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Chapter 17: The Second Source
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2026-07-21 16:23:42
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His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 17: The Second Source
I stared at the text message until the words blurred, my thumb hovering over the screen like touching it again might make the sender materialize in front of me.*Ask your husband what really happened to Marianne Cole’s mother. He’s not the only Blackwood keeping secrets, Evelyn. Some of us just aren’t as good at hiding them as he is.*I read it four times before I moved, before some numb, mechanical part of my brain finally pushed me out of the chair and down the hallway toward Damian’s study, the phone clutched so tight in my hand the edges bit into my palm.He looked up the moment I burst through the door, whatever exhaustion had settled into his face after our earlier conversation sharpening instantly into alertness.“What happened.”I held out the phone without a word, watching his eyes scan the message, watching the color drain slowly from his face as he read it a second time, then a third.“Where did this come from,” he said, his voice gone dangerously quiet.“I don’t know. Unkn
His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 16: Everything
Damian sat across from me in the studio, hands loosely clasped between his knees, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked genuinely uncertain about how to begin.“Marianne wasn’t just a girl I loved at nineteen,” he said finally. “She’s Richard’s daughter.”The words landed strange, disconnected from meaning for a full second before the weight of them crashed into me. “What?”“My father had an affair decades ago, with her mother, before I was born. Marianne is my half sister. I didn’t know that when we fell for each other. Neither did she.” His voice had gone flat, controlled in the particular way I now recognized as him holding something together by sheer force of will. “My father knew. He let it happen anyway. Let two teenagers fall in love without saying a word, and only intervened once it became a scandal he couldn’t quietly bury.”The room tilted slightly. “Damian.”“He separated us under the excuse of her family not being suitable. That was the lie he told me for yea
His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 15: The Cousin’s Warning
Ethan Blackwood arrived unannounced on a Tuesday, the way I was starting to understand most Blackwood men arrived at anything, like the world owed them the element of surprise.“There she is.” He strode into my studio without knocking, dropping into the chair across from my drafting table like he’d been invited, which he most certainly had not. “The infamous wife nobody in this family can stop talking about.”“You must be Ethan.” I set down my pencil, amused despite the intrusion, something easy and familiar already threading through his voice that reminded me faintly of Lucas. “Damian didn’t mention you were visiting.”“Damian doesn’t know I’m visiting.” Ethan grinned, unbothered, glancing around the studio with open curiosity. “I prefer to surprise people. Keeps everyone honest.”“Or keeps everyone locking their doors.”“That too.” He laughed, easy and warm, and something in me relaxed slightly at the lack of pretense in him, a welcome change from the careful calculation that seemed
His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 14: Samuel’s Shadow
Samuel Reed didn’t talk much, which I’d learned in the two weeks since Damian assigned him to me, but the silence never felt empty. It felt watchful, the kind of quiet that came from a man who noticed everything and wasted nothing on commentary.“You don’t have to walk three steps behind me everywhere,” I said, glancing back at him as we crossed the lobby of Grace’s building. “I promise I won’t get kidnapped between the elevator and the front desk.”“Wouldn’t take my chances on that,” Samuel said, his voice low and even, eyes still scanning the street through the glass doors even as he answered me. “People get careless in familiar places. That’s usually when something happens.”“That’s a cheerful outlook.”“Keeps you alive.” The corner of his mouth twitched, the closest thing to humor I’d seen from him yet. “Mr. Blackwood asked me to keep you breathing. I take my job seriously.”I smiled despite myself, some of the tension in my shoulders easing at his dry, unbothered protection. In t
His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 13: Charlotte’s Truth
Charlotte Reeves looked like she hadn’t slept in days when Damian called her into his office the next morning, and something about that exhaustion made my stomach twist with a guilt I hadn’t earned yet.I sat in the corner chair, close enough to watch but far enough to feel like an observer, while Damian stood behind his desk with Noah beside him, a manila folder squared neatly in front of them like evidence in a trial. Charlotte’s eyes flicked toward the folder the moment she walked in, and whatever color remained in her face drained out entirely.“Sit down, Charlotte,” Damian said, quiet, controlled, the voice of a man holding his temper on a very short leash.She sat. Her hands folded in her lap, knuckles white, and I watched her throat move as she swallowed whatever she’d planned to say first.“We know about the leak,” Damian said. “Noah’s traced the login timestamps to your account. We know about the university connection to Vanessa Sterling. What we don’t know yet is why.”Charl
His Substitute Bride Became His Obsession Chapter 12: What Noah Knew
The car ride home was silent in a way that pressed against my ribs like a held breath.Damian sat across from me in the back of the town car, jaw tight, staring out the window at the city sliding past in streaks of gold and red. I watched his reflection in the glass, watched the careful mask settle back over whatever I’d glimpsed in the library two nights before, and something in my chest ached at the loss of it.“You still haven’t answered me,” I said finally.“I know.”“Damian.”He turned from the window, and in the dim light of the car his eyes looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour. “I had someone looking into Adrian Collins the week we signed the marriage contract. Standard due diligence, or that’s what I told myself at the time. What I found didn’t sit right with me, so I kept digging.”“Digging into my ex-husband’s business dealings, or digging into me?”“Both,” he admitted, no hesitation, and something about the honesty of it disarmed me more than a denial
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