The Bride They Tried to Erase のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

Ethan's POVThe eastern port contract had our father's handwriting on the margins. Actual handwriting—he still made his lawyers print things out so he could scrawl notes in the white space, a habit from an era before anyone trusted a screen. I found the old copy of it in an archived folder my assistant hadn't thought to hide from me; twenty years of ink faded to brown, and one line circled twice near the bottom: “Adrian should learn to sign his own name eventually.”He'd have been nine when our father wrote that. Maybe ten.I didn't feel sorry for him. If anything, I finally got him. There was one door he would never walk through. I had no problem walking through it myself, especially for triple the going rate.”The regional director still tested me. He'd spent years dealing with Adrian, and he clearly wasn't sure what to expect from me."Your brother's the one with the name," he said, sliding the contract an inch back across the table."My brother thinks a name is worth more than a s

Diana's POVI followed him down the hallway the moment the car doors shut behind us, my heels sharp against the marble, anger finally catching up to the shock that had carried me through the rest of the party. Behind us, the faint echo of the ballroom's music was already fading.“Are you okay?” I asked, staring at him. “Because you clearly weren't when you decided to announce that in front of everyone.”He didn't turn around right away. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, like my anger was a scheduling conflict he'd get to once he'd finished with something more pressing."Do what?""Announce that. In front of a room full of people who'll repeat it to everyone they know by morning. Without asking me first."He turned then, and there was nothing apologetic in his face, only that maddening stillness I'd learned wasn't calm at all—just control, worn like a second jacket. "It solved a problem. People were already speculating. Now they have an answer they c

Diana's POVI found him in his study later that day, the frame still sitting exactly where I'd first noticed it, facedown among his books like it had never moved at all. Rain tapped lightly against the windows, the only sound in the room besides the soft scratch of his pen.He didn't look up when I stepped inside. "Do you need something?" He asked "I need you to answer a question," I said. "Honestly, this time."That got his attention. He set the pen down slowly, watching me the way he did when he was deciding how much of himself to let show."The frame." I nodded toward it. "You don't have to tell me everything. But I'd like to know why it's the only thing in this house you keep and the only thing you refuse to look at."He was quiet long enough that I thought he'd simply wait me out, the way he usually did with anything he didn't want to discuss. Instead, he reached over and picked it up, turning it slowly in his hands without actually looking at whatever image was inside."It's my

Diana's POVAdrian didn't sleep that night. I heard him moving through the house past midnight, low voices in the hallway, a door closing somewhere near the security office that I'd never once heard used before. By morning there were two more men stationed near the gates who hadn't been there the day before, and a third posted at the end of the garden path, pretending to trim a hedge that didn't need trimming.He said almost nothing about the message itself — only that he was having it traced, that it would take time, and that the extra security wasn't optional until he knew who'd sent it. I opened my mouth twice to ask more. Both times, his jaw stayed locked tight enough that I closed it again without asking anything at all.Two mornings later he left for the city — the same trace, he said, a lead worth following in person rather than over the phone. He told me he'd be gone until evening. He told the men at the gate, loud enough for me to hear, that no one came onto the property who

Diana's POVThe gap in the door was barely wide enough to see through, but it was enough.Inside, a man knelt on the floor, hands bound behind him, blood already dried along one side of his face. Two of Adrian's men stood near the wall, silent, arms crossed, watching without expression. Neither of them so much as shifted their weight. Adrian himself sat behind his desk, his tie still perfectly straight, not a single hair out of place."You had one job," Adrian said, his voice quiet in a way that somehow felt louder than shouting would have. "Move the shipment through the east corridor without drawing attention. Instead, half of it is sitting in an evidence locker, and three of my men are being questioned by people I now have to pay to forget they ever saw anything.""I didn't know," the man said, his voice cracking. "I swear, I didn't know they'd be watching that route.""That's the problem," Adrian said. "You didn't know. I don't employ men who don't know things, because not knowing