All Chapters of When I’m Gone, You Love: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

155 Chapters

Chapter 130 – The Lawyer

Beatrice's POVI didn't flinch.Cedrick stood close enough that I could feel the heat of his wolf against my skin, and his words about wanting to kill Martin were still hanging in the air between us, and every instinct I had was telling me to step back and lower my eyes and survive the moment the way I'd survived every moment with this man for years.Instead, I stepped forward."You can't touch Martin," I said. "His family is just as powerful as yours, and unlike you, he cares about me. He has cared about me for years, Cedrick. Without conditions, without chains, without throwing money at me to keep me quiet."His jaw tightened. The gold in his eyes burned brighter."Have you fallen in love with him?" he asked. His voice was low and rough, scraped from somewhere that sounded less like anger and more like a wound. "Is that why you betrayed me?"The word betrayed sat between us like a blade. He considered my leaving a betrayal. Three years of raising a child alone in a fishing town, thr

Chapter 131 – Sinister

Neah's POVI called Martin from my mother's sitting room with the door locked and my wolf pacing inside me like a caged animal.He answered on the third ring. His voice was calm, I hated that voice. I hated everything about Martin, from his patience to his principles to the way he looked at Beatrice as though she were something precious rather than the curse she actually was."You need to marry her," I said. "Now. This week. Take her somewhere, find someone to perform the ceremony, and make it legal before Cedrick figures out what he's doing."Martin was quiet for a moment before he spoke in a harsh tone, “You must be upset, Neah. King Cedric has reunited with his old lover.” What's happened?""Cedrick is her boss. He's installed himself at the school where she works. He's created a position for her, trapped her with some legal clause from her brother's case, and declared her his wife in front of the entire staff. That's what's happened."The silence on the other end was longer this t

Chapter 132– The Bar

Beatrice's POVThe bar was dark and loud and smelled like spilled beer and cheap cigarettes, and I had been sitting in a corner booth for two hours waiting for a man who wasn't coming.Martin's contact had said Jin would be here tonight. A meeting with a local property developer, eight o'clock, the booth near the back entrance. I had arrived at seven-thirty and ordered water and positioned myself where I could see the door and the back hallway and every face that came through either one.Eight o'clock passed. Then nine. Then nine-thirty.Jin didn't come. The booth near the back entrance stayed empty, and the bartender had started giving me the look reserved for women who sat alone in bars for too long without ordering anything stronger than water.My wolf was restless inside me, pressing against my ribs with a frustration that matched my own. Three years of tracking, weeks of planning, two hundred miles of driving, and the man I was hunting had either changed his plans or been tipped

Chapter 133– That Night

Beatrice's POV"Cedrick." His name left my mouth before I could stop it. My hand found his wrist and held on.He looked down at my fingers on his skin. His jaw was tight, and his wolf was burning behind his eyes, gold and restless, but his body stayed still. He didn't move toward me and he didn't pull away."You're not in your right mind," he said.He was right. The drug was still in my blood, softening every edge, dissolving every wall I'd spent three years building. My thoughts moved like water, slow and shapeless, and the only thing I could feel clearly was his pulse under my fingertips and the heat of his skin and my wolf reaching for his wolf with a need so deep it bypassed my brain entirely."Stay," I said."Beatrice.""Stay."I pulled his hand toward me and pressed it against my cheek, and his thumb moved across my cheekbone the way it had in the carriage three years ago, wiping away tears that weren't there this time. His touch was gentle, so gentle it made my chest ache, and

Chapter 134 – The Morning After

Beatrice's POVI woke to the smell of cedar and iron and the weight of an arm across my waist.My eyes opened. Morning light came through curtains I didn't recognize, falling across sheets I hadn't slept in before, and beside me, his face turned toward mine on the pillow, his breathing deep and even, was Cedrick.I sat up so fast the room spun."What are you doing here?" I pulled the sheet against my chest and pressed my back against the headboard. Cedrick opened his eyes and smiled, "You invited me," he said."I did not.""You pulled me onto the bed. You kissed me. You told me to stay." He sat up, and the sheet fell to his waist, and the morning light caught the twenty scars on his back as he turned. "Twice."The memories came back in pieces. The bar. The drugged drink. The room with the stripped mattress. Cedrick's arms lifting me out. And then, with a clarity that made my stomach drop, the hotel. My hands on his collar. My mouth finding his. My voice saying stay, and meaning it, a

