All Chapters of I Married My Mother's Secret Lover : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

I kept staring at Adrian, waiting for him to deny it, because there were still moments when some stubborn part of me wanted to believe that the man I had married would eventually stop surprising me with another buried piece of my life, another truth he had known long before I did and somehow decided I was not ready to hear. He didn't deny anything. He simply stood in front of me with his shoulders tense and his eyes fixed on mine, and somehow that silence told me more than any explanation could have.“You knew.”Adrian exhaled slowly. “Yes.”The answer made something inside me snap.“You knew my father gave my mother his ring three days before he died, and you never thought that was worth mentioning?”“It wasn't that simple.”“It never is with you.”My voice rose, and by then I didn't care who heard me. Reed was still near the security monitors, Gabriel and Daniel were standing several feet away, and none of them looked particularly comfortable watching a husband and wife tear into ea

I kept looking at Adrian because I honestly didn't know what to do with the answer he had just given me. The problem wasn't simply that he had my father's ring or that Victoria had somehow given him the key sixteen years ago. By now, I had learned enough about Adrian to understand that every object he kept seemed to have a history attached to it, and every history seemed to lead back to something he had deliberately chosen not to tell me. What bothered me most was the expression on his face. He wasn't surprised by the message on my phone. He wasn't even confused by the key. He looked like a man who had just realized that a door he had spent sixteen years keeping closed had finally been pushed open by someone who no longer cared whether he was ready to face what was behind it."Adrian, what does this key open?"He didn't answer immediately.I held up my phone so he could see the message again, although there was no reason to do that because I knew he had already read every word. "It sa

I kept looking at Adrian, waiting for him to tell me that I had misunderstood what we had just heard, that Victoria was manipulating us again, or that there was some explanation for why my father had supposedly feared his own daughter's blood. I would even have accepted another carefully worded half truth if it meant he would finally stop looking at me as though I were standing on the edge of something he had spent sixteen years trying to keep me away from. Instead, he remained beside the monitor, his fingers curled around the silver key, and the silence between us grew so uncomfortable that I began to wonder whether I had ever really known the man I had married."Adrian, look at me."He did, but the expression in his eyes made my stomach tighten."What did my mother mean?""I don't know exactly what she was referring to.""Don't do that. Don't stand there pretending you have no idea what she's talking about when you look as though someone has just announced your execution."His jaw t

“Let me go, Victoria.”My mother’s voice carried through the darkness with the same cool authority I remembered from childhood, the tone she used when she expected everyone in the room to obey before she had to repeat herself. There was no panic in it, no uncertainty, not even the slightest hesitation over the fact that she had just threatened the lives of everyone standing between her and me. I had spent years convincing myself that Victoria Hart was a difficult woman who cared more about appearances than affection, a mother who could be cruel without understanding the damage she caused, but the woman outside that door sounded like someone who had already decided what she was willing to sacrifice to get what she wanted.Adrian’s arm tightened around my waist. “Stay behind me.”I could barely see his face, but I felt him turn his head towards the entrance, listening for the next movement. The darkness had transformed the medical room into a maze of unfamiliar shapes, and the only ligh

“Evelyn Hart, I believe you have something that belongs to me.”The man's voice came from the other side of the boathouse door, calm and measured, as though he had arrived for an ordinary appointment rather than tracked a group of frightened people through a hidden medical chamber beneath a lake house. I clutched my father's letter inside my coat and stared at the door, trying to understand how a stranger could speak with such confidence about something that had supposedly belonged to him for years. Beside me, Adrian's entire expression changed, and the hand he placed against my back was no longer merely protective. He was preparing for a fight.“Dr. Victor Ashford,” Adrian called. “You've been difficult to find.”A quiet chuckle came from outside. “And yet you managed to bring me exactly where I needed you to be.”Adrian's fingers pressed against my back, warning me not to move closer to the entrance. I ignored the warning long enough to step beside him, because I had spent too much