All Chapters of THE CAPTAIN'S FAKE GIRLFRIEND : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The photograph slipped from my numbed fingers, fluttering through the cold air before landing face-up on the grime-coated linoleum floor between us.Neither of us moved. Neither of us dared to breathe.His mother. Alive. Sitting in a sunlit hospital armchair, her thin hand held securely in Adrian’s grip.For three excruciating years, Damon had carried the crushing weight of her death. He had built an armor of arrogance and distance around his heart to survive the void she left behind. Now, in the dark belly of an abandoned medical center, a single photograph had unraveled his entire reality."Damon..." My voice was barely a breath, fragile and trembling.He didn't answer. His dark eyes remained glued to the floor, staring at the face of the woman he had buried. His features had gone utterly blank, washed clean of all color, transformed into a mask of pure, unadulterated shock.Slowly, agonizingly, he crouched down and picked up the paper, his long fingers trembling so violently he nea

The rain followed us all the way down the highway, hammering relentlessly against the windshield. Inside the car, the silence was suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic, heavy sweep of the wipers clearing the torrents of water.Damon kept both hands locked around the leather steering wheel at ten and two, his knuckles white, his jaw set in a hard, unbreakable line. Every few miles, his right hand would break its grip to find mine on the center console, squeezing tightly, grounding us both before returning to the wheel.My father sat completely silent in the back seat. He hadn't uttered a single word since we left the abandoned corridors of St. Mary’s Hospital. He just stared out the rain-streaked window into the black night, looking frail and hollowed out by the secrets he had carried for twenty-one years.I kept staring down at the yellowed envelope resting in my lap. My mother’s handwriting. My mother’s words. A lifetime of questions reduced to a single, haunting sentence:The tru

The room remained in absolute darkness for several terrifying seconds after the projector cut out.The only illumination came from the faint glow of the wall where Richard's face had been projected moments ago, his voice still echoing in the cold air: If Amelia ever discovers who her real father is, she can never stay at Westbridge.My chest tightened so hard I could barely draw breath. Beside me, Damon shifted instantly, his broad body creating a solid wall between me and the dark doorway, his warm hand finding mine in the shadows. "Stay with me," he whispered, his pulse hammering against his fingers."I'm right here," I managed to choke out.Across the room, my mother looked utterly terrified, her hands trembling as Dr. Collins lunged toward the AV console on the wall."Someone bypassed the building's main firewall," Dr. Collins said, her voice laced with sharp panic as her fingers flew over the control panel. "I'm overriding the breaker manually—"CLACK.The overhead fluorescent tu

The text message hung in the air like a lethal threat, glowing from every illuminated screen in the suffocating room:> ASK AMELIA WHAT HAPPENED THE NIGHT SHE WAS BORN.> Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.I stared down at my phone until the blood-red letters blurred into a smeared haze of light. My heart knocked wildly against my ribs, each thud sounding like a death knell in the sudden, dead quiet.Slowly, I lifted my gaze.Every single pair of eyes in the hearing room was locked onto me. Damon. My mother. The man I had called my father my entire life. Richard. Dr. Collins. Dean Vance. Even the university security guard at the door. They stared at me as if I held the missing piece to a puzzle that had been burning their lives to the ground for twenty-one years."I don't know..." I whispered, my voice barely carrying across the table. "I don't know what happened."Across the room, Richard’s stone-cold posture wavered. My father—Daniel—flinched and looked down at his shoes. My mother pressed

The heavy oak door slammed shut with a thunderous BANG, the electronic deadbolt snapping into place with a sharp, mechanical click that reverberated through the hearing room.For several agonizing seconds, nobody breathed. The air grew thick, suffocating, and heavy with dread.Amelia stood frozen, her eyes glued to the faded photograph resting in Coach Reed’s hand. The glossy paper seemed to burn under the harsh fluorescent lights. Her mother looked young and terrified. Beside her stood Michael Carter. And right next to them stood the unknown man—a figure whose presence seemed to command the very air around him.The six words written in dark, permanent ink on the back of the photograph echoed in her mind like a relentless drumbeat: He is not Michael. He is your father.Her fingers tightened around the edge of the gloss paper until her knuckles turned white."That's... that's impossible," she whispered. Her voice sounded thin, frail, almost entirely stripped of life.Coach Reed didn't