All Chapters of Marry Mafia King or My Fifth Fiancés Dies: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

“The second was far more dangerous than the first ever was.”Maximilian slid the next set of documents across the desk, and my stomach dropped the moment I recognized the photograph clipped to the top page.Nathaniel Price, in the crisp gray suit he’d always favored, that easy, reassuring smile still frozen on his face exactly as I remembered it.“Nathaniel.” My voice caught on his name, memories surfacing before I could stop them. “He was a lawyer. Everyone loved him. My sister adored him. He used to sit with me for hours whenever I doubted myself, telling me I deserved better than the disasters that came before him.”“He was very good at his job,” Maximilian said quietly. “Both the one you knew about, and the one you didn’t.”“Don’t.” My voice sharpened despite the exhaustion pooling heavy behind my eyes. “Don’t start this the same way you started the last one. Nathaniel was kind. He defended me, Maximilian. When people whispered about my broken engagements, he was the one who told

“That is one of The Director’s men.”The words landed like ice water down my spine. I stared at the photograph, at the man’s face half-hidden behind the pillar, his eyes fixed unmistakably on me rather than on anything else happening at that gala.“He was watching me,” I whispered. “Even then. Even with Sebastian.”“The Director’s network extends further back than I initially realized,” Maximilian said, his voice grim. “If his men were already tracking you during your engagement to Sebastian, that means his interest in you predates even my own involvement.”“Why?” My voice cracked. “Why would a man like that care about a wedding planner from Queens years before any of this began?”“I don’t know yet,” Maximilian admitted. “But I intend to find out.”I pushed the photograph aside, my hands unsteady, the weight of everything he’d revealed tonight pressing down harder with every new discovery. “There’s one more. The fourth. Show me.”Maximilian hesitated, and something in his hesitation m

“Go see him yourself.”The words hung there, an offer and a challenge at once, but I didn’t move toward the door. Instead, I stood rooted where I was, my arms crossed tight over my chest, something stubborn refusing to let this end so easily.“Not yet,” I said.Maximilian’s brow furrowed slightly. “You just spent the last hour demanding I let you make your own choices. This is that choice.”“It is.” I held his gaze steadily. “But I’m not walking out that door to hear the truth from Owen while there’s still a single file left on this desk I haven’t seen. If there’s more, tell me now. I don’t want to sit across from him and discover you left something out because you decided, once again, that I couldn’t handle it.”Something shifted in his expression, a flicker of something almost like respect threading through the exhaustion. He glanced down at the desk—at the scattered folders, the photographs, the documents that had rearranged the entire architecture of my life over the past few hour

The velvet box held nothing but an old pocket watch, it’s face cracked, it’s hands frozen at some hour that no longer mattered—clearly a relic from Maximilian’s own past rather than anything connected to the secrets I’d been chasing all night.I set it back carefully, disappointment and relief tangling together, and my eyes drifted across the desk toward a manila folder I hadn’t noticed before, tucked half beneath the laptop, its edges slightly worn from handling.I shouldn’t have opened it. I knew that even as my fingers reached for it, some part of me already bracing for another devastating revelation. But curiosity had carried me too far tonight to stop now, and some reckless part of me needed to know whether the promise he’d made only an hour ago—no more secrets—already had an expiration date.Inside sat a photograph of me, recent, taken outside the mansion’s gates weeks ago, the kind of candid image that could only have come from someone watching closely enough to catch me mid-st

I crossed the distance between us myself, my heart hammering, and stopped only inches away, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from him, close enough that neither of us could pretend this was accidental.Maximilian didn’t move. His hands stayed at his sides, restrained, watchful, though I could see the effort it cost him plainly in the tension coiled through his shoulders.“Emery.” His voice came rough. “Tell me you’re certain. Not because you’re exhausted, not because tonight has been overwhelming enough to blur every line you’d normally hold. Tell me this is what you actually want.”“I’m certain.” My voice came steadier than I expected. “I’ve spent this entire night hating you and understanding you in the same breath, Maximilian. I can’t separate the two anymore, and I’m done trying to pretend I don’t want you simply because wanting you complicates everything else.”“That’s not the same as being ready.”“I don’t need you to protect me from my own decision,” I said, echoing th