Todos los capítulos de Married to my Fiancé Uncle: Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

ELENA POVI hadn't planned on visiting my father's office. I told myself, driving downtown with the fabric samples for my next project still sitting untouched on the passenger seat, that I only wanted to see the building where I'd spent so many childhood afternoons doing homework in the back conference room while he worked. That wasn't entirely true, and I knew it even as I gave the address to Damien's driver instead of the fabric shop I was supposed to be heading toward.The lobby looked smaller than I remembered, the receptionist an unfamiliar face who didn't recognize me until I gave my name, and even then her expression flickered with something uncertain, like she wasn't sure whether I still counted as family or simply as the woman married into a more dangerous one now.My father's office door was cracked open when I reached it, and I heard voices before I saw anyone, his and my stepmother's, tight and clipped in a way that told me I'd walked into the middle of something."The H

ELENA POVI woke to raised voices somewhere downstairs, low and urgent in a way that pulled me out of sleep faster than any alarm could have. It was barely past three in the morning, the house still dark except for a strip of light spilling from underneath Damien's study door at the end of the hall.I found him standing over his desk, still in the shirt he'd worn to bed, phone pressed to his ear while two of his men stood near the window with expressions I hadn't seen on either of them before, something close to controlled panic."How many?" Damien said into the phone, his voice flat in a way that scared me more than shouting would have. "And the driver?"A pause. Whatever answer came through the line made his jaw tighten visibly, even from across the room."Get him to a hospital. Not ours. Somewhere they won't think to look tonight." He ended the call and set the phone down carefully, like he needed the small, deliberate motion to keep from doing something else with his hands entire

ELENA POVVittorio disappeared from the family's operations without any public explanation, and I understood well enough not to ask. Damien came home the night it happened later than usual, his shirt collar slightly askew, his expression carrying a weight I hadn't seen on him before, not fear exactly, but something adjacent to it, the particular exhaustion of a man who had just done something necessary and hated every second of it.I didn't ask him what happened. He didn't offer, and I found I respected the silence more than I would have respected an explanation neither of us actually wanted spoken out loud in that house."It's done," was all he said, sitting heavily in the chair across from me in the library, the fire burned down low. "Carlo will know by morning, if he doesn't already.""What does that mean for us?""It means he's lost his eyes inside my house. It means whatever he plans next, he'll have to do it blind, which should slow him down." He rubbed both hands over his face

ELENA POVTwo weeks passed with nothing more dangerous than tension, long enough that the guards at the gate started to feel less like a warning and more like furniture, and long enough that I let myself believe, foolishly, that Carlo's plan might have stalled entirely. Damien never let his guard down the same way. I noticed it in small things, the way he checked his phone more often than usual, the way he stopped reading aloud some evenings, simply sitting with a book open and unread in his lap while his mind clearly worked through something he wasn't ready to share yet.The fashion program hosted its final showcase of the semester on a Thursday evening, a bigger event than the last one, buyers and press from outside the city this time, and I'd insisted on attending despite Damien's obvious reluctance. Two of his men came with us, positioned near the entrance and the back exit, close enough to reach me quickly, far enough to let me move through the room without feeling like I was o

ELENA POVThey found the ring three hours later, once the fire had burned itself down to something the investigators could finally approach without risking their own safety. One of Damien's men brought it to me still warm, wrapped in a handkerchief as if it might still hold heat from the flames, and the moment I saw it, the careful performance I'd been holding together since the dock finally cracked wide open.I didn't have to force the tears after that. They came on their own, ugly and uncontrollable, and somewhere in the middle of that grief, real in every way that mattered even though I knew the truth, I understood that Damien had asked me to do something far crueler than simply lie to the people around me. He'd asked me to grieve a man who wasn't actually gone, and there was no version of that request that didn't cost something real.The funeral happened four days later, a somber affair held at the estate itself, the same rooms that had hosted our wedding now dressed in black ins