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CHAPTER FORTY FOUR: THE FIGURE IN THE GLASS

Author: Ruby Andrews
last update publish date: 2026-07-17 15:45:06

I didn't turn around.

Every instinct told me to, every nerve in my body fired at once, but I sat completely still and kept my eyes on the phone screen and the reflection caught in the east facing window, studying the figure standing in the doorway without letting them know I had seen them.

Tall, still, watching me.

Not moving, not speaking, just present in the way people were present when they had been waiting long enough that patience had become something physical.

I set the phone face down on
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  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FIFTY THREE: THE DEADLINE

    “Your choice has a deadline.”I set the phone face down on the table.Adrian's hand was still in mine, warm and steady, and I left it there because pulling away right now would have felt like a decision I wasn't ready to make, would have felt like choosing the fear over the person sitting beside me, and I had spent three years choosing fear without knowing that was what I was doing."He's still outside."Adrian's voice was quiet."I know.""We should move.""To where, he knew we were here before we did, he'll know wherever we go next before we arrive, moving isn't the answer."Marcus turned from the window."Then what is."I looked at the phone, at the five words still burning somewhere behind the screen, at the deadline that had no number attached to it, no time, no date, just the particular pressure of a man who understood that uncertainty was more effective than any specific threat."He wants me to expose everything.""You said that already.""I know, but I've been thinking about w

  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FIFTY TWO: THE KING IS DEAD

    Richard's footsteps had been gone for less than three minutes when Adrian's phone rang.He looked at the screen and something changed in his face, not the dramatic draining of color I had seen all night, something quieter and more final, the particular expression of a person receiving news they had been half expecting and hadn't known they were half expecting until it arrived.He answered without moving away from me."Yes."Silence on his end, the voice on the other side too low to hear, I watched Adrian's face and read everything the voice was saying in the small movements he couldn't control, the slight tightening around his eyes, the way his jaw set, the almost imperceptible exhale that meant something enormous had just landed and he was deciding in real time how to carry it."When."Another pause."Where is he now."He listened for another moment then ended the call and stood with the phone at his side and said nothing for long enough that the silence became its own kind of statem

  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FIFTY ONE: THE MAN WHO WAITED 

    He was already inside.That was the first thing I understood, not that he had entered, not that he had moved through a door we forgot to watch, but that he had been inside long before any of us realized it, that the waiting outside in the car had been performance, something to occupy our attention while the real arrival happened somewhere we weren't looking.Richard Ashford stood at the far end of the room with his hands at his sides and his eyes on me, and the most frightening thing about him wasn't his presence or his timing, it was his stillness, complete and unhurried, the stillness of a man who had never needed to rush because everything had always arrived exactly when he arranged it to.He was older than I expected, late sixties, silver haired, the kind of face that had been handsome once and aged into something more authoritative than handsome, something that carried the particular weight of a person who had spent decades being the most intelligent presence in every room and ha

  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FIFTY: THE CAR OUTSIDE 

    Nobody moved.The five of us stood inside a private hospital room at dawn with a car parked outside that had been there before we arrived, and the particular silence of people who had just understood that the conversation they were having had already been heard by someone they couldn't see.Marcus stepped back from the window carefully, not fast, not sudden, the particular movement of someone trained to withdraw from a sightline without announcing the withdrawal."One car, two people inside, engine off, they're not moving.""Waiting."Adrian's voice, flat and certain."For what.""For us to come out."I looked at the door, then the window, then back at the five people in this room, Daniel still at the table, Sophia standing with her arms folded tight across her chest, Marcus by the wall, Adrian between me and everything else the way he had been positioning himself all night, and I understood that Richard Ashford had done this deliberately, had let us find the recording, had let the na

  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FORTY NINE: THE LAST RECORDING

    My father's voice filled the room.The same voice from upstairs, low and measured and carrying the particular weight of a man who understood he was running out of time, I stood in the doorway with Marcus beside me and Sophia and Daniel across the table and nobody moved, nobody spoke, we all just listened."If you're hearing this then everything I feared has already happened, which means Elena is close to the truth and the people who erased it are close to her, so I'll be brief because brevity is the only mercy I have left to offer."My throat tightened."The night Elena and Adrian met in the building was not accidental, I arranged it. I needed Adrian to know her before his father could use him against her. I believed that if he loved her first Victor Knight could never fully weaponize him, I was right about the love and wrong about everything else."I pressed my hand flat against the doorframe.My father had arranged it.The first meeting, the proposal, the connection that had been er

  • CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE    CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT: SHE ALREADY KNOWS

    She already knows everything.I read the words twice, standing in a sealed room with my brother beside me and a hospital photograph in my hand and the particular feeling of something enormous closing in from every direction at once, not panic, something colder and more focused, the feeling of a person who had been running toward a truth all night and had just realized the truth had been running toward them at the same time."We need to get to that hospital."Marcus took the phone and studied the photograph."That's the east wing, the private wing, the kind of access that requires specific clearance or a specific name.""Then we find out whose name she's using.""If Sophia already knows everything and she's at that hospital and she's frightened, she isn't there to hide something, she's there because something is already happening, something that started without either of us."I turned that over carefully, Sophia at the hospital, frightened, the missing piece of the recording in her han

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