWN FAMILY HOTEL.“I am so sorry, Mr. Sterling,” the nurse whispered. “I only wanted you to see it before someone else showed you.”“You did right, my dear. Go and breathe. I will not break before sunrise.”She hurried out. I shut the door and crossed the room. On the windowsill sat the pear pie from last week, still in its tin, dry at the edges. Nobody had the heart to throw it away.“You s

Point of View: Elena“Sit down, child, and stop pacing my floor. You walk like your mother did when she was frightened. Heel first, as if she was trying to wake the building.”Great Aunt Odette Hart said it from a rocking chair by the window. She was eighty four years old, small as a sparrow, with silver hair pinned up in a braid and a wool shawl the color of old roses. Her flat above the Dunmore Street tailor shop smelled of lavender and steamed cloth. Through the glass I could see my grandfather’s old sign, still hanging crooked above the door. HART AND SON. MENDING DONE WELL.It was ten in the morning. I had left Claire at school, with a smile glued to my face and a lie ready in my pocket. I had told her I would explain everything at dinner. She had looked at me with her father’s gray eyes and said, “You have your worried face on, Mommy.” Then she had hugged me hard and gone through the gate.Now I sat on Odette’s sagging sofa with a cup of tea going cold between my hands.“I need

Point of View: Elena“Mommy, I am not a baby. Daddy said grown ups should tell the truth, and you are a grown up, so tell me. Is Grandpa going to jail because of the fire?”Claire sat at the kitchen table in her school uniform, with her chin on her fists and her rabbit squashed under one arm. It was six in the evening. The lamp over the table threw a warm circle on the wood. A pan of pasta sat untouched on the stove. I had planned the speech all day, a gentle one, with soft words and a careful ending. It all fell out of my head the moment she looked at me with her father’s gray eyes.“Who told you about the fire?” I asked.“A boy at lunch. Tomas. His mother showed him on her phone.” Claire’s lip trembled, and she squeezed the rabbit. “He said my grandfather is a criminal. I said he is not. Then I pushed him.”“You pushed him?”“A little.” She sniffed. “Miss Alvarez said I have to say sorry tomorrow.”I came around the table and knelt beside her chair. My heart was aching in my chest,

Point of View: Elena“You went to Voss’s house without me, Alexander. You decided I was too fragile to hear it, again. Do you know how many people have decided that for me over the years?”I said it at midnight in our bedroom, with my arms crossed and my voice shaking. The lamp on the dresser was off. Only the glow from the garden came through the curtains. Alexander stood by the door, still in his wet coat. He looked exhausted and guilty, and part of me wanted to hold him, and the rest of me wanted to throw a shoe.“Elena, I went because Claire was frightened.”“Claire was frightened. I was home with her. I was the one who held her.” My voice broke. “You went and found a photograph, and you stood in the rain and talked to men in brandy rooms, and then you came here and handed me a name like a parcel.”“Her name is Beatrice Lowe.” He did not move. “She was at our wedding. She wept at your mother’s funeral. She is the closest thing to a family friend you have outside this house.”“I kn

Point of View: Elena“Look, Mommy. Look at the lamp. It has a keyhole. A tiny one. I think somebody forgot to paint the key.”Claire had said it last month, while she waited for me after her art class, with her small finger pointing at the lower left corner of my mother’s painting. I had laughed. I had said it was only a pattern in the brass. I had kissed her forehead and carried her out to the car.Now it was ten at night and the Delancey Theater was dark and silent around us, and I stood on the stage with my hand against the cold painted wall, my heart pounding so loudly I thought it would echo in the empty seats.“Are you ready?” Alexander asked.“No.”“Do you want to stop?”“No.”He smiled in the dim light. A single work lamp glowed on its metal stand beside us, throwing long shadows up the red velvet curtains. The mural rose before us, twenty feet wide, a sweep of blue and gold and deep green. It showed a city at dusk, with a woman on a bridge and a thousand windows glowing. My m