Accueil / Romance / His Uncle's Priceless Jewel: Unmasking His Regret / Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

The Last Goodbye

THALASSA'S POV:"Thalassa...""The debt is paid, Cassian. My father's debt. Your father's favor. All of it. Paid in full. I have given you five years of my life. I have sat in this house and been invisible and asked for nothing. And now you want to give me money to go away quietly, and I am telling you that I do not need it."He looked at me like he had never seen me before. Maybe he had not. Maybe this was the first time in five years that he had actually looked at the person standing in front of him instead of the mask covering her face."Then what do you want?" he asked again, and this time the question felt real."Nothing from you," I said. "I want nothing from you. I am going to pack my things and I am going to leave. And you are going to let me, quietly, without fuss and without scandal. Just like you wanted."I turned and walked out of the study before he could respond. I did not look back. I did not want to see his face or Eulalie's face or anything else in that room.Upstairs

A Life of My Own

THALASSA'S POV: The gate clicked shut behind me and I swear I heard it echo through my whole body like a bell ringing. I stood there on the sidewalk for a full minute, just breathing. The air smelled different out here. Fresher. Like someone had opened a window in my lungs and let all the stale air from the past five years rush out. There were flowers growing along the fence, little purple ones that nobody had planted on purpose, and they smelled like honey and dirt and the ordinary beauty that does not ask for permission to exist. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to do a cartwheel right there on the sidewalk even though I had not done a cartwheel since I was twelve and would probably break something important. Instead, I just walked. One foot in front of the other, away from the mansion, away from Cassian, away from the life I had been living for five years like a spirit haunting someone else's house. The street was quiet this time of morning, just a few cars and a wo

The Pen Is Mightier

THALASSA'S POV:The empty apartment was starting to feel less empty and it was not because I had bought furniture yet, I was still sitting on the floor like a weirdo with my mask next to me and my bag as a pillow. But because the silence was different now. It was not the heavy, judgmental silence of the Deveraux mansion, this was a peaceful silence which I like.I reached into my bag and pulled out my laptop. The same laptop I had used for years in my room, writing books and saving lives and pretending I was not slowly dying inside. But now I was opening it in a place that was actually mine, and somehow that made everything feel different. More real. More mine.The screen glowed to life and I stared at the desktop background for a minute. It was a picture of the ocean, taken from a beach I had visited once, a long time ago, before the fire. I had kept it all these years as a reminder that there was a world out there bigger than the one I was trapped in. Now I was finally in that world

Number One

THALASSA'S POV:I laughed again. Peggy was a gem. She had been my editor for six years and had never once asked to meet me in person, never once demanded to know who Lyra St. James really was. She just accepted that I was a mystery and let me do my thing, sending me contracts through secure servers and deposits directly into my hidden bank accounts.The most recent email was from this morning, sent at six AM, which meant Peggy was either an early riser or she had not slept at all."Thalassa, I am begging you. The publishers are breathing down my neck. The fans are rioting on social media. We need the next book. Even just a title. Even just a page. Throw me a bone here. I have children to feed. Not really, I do not have children, but I have a cat and he is very expensive."I typed back:"Peggy, calm down. I am alive. I am working on it. Also did you see the list? NUMBER ONE. We did it again."I hit send and sat back, grinning so wide my face hurt. It had been a long time since I had sm

The Scarred Healer

THALASSA'S POV:My new apartment did not have a spare bedroom. It barely had a regular bedroom. But I did not need a spare bedroom. I needed a secure connection, a reliable power source, and a door that locked. Everything else was just furniture, and furniture I could buy.The first thing I did after setting down my bag was pull out my phone and open my encrypted messaging app. The one with the icon that looked like a calculator but was really a backdoor into a network of doctors, nurses, and medical fixers who operated in the spaces where normal medicine could not reach. I had built this network myself, over years of late nights and careful favors. These people owed me. Some of them owed me their lives.I typed a quick message to my contact in Geneva. "Need new equipment. Same specs as last time. Deliver to my new address."Three seconds later, the response came. "Done. Three days."I sent another message to my contact in Singapore. "Secure video platform. Need it up by tomorrow. Pri

