All Chapters of The Billionaire's Secret Bride: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Point of View: Elena"Mrs. Sterling, you need to come now." The nurse's voice cracked through the phone like a struck match, and I knew before she said another word that nothing about today was going to stay ordinary.My father collapsed at eleven that morning, and the phone call reached me before I had even finished reading the court papers Alexander had left open on the kitchen table."It is his heart," the nurse said, her voice careful in the way nurses learn to be careful. "He is stable, Mrs. Sterling, but we need you here as soon as you can come."I did not remember grabbing my coat. I did not remember the elevator, or the driver, or the twenty minutes it took to reach the hospital where machines hummed steadily beside my father's bed like they were the only honest thing left in the building."Elena." His voice was thin, but his eyes found mine immediately. "You look like you have not slept in a week.""Neither have you, apparently," I said, pulling a chair close enough to hold h

Point of View: Elena"Vanessa." Daniel's voice was barely audible through the phone, but the single word landed like a dropped glass, and I watched Alexander's face drain of color before he even repeated it out loud.Alexander's face drained of color so completely that I crossed the room before Daniel had even finished his sentence, my hand finding his arm the way I had learned to anchor him through the worst of his silences."Vanessa," Alexander said finally, lowering the phone. "Elena, the third child's granddaughter is Vanessa."The room seemed to tilt sideways, the lamp light suddenly too sharp against my eyes, the old couch beneath me feeling less solid than it had only a moment earlier. Somewhere outside a car alarm wailed briefly and cut off, an ordinary sound from an ordinary night that no longer matched anything happening inside our living room. "That is not possible," I said. "Vanessa has known your family for years, Alexander. She was engaged to you. She would have said som

Point of View: Elena"Rooftop meetings this late," Marcus said, amused, his voice sliding through the phone's speaker before Alexander even had it fully raised. "Alexander, I always did admire your flair for the dramatic when cornered."Alexander answered on speaker before I could stop him, and Marcus's voice slid smoothly through the cold rooftop air like he had been listening from somewhere close enough to know exactly what he was interrupting.The wind carried his voice thin and metallic through the phone's speaker, and I found myself watching Alexander's face instead, searching for the exact moment his careful composure would finally crack under the weight of whatever Marcus had planned to say next. "What do you want, Marcus," Alexander said flatly."I want you to know I am not stupid," Marcus said. "Vanessa's phone has been pinging near your building for the last twenty minutes. I assume she is telling you everything I asked of her, probably wrapped in some newly discovered consc

Point of View: Alexander"Someone was watching us." Elena's voice was tight with a fear I recognized instantly because it matched my own, her eyes fixed on the phone screen between us.Marcus's text contained a single photograph, a blurred but unmistakable image of Eleanor's letter lying open across the theater floor, taken from an angle none of the four of us occupied at any point that night.I stared at the photograph until the pixels blurred, the theater's unfinished walls suddenly feeling less like sanctuary and more like a stage someone else had been quietly directing without our knowledge the entire time.I called Daniel immediately, pacing the length of the theater lobby while the phone rang twice before he answered. "Daniel, someone photographed the letter tonight. From inside the building. I need to know who had access to the security feed."There was a long pause before he answered, longer than I liked. "Alexander," he said carefully, "I authorized someone to monitor the the

Point of View: Alexander"I am coming with you." Elena was already reaching for her coat before I had even set the phone down, her voice leaving no room for argument.The message traced back to a burner number Daniel could not identify by name, but the address attached to it belonged to a small chapel two blocks from the cemetery where Claire had been buried a decade earlier, and something about that specific location made refusing impossible.The chapel's address glowed on my screen against the darkness of our bedroom, and something about its proximity to Claire's grave made my chest ache in a way none of Marcus's threats ever quite managed to reach."Elena, if this is a trap, I need you safe," I said."I have been safe my entire marriage while you walked into danger alone," she said. "Alexander, we agreed. Together, regardless of what either of them still has left to throw at us."We arrived to find my aunt sitting alone in the last pew, smaller somehow than I remembered her, her ha