My Three Fiances Betrayed Me, So I Married the Heir의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

Beautiful wedding vows don't guarantee an easy marriage.In my first week at the Black Harbor estate, I tested Roman almost deliberately. He had a separate bedroom ready for me and programmed the door to recognize my fingerprint. The closet wasn't stocked with clothes chosen to fit some idea of how his wife should dress; the racks were empty. My personal account, car keys, and studio keys were laid out together on the desk."You don't have to behave well enough to earn any of this," he told me. "Even if we have a serious fight, nobody is going to change your access."I didn't fully believe him then.At our first dinner, the braised fish tasted fishy and bitter, and I put my fork down after one bite. "This is terrible."The butler and the cook both went quiet at the table. At home, my mother would either order the kitchen to start over immediately or, later on, accuse me of being fussy when I had never wanted for anything. Both responses treated me like a child who bore no responsibilit

Two weeks after the wedding, the Ashford cars stopped outside the gates of the Black Harbor estate.On the table in the reception room my mother laid out everything she had brought, one piece at a time. The moonstone crown, the unlimited black card, the red emergency button, the nameplate from the fourth chair, and the key to the primary bedroom."It's all back the way it was," she said. "Vivian is willing to move to a guest room, and the closet and the driver are yours again. Evelyn, come home with me."Vivian nodded at once. "I'll move today. I don't need any of it."But I saw her grip the coat in her hands, her knuckles white. "Do you actually want to move out?" I asked.She looked at my mother, then at the other three, her lips trembling slightly. "As long as you come home, I don't care where I live.""Then don't move," I said. "I didn't leave so that you would give me my bedroom back."It was as if a weight came off her, and then she felt guilty about the relief.Alexander pushed

Sophie Grant's wedding was at a hotel on Boston Harbor. I entered the ballroom on Roman's arm, and the conversation died in waves. For ten solid years, all of Boston society had been waiting for me to choose a husband from Alexander, Nathan, and Julian. Nobody had expected the man beside me to be Roman, the heir to Black Harbor, a man everyone feared and few respected.Plenty of people muttered that I had married into Black Harbor out of spite, and some guessed privately that Roman would soon tire of a wife who had been spoiled since birth. I paid no attention to any of it.At the family table the fourth chair was still in its place, the silver plate restored, and the person sitting in it was Vivian. The moment my mother saw me she signaled Vivian to stand. "That's Evelyn's seat."The color went out of Vivian's face. She braced a hand on the table edge and got up, her voice faint. "I didn't know you were coming back. I'll move right now."Every guest in the room was looking at her.I d

Whenever I was in trouble before, Alexander was always the first to take charge. He was used to giving orders and certain he always knew best. But on the night of the blizzard, he stood at the cold doors of the hotel, stripped of all his pride, and asked me for help.Alexander, Nathan, and Julian had already searched every place in Boston my mother regularly went. Julian accessed the vehicle-tracking system and traced the car onto the coastal highway heading north, where the storm had swallowed the signal whole."The last location is around Blue Bay." Julian's finger stopped on the screen, his voice tightly controlled. "I can keep reading the in-car records, but that's Eleanor's and Vivian's private data, and I don't want to make decisions for anyone on my own anymore."Nathan played a fragment of audio saved on his phone. Howling wind filled the earpiece, most of the words torn to pieces, only a few of them coming through. "Blue Door... Vivian, don't run... wait for me...""She said B

Once my mother was out of danger, I scrolled through the whole chat from beginning to end.Giving Vivian the moonstone crown wasn't a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Giving her my chair at the club wasn't an attendant's mistake. Freezing the black card, reassigning the driver, taking over my bedroom, and changing the priority on the emergency system were not careless oversights made in the middle of chaos.Every one of those decisions was worked out among the three of them.The day after the Black Harbor engagement was confirmed, Alexander was the first to argue that Vivian had only just come home and was already being married off, so for this last month she ought to have everything I had always had. Nathan believed I had lived my whole life inside a protective shell and that giving way briefly would do me no real harm. Julian decided that although I was stubborn, I was soft underneath, and that as long as the three men presented a united front, I would soon learn to share.Then they divid