Chapter 135 – The Letter

Cedrick's POVBeatrice stepped between Martin and me before the silence in the hotel corridor could harden into something worse."My son is home alone," she said. "I need to go. Now."The worry in her voice was real. Whatever had passed between us last night, whatever walls had fallen or risen since morning, the boy came first. I could see it in the way her body shifted toward the exit, the way her wolf turned inward, reaching for her child through an instinct that transcended distance."I'll drive you," I said."I'll come too," Martin said.I looked at him. He looked back with the steady, infuriating calm of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and intended to do it regardless of what I wanted."Your reputation has taken some hits lately, Cedrick," Martin said. His voice was pleasant and conversational. "Spending the night in a hotel with a woman who isn't your fiancée. The court will have opinions."My wolf pressed forward. I held him back."The court can have whatever opinions

Chapter 136 – The Confession

Beatrice's POVI woke to the smell of butter and eggs and the sound of my son laughing.The laughter came from the kitchen, bright and unrestrained, the kind of full-body joy that only a four-year-old could produce at seven in the morning. I pulled on a robe and walked down the hallway, and the scene I found stopped me in the doorway.Cedrick stood at the stove. He wore his shirt from yesterday with the sleeves rolled up and a dish towel thrown over his shoulder, and he was flipping something in a pan while Elan sat on the counter beside him, his legs swinging, his face smeared with flour. A bowl of batter sat between them, and the counter was dusted with powder, and Cedrick was telling the boy something about the proper way to crack an egg that involved a demonstration so exaggerated it made Elan shriek with laughter.He looked up when I appeared. His eyes found mine across the small kitchen, and the expression on his face was one I had never seen before. Three years ago, this man h

Chapter 137 – Boss

Beatrice's POVJin fought dirty.He grabbed a brass candlestick from the mantelpiece and swung it at my head. I ducked and it caught my shoulder, the same shoulder I'd bruised in the staircase fall, and the pain was bright enough to blur my vision for a second. I used the second. I drove my knee into his ribs and heard something crack, and he doubled over and I grabbed the back of his head and brought it down against my rising knee.Blood sprayed from his nose. He staggered backward into the desk, scattering papers and ink bottles, and I followed him, pressing the advantage while he was off balance. He lashed out with a wild fist that caught my cheekbone, and my head snapped sideways and I tasted copper inside my mouth.We crashed through the study like two animals locke

Chapter 138 – The Answer

Beatrice's POVI read the name on the document three times.My eyes moved across the letters, and my brain rejected them, and I read them again. The ink was old and slightly faded, but the handwriting was precise, and the signature at the bottom of the page was one I had seen a hundred times on letters and notes and the small cards he tucked inside gift boxes for my son.Martin.Martin's name. Martin's signature. Martin's handwriting on a commission order dated six years ago, authorizing the framing of Callum for the murder of Cedrick's sister. Martin's seal pressed into the wax at the bottom of the page, the same seal I had seen on the letters his owl delivered to my windowsill.I checked again. I held the paper closer to th

Chapter 139 – Six Years Ago

Six years ago…Felix poured his fourth glass of wine and laughed at something Elara said.They were in a private room above a tavern.. Felix was the son of King Aldric, a young man with too much money and too little restraint, whose appetites ran darker than his father's court would tolerate in public. Elara was Cedrick's younger sister, visiting Felix's kingdom on a diplomatic exchange, bright and trusting and entirely unaware of what the man across the table had taken before she arrived.The drug hit Felix between the fourth and fifth glass. His eyes dilated. His hands began to shake. The room warped around him, the walls bending and the candlelight fracturing into colors that didn't exist, and the woman sitting across from him stopped being a diplomat's sister and became something else in his ruined percep

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