Todos los capítulos de Signed the Devil’s contract: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 19

AMARA’S POVI didn't go back inside until well after dark.The garden had gone cold around me, but I hadn't noticed until my hands started shaking from more than just shock. By the time I made it back to my room, I was hollowed out in a way I didn't have words for; too much feeling and no feeling at all, both at once.I didn't expect him to be there.Adrien was sitting in the chair by the window, not on the bed, not close enough to crowd me, just present in a way that told me he'd been waiting a long time and had made his peace with waiting longer."You shouldn't be in here," I said, though there was no real heat behind it."I know." He didn't move. "I'll leave if you want me to."I didn't answer right away. I stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around myself, staring at this man who was somehow both a stranger and the father of the two children who'd already carved out a piece of my heart I hadn't meant to give them."Stay," I said finally, surprising myself.He rose slowly, like he d

ADRIEN’S POVScott was already seated when I walked into the conference room, feet up on the edge of the table like he owned the building instead of merely a stake in it."You look well-rested," he said, grinning. "Marriage suits you.""You said this was urgent.""It is." He dropped his feet to the floor and slid a folder across the table, a different folder than the one sitting in my desk drawer at home, though something in my stomach tightened at the sight of it regardless. "Investors are asking questions about the merger. Specifically, about how quickly it came together. People talk, Adrien. They're wondering why a man who's spent a decade avoiding marriage suddenly found a bride the same month his grandfather started threatening to change his will.""The merger is sound. The marriage is real.""Is it, though?" Scott leaned back, studying me with an expression I'd once mistaken for friendship and now recognized as something closer to hunger. "Because from where I'm sitting, it look

SCOTT’S POVAdrien's lawyer called me before the sun was even up, informing me in the flat, rehearsed tone of someone reading from a script that my shares were being frozen pending an internal investigation. Breach of partnership conduct, they called it. Careful, sanitized language for what we both knew was really happening.I sat in my kitchen with the phone still in my hand long after the call ended, staring at nothing, feeling the walls of my own life closing in with a speed I hadn't prepared for. Outside my window, the city was just beginning to wake up, delivery trucks rattling past, someone's dog barking three floors down, the ordinary noise of a world that had no idea mine had just started collapsing.Fifteen years. Fifteen years of building that company at his side, and it took him one conversation to start dismantling my place in it entirely.I should have expected this. I'd known, the moment I said the words out loud in that conference room, that there was no walking them ba

AMARA’S POVZuri was midway through building a paper crown for one of her stuffed animals when we walked in, and Kian sat beside her sorting crayons by color with the same quiet focus he gave everything."Mommy! Daddy!" Zuri abandoned her crown immediately, scrambling up to hug both our legs at once, delighted to see us together. "Are we going somewhere fun?""Not today, sweetheart." Adrien knelt down to her level, and I did the same, settling onto the rug the way I had that very first afternoon. "We need to talk to you both about something important."Kian looked up from his crayons, already alert in that quiet, watchful way he had. He set down the crayon in his hand and gave us his full attention without being asked, the way he did whenever something in the room shifted."Are you getting a divorce?" he asked, blunt as ever."No," I said quickly. "Nothing like that.""Then what?" Zuri asked, settling into my lap without hesitation, her small hands playing with the hem of my sleeve.A