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Chapter 38: The Search That Almost Worked
publish date:
2026-06-10 10:11:44
Latest chapter
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 58: Sweet Poison
(Keyla POV) The smile was already there before she spoke. Vivienne smiled at me like the wedding night had never happened, either she'd forgotten, or she expected me to. I heard her heels before I saw her. She'd found me in the garden corridor during the half hour between meetings — the passage that ran along the back of the house, open to the garden on one side, with windows onto the frost-killed hedgerows and a runner that had been there long enough to show paths in it. More to avoid thinking than because I expected an immediate reply. I'd been checking my phone, waiting for a response from Priscilla about the afternoon's legal schedule. Vivienne appeared from the far end with the unhurried pace of someone who'd timed the encounter. She didn't call my name right away. "Keyla." Warm. Genuinely warm-sounding, which was the thing about Vivienne — She'd always known exactly how much warmth to put into her voice with enough technical accuracy to delay the moment of recognition. Her e
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 57: Ask the Mother
(Keyla POV) I looked up when the shadow stopped outside the door. He found me in the small sitting room off the east corridor, which I'd been using as a base between meetings because it had a door that closed properly and a window that faced the garden rather than the driveway. It was the only room that didn't make me feel like someone was about to walk in. Leo was in the hallway with Nora — Leo's voice drifted in from the hallway before I saw either of them. I could hear him through the wall, asking her something about whether the carpet pattern meant anything. It almost made me smile. The way he asked about most patterns. I'd left the door ajar specifically so I could hear him. As long as I could hear his voice, I could breathe. The door opened before I could call out. Draxler came in without knocking, which told me he'd been waiting for a moment when I was alone. He'd chosen this moment carefully. The paper slid across the table without a sound. He set Augustus's note on the tab
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 56: The File for Draxler
(Draxler POV) The study Holt led us to wasn't Augustus's — I'd only ever been brought here when something was about to change, it was one of the smaller working rooms on the east side of the house, a room that had always felt like a holding space between decisions rather than a place where decisions were made. Two chairs. A writing desk. Outside, the kitchen garden had already begun turning brown along the edges Marcus came in behind me. Holt placed the folder carefully on the desk, "I'll give you some privacy." He excused himself. I couldn't tell whether he was being polite or making sure whatever came next happened without witnesses. Then I opened the folder. The first document was a search report. It was a search report — the one Marcus had commissioned eighteen months ago through the private investigative network we used for sensitive matters. I recognized the layout immediately, the specific layout of the header, the reference numbers in the upper right corner. It had been m
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 55: Named by the Dead
(Keyla POV) I felt the change in the room before I saw where everyone was looking. Not dramatically. It happened quietly enough that someone outside the room might have missed it. But the attention moved, all of it, like water finding the lowest point, and somehow Leo noticed it before I did. He looked up from where he'd been examining the stitching on the arm of his chair and found four adults looking at him, and he did what he always did under unexpected scrutiny: he went very still and looked back. His fingers stopped playing with the stitching. By the time I realized what I was doing, my arm was already around him.. My arm went around him and he came without resistance as if he'd been waiting for permission. I kept my hand on his shoulder while Holt quietly rearranged the documents and the silence settled into something heavier. Holt adjusted the top page before speaking, "To clarify the language," Holt said, "and I should note that this is the limited language I'm authorize
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 54: The Sealed Room
(Keyla POV) Holt glanced once around the room before opening the folder in front of him "Before the will can be read," Holt said, "we must confirm all named parties are present." Nobody answered. A chair creaked somewhere to my left. The room he'd chosen for the preliminary meeting was the small sitting room off the library — which was probably deliberate. Nobody would mistake this room for somewhere people came to win arguments.. There were eight chairs arranged in a loose formation, a side table with water, and no flowers, which made it feel more like a boardroom than a house. The room had been stripped of anything that might soften what was about to happen. Eleanor had arrived first and taken the chair that communicated she'd arrived first. She sat with the quiet certainty of someone who expected everyone else to arrange themselves around her. Adrian was beside her, still performing grief in the slightly overworked way he'd been performing it all morning, the expression too cont
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 53: The Child Who Would Not Shake His Hand
(Keyla POV) Holt had asked for everyone in the outer sitting room before the formal reading — family and any guests named in the estate proceedings, which meant Keyla was required to be there, which meant Leo was with her, and which meant the first time Draxler approached Leo directly, it happened under fluorescent lighting with a solicitor's assistant hovering in the doorway. I saw him coming before he reached us.. I'll give him that. Not the way someone moves when they're entitled to a space, but the careful, deliberate approach of a person who was aware they could be asked to leave. He stopped a respectful distance away before lowering himself to Leo's level.. Leo had been standing slightly in front of me, partly because that was where he'd decided to stand and partly because Leo had strong opinions about geometry and this was where the geometry made sense to him. He watched Draxler descend to his level with the expression he gave everything he was still deciding about. Withou
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 47: Blackthorn Manor Waits
(Keyla POV) The rain started somewhere around the last mile of private road, and by the time the gate came into view — iron, tall, the kind that seemed designed to remind you whose territory this was — the windows were streaked and the late afternoon light had gone flat and grey. Blackthorn Man
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 46: Three Tickets Home
(Keyla POV) Leo never took his eyes off the window. "Are we going to meet the monsters or the family first?" Leo asked this with his face pressed against the airplane window, watching clouds slide past like he'd never seen any before, even though we'd flown twice for client work and he'd been b
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 44: Blackthorn Goes Silent
(Draxler POV) Every hallway at Blackthorn was too quiet. I'd grown up in this house, and I knew its sounds — the particular creak of the east staircase, the way voices carried from the breakfast room if the kitchen door was left open, the staff moving through corridors with the kind of practiced
One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother Chapter 41: Eleanor Opens a Drawer
(Third Person Limited Eleanor POV) Years of marriage had taught her exactly when Augustus stopped being a risk. Then she went to his study. Curiosity had stopped being curiosity sometime during dinner. She pulled on the gloves automatically, the same way other people locked doors. There had been
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