All Chapters of The 100-Day Wife: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The car was warm and smelled like leather that cost more than her car. Imogen sat as far from the man in the coat as physics allowed and watched the city smear past the window, and did not let herself wonder why she had gotten in.They went up forty floors of a building with CROWTHER in brushed steel over the doors. The elevator opened into an office the size of her house. Behind a black desk, in front of a wall of rain-streaked glass, stood a man who looked like grief had hired a tailor.Sebastian Crowther. She knew the face. Everyone knew the face. It had been on magazine covers next to words like "ruthless" and "most eligible", and once, two months ago, next to a society headline about a wedding that had not happened."Miss Hartley." He did not offer his hand. "Sit.""I'll stand."Something crossed his face. Not annoyance. Inventory. "My grandfather spoke about you for three weeks. The nurse who wouldn't let him cheat at chess." He said it flatly, like reading a report. "He died ow

They married on a Thursday at 9:15 in the morning, between a couple fighting over a vending machine and a man marrying his parole officer's niece. The officiant had done eleven thousand ceremonies and read their names off a card. Sebastian said "I do" like a man initialing a memo. Imogen said it like a nurse confirming a dosage.Marta cried anyway, exactly on cue, and hugged Imogen hard enough to crack a rib, and whispered, "If he hurts you I'll kill him with an IV line," loud enough for him to hear."I like her," Sebastian said, in the tone of a man reviewing security footage.The ring was not the coat-button diamond. It was a plain band, his grandmother's, produced at the last second from his vest pocket. It was still too big. Imogen wound a twist of thread around the inside, the nurse's fix, and he watched her hands do it and said nothing at all.The penthouse took up the forty-first floor and had the personality of a very expensive hotel, which she supposed was the point. Mrs. Pet

Mr. Okafor arrived on a Sunday with a briefcase and the air of a man carrying live explosives. Sebastian was in Singapore, or Singapore-adjacent; with him you could never tell, and asking felt like weakness."Per the terms of the will," Okafor said, "certain personal effects pass to you, Mrs. Crowther. Mr. Crowther senior was specific." He produced a flat box, old leather, the corners worn soft. "And this was to be given to you after the wedding. Not before. His instructions were unusually detailed."You've read it," she said."I read everything. Occupational hazard." Okafor adjusted his glasses. "Off the record, Mrs. Crowther: in thirty-one years of estate work, Walter Crowther is the only client who ever made me promise a letter would be delivered by hand, in person, after the wedding, and not before. He was very clear. He was also, forgive me, very amused.""Amused.""He said, and I quote: this one starts a fight worth having.""Inside the box, on a bed of tissue, was a letter. The

He didn't come home the next night. Or the one after.Mrs. Petrakis communicated this through soup, leaving pots of it on the stove with the devotion of a woman laying flowers. Moss communicated it through nothing at all, which from Moss was a press release. Imogen worked her two shifts, took a third when Marta asked, and learned from the financial press that Crowther Hotels had called an emergency board session for Friday.The investigation's findings arrived Thursday, by courier, in a folder like a court summons. No note. The cash deposit was real. Untraceable bills, paid at a branch two hundred miles from anywhere she'd ever been. Her application to St. Augustine's, her ward request, three years of her phone records, printed and tabbed. She had been verified, all right. Verified into a shape she didn't recognize.Danny came by on Wednesday with his lip healed and his eyes older than last week. He stood in the marble foyer like it might bill him."They knew, Immy." He turned a chess

The press conference was set for noon in the Crowther ballroom, the same room where, twenty days earlier, he had danced with his wife like the contract had a heartbeat.Vivienne stood at the edge of the stage in victorious navy. Bianca sat in the front row in white, dressed for a reconciliation the press had already been briefed to expect. The board filled the wings. Two hundred reporters filled the chairs, and every one of them knew the script: the heir announces the marriage was a mistake, the lawyers annul it, the shares pass to the trust, and order is restored. One way or another, the will's clock runs out on a divorced man.Sebastian took the podium alone."Twenty-three days ago I married a nurse named Imogen Hartley." No notes. His voice went out over the silence like a stone over ice. "You've been told she targeted my family for money. Here is what you weren't told: the debt payment that supposedly proves it was made by my grandfather, repaying her mother, who held my grandmoth