Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Debt I Owed My Husband : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

Mia didn’t sleep that night.She sat at the kitchen table with the contract spread out in front of her, reading it by the light of a single lamp while her father snored fitfully on the couch — exhausted from relief, she guessed, or from the particular kind of relief that came with someone else paying for your mistakes.The document was thirty-two pages long. She read every line twice.Term: 24 months from date of marriage.Public appearances: required, frequency at Mr. Cross’s discretion.Living arrangements: shared residence, separate quarters.Settlement upon completion: $2,000,000, contingent on fulfillment of all terms.Early termination by Ms. Bennett: forfeiture of settlement, reinstatement of original debt.Early termination by Mr. Cross: settlement paid in full regardless of term completion.That last clause made her stop.Why would he protect her financially even if he was the one who ended things early? Rich men didn’t write contracts that gave away leverage for nothing. Eve

Mia barely slept, and when she finally gave up trying, it was still dark outside, the city lights blinking against a sky that hadn’t decided on morning yet.She found her way to the penthouse’s private gym instead of the kitchen — not because she wanted to work out, but because she needed somewhere to put the restless energy crawling under her skin. She hadn’t expected anyone else to be awake. She definitely hadn’t expected to find Damian there, already mid-run on the treadmill, shirt clinging to him, expression somewhere between focus and exhaustion.He glanced at her in the mirror but didn’t stop. “Couldn’t sleep either.”It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t treat it like one. She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler by the door and sat on the bench, watching him for a moment before she spoke.“Tell me what Serena meant.”His pace didn’t change, but something in his shoulders tensed. “Serena likes chaos. She’ll say things designed to unsettle you regardless of whether they’re tr

The drive to the hospital took eleven minutes. It felt like eleven hours.Mia sat rigid in the back of Damian’s car, still in the green gown, her mind cycling through every version of deliberate that could apply to her father. An attack. A threat carried out. Something tied to the debt Damian had cleared — had he cleared all of it, or had someone been left unpaid, someone with less patience than Cross Enterprises’ legal department?“Breathe,” Damian said quietly beside her. It was the first thing either of them had said since leaving the gala.Don’t tell me to breathe. You don’t know what this could be.”“You’re right. I don’t.” His voice was steady, but his hand found hers on the seat between them — not soft, exactly, but solid, like an anchor she hadn’t asked for and couldn’t afford to refuse. “But panicking before we have information won’t help him.”She didn’t pull her hand away. She told herself it didn’t mean anything.The hospital lobby smelled like antiseptic and fear. A nurse

He’d added something new. A printed still from the security footage — Victor Reyes’s face, pinned dead center, a red line connecting him to at least four other photographs she didn’t recognize.“You should be resting,” Damian said without turning around.“So should you.”“I don’t rest well when a ghost from ten years ago just resurfaced and put your father in a hospital bed.” He tapped the photograph. “Victor Reyes disappeared the week after my father died. No forwarding address, no paper trail, nothing. I spent two years trying to find him and gave up when every lead ran cold. And now he shows up assaulting Richard Bennett in a parking garage like no time passed at all.”“Which means someone’s been protecting him. Hiding him. All this time.”“Which means someone’s still afraid of what he knows.” Damian finally turned to face her, and the exhaustion on his face made him look younger, less like the untouchable CEO from the magazine covers and more like a man who’d been carrying somethi

They found Richard Bennett’s phone before they found Richard Bennett — discarded in a trash can two blocks from the hospital, screen cracked, battery dead. Damian’s security team traced his last known movements to a bus station on the edge of the city, then lost him entirely.“He’s hiding,” Mia said, sitting in the back of Damian’s car as they drove through streets she didn’t recognize, following a lead that was growing colder by the hour. “He’s not running from Marcus. He’s running from us. From having to explain the rest of it.”“You think he knows more than he told you at the hospital.”“I think my father has spent ten years protecting a secret he was too ashamed to say out loud, and now that it’s finally catching up to him, his first instinct isn’t to fight. It’s to disappear.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she hated how much that admission cost her. “That’s who he’s always been. Not a bad man. Just a man who runs from things instead of facing them.”“Is that why you nev