All Chapters of The 100-Day Wife: Chapter 21 - Chapter 23

They didn't speak on the drive down from the tower.Sebastian drove himself, which surprised her. She had assumed men like Sebastian Hale outsourced everything, even silence. But he took the coast road with both hands on the wheel and the window cracked open two inches, and the night smelled of salt, and neither of them reached for the radio.The vote sat between them like a third passenger.Five for. Five against. Helen Aris's abstention. And Vivienne's face as the count landed. Imogen would carry that face with her for a long time, the way you carry a storm you have driven out of. Not triumph, exactly. The memory of pressure."You said something to her," Sebastian said at last. "Before the meeting. Helen Aris.""A nurse's true thing.""Which was?""That a secret devalues the moment you say it out loud. That it only has power while you keep paying for it."He considered that, eyes on the road. "That's not nursing.""No," she said. "That's debt."---The penthouse at eleven at night r

Dana's story went live at five o'clock exactly, and for eleven minutes it was the only version of Imogen Hartley in the world.She read it on Sebastian's laptop, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room where she had written it. Dana had kept her word. Not one comma moved. The debt, the envelopes, the house on Comfrey Lane, Walter's chess board, the offer, the money, the days. Sebastian's line, untouched: I bought a wife. Her line under it, untouched: He also stayed up all night to read mine.The headline was Dana's, and it was kinder than either of them deserved: THE NURSE AND THE CONTRACT - IMOGEN CROWTHER, IN HER OWN WORDS."Eleven minutes," Sebastian said, watching his phone. "That's how long we had the field."Then the Ledger loaded, and the room went cold.They had done their work. She had to give them that, the way you give a fire credit for thoroughness. Page one was the wedding photograph, blown up past decency, her face a full column wide. RENTED. And underneath, the se