The Miracle Doctor Returns

THALASSA'S POV: The message ended with a picture. A small girl with dark hair and big eyes, wearing a hospital gown that swallowed her whole. She was smiling. She did not know she was dying. I stared at the picture for a long time. This was why I became a doctor. Not for the money, not for the fame, not for the praise that never came anyway. For her. For all the hers and hims and thems that the system had given up on. I typed back. "Send me the full scans. I will review tonight. Have the family ready for a video consultation tomorrow at 9 AM their time." The response came immediately. "Thank you, Dr. Miravel. They have been waiting for you." Waiting for me. The Miracle Doctor. The woman nobody had ever seen, whose real name nobody knew, whose face was a mystery wrapped in porcelain. I had built a reputation over the years, one impossible case at a time. The doctors in the underground network spoke about me in whispers. Did you hear what she did in Stockholm last year? She sav

The Uncle's Arrival

3RD POV:Cassian had been divorced for three weeks and he was already sick of everyone asking him how he was feeling.His father had called four times today alone. Four times. Each conversation started the same way. How are your eyes, son? Are you resting? Have you been following the doctor's orders? Cassian wanted to scream. His eyes were fine. Better than fine. He could see better now than he had before the accident. Everything was sharp and clear and bright, almost too bright sometimes, like the world had been turned up to a volume he was not used to hearing.But his father was not really asking about his eyes. His father was asking about the divorce. The scandal. The mess that Cassian had created by throwing away his wife and bringing Eulalie into the mansion before the ink was even dry on the divorce papers.The press had gotten hold of the story somehow. Cassian suspected Eulalie's agent, a weasel faced man who saw dollar signs everywhere he looked. The headlines were brutal. "D

The Heart She Saved

THALASSA'S POV:The café was small and cramped and smelled like burnt coffee and old books, which meant I loved it immediately. I had found it three days after moving into my apartment, tucked between a laundromat and a store that sold nothing but vintage lamps. The owner was a woman named Rosa who had arms covered in tattoos and a stare that made grown men apologize for things they had not done. She did not ask about my mask. She just took my order and brought my coffee and left me alone. Perfect.I sat in the corner booth, my laptop open in front of me, the cursor blinking on a page that was supposed to be chapter fourteen of my new novel. Except chapter fourteen was not cooperating. The words would not come. They were stuck somewhere in the back of my brain, hiding behind memories of Cassian's face and Eulalie's smile and the way the mansion gates had clicked shut behind me.I typed three sentences, read them, deleted them. Typed two more, read them, deleted those too. Rosa brought

The Man Across the Street

THALASSA'S POV:Back to compressions. Eighty. Ninety. One hundred.My arms were burning. My hands were screaming. But I did not stop. I could not stop. This man was someone's husband. Someone's father, probably. Someone's friend. He had a life, a story, people who loved him. I was not going to let him die on a sidewalk while I stood there watching.One hundred twenty. One hundred thirty. One hundred forty."Two minutes," the timer's voice said.I switched positions, shaking out my arms, letting someone else take over for a few seconds while I caught my breath. The new volunteer was a young man with strong hands and a determined face. He had been watching me, copying my technique, and he did not hesitate when I tapped his shoulder."Hard and fast," I said. "Let the chest come all the way up. Do not stop."He nodded and started compressions. Good. Strong. Steady.I checked the man's pupils. Dilated but not blown. That was something. His brain was still getting oxygen from the compressio

Aftermath

3RD POV:Alaric Deveraux did not follow the woman in the mask when she walked back into the café. He stayed on the other side of the street, his hands in his pockets, his coffee forgotten and cold. The ambulance had gone. The crowd had melted away. The only thing left was the ordinary hum of the city and the strange, quiet curiosity sitting in his chest.He had seen a lot of things in his life. He had watched men lie with straight faces and women cry with dry eyes. He had seen kindness and cruelty and everything in between. But he had never seen anyone move like that. So calm. So certain. So completely unafraid of getting involved.Most people walked past emergencies. They looked away. They told themselves someone else would handle it. Not her. She had dropped to her knees in the gravel without a second thought, and she had saved a man's life while everyone else just watched.He wanted to know who she was.Not because he needed anything from her. Not because he had any plan or purpose

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