All Chapters of Contracted to the wrong twin : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 31Getting OutDan was still on the phone when Judith came back into the living room with the bag.Ethan was at the table with the folder open, going through the documents one more time. He looked up when she walked in and his eyes went to the bag in her hand. Then back to her face.“Lily is getting Mr. Bear,” she said.He nodded and looked back down at the folder.Judith set the bag by the door and went to the kitchen to get Lily’s juice bottle from the counter. She rinsed it and filled it and put the lid on and dropped it into the side pocket of the bag. Small automatic things. The kind of things a mother’s hands did without being told.Dan ended his call and came toward her. “Robert’s property is ready. There is a woman there who manages it, her name is Grace, she is expecting us. Robert says she has been with him for twenty years and she is completely trustworthy.”“How do we get there without being followed,” Judith asked.“Two cars,” Dan said. “We leave separately. Diffe

Chapter 33All Under One RoofEthan arrived forty minutes after them.Judith heard the car on the gravel before she saw him. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea Grace had pressed into her hands the moment she walked through the door. Dan was across from her doing the same thing. Neither of them had said much since coming inside. They were both just sitting with the quiet for the first time in hours letting it settle around them.Grace appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Another car outside.”Dan stood up immediately.“It is Ethan,” Judith said without moving.She did not know how she knew. She just did.Dan sat back down.The front door opened a minute later and Ethan walked into the kitchen still in his coat from last night, the folder under his arm, his face carrying the particular tiredness of a man who had not slept and was not going to stop moving long enough to feel it.He looked at both of them at the table.“Nobody followed me,” he said.“Good,” Dan said.Grac

Chapter 35Two O’ClockElena walked into the kitchen with two garment bags over her arm and her phone in her hand and the particular expression of a woman who had been managing chaos since before sunrise and was not finished yet.She stopped when she saw Judith.“You look exhausted,” she said.“Thank you Elena,” Judith said.Elena put the garment bags over the back of a chair. “I brought options. I did not know what you would want so I brought three things.” She looked at Ethan. “Your suit is in the grey bag. Dan yours is in the black one. I called Robert’s lawyer on the way here. He wants everyone in the conference room by one thirty so there is time to brief properly before the press arrive at two.”“How many press,” Dan asked.“Twelve outlets confirmed,” Elena said. “Possibly more by the time we get there.” She sat down at the table and opened her phone. “Sarah Okafor is already at the hotel. She has been managing the room since this morning.” She looked around the table. “The coun

Chapter 37:The RoomEthan read for four minutes without stopping.Nobody in the room moved. Nobody wrote anything down or checked their phone or shifted in their seat. They just listened. Judith sat beside him and watched the faces of the journalists across the table as Ethan spoke. She could see the moment each of them understood what they were hearing. Not a family dispute. Not a business story. Something bigger and older and more serious than any of them had walked in expecting.When he finished he closed the folder and sat back.Sarah stepped forward immediately. “Robert Ashby.”Robert stood up slowly. He did not have notes. He did not need them. He had been carrying what he was about to say for six years and it came out of him the way things do when they have been held too long. Quiet and certain and completely steady.He talked about Gerald Thompson. About the property deal and the money moving underneath it and the night Gerald told him he was going to walk away and expose it.

Chapter 39:AfterThe afternoon air was cold when they stepped outside.Elena had the car waiting at the kerb. The driver was the same man who had taken them to the property that morning. He stood by the door and opened it when he saw them coming without being asked.Judith got in first. Dan after her. Ethan went around to the other side. Elena got in the front.The car pulled into the afternoon traffic.Nobody spoke for the first few minutes. They just sat with the quiet the way people do after something big has finished and the body is still catching up with the fact that it is over. The press conference. The statements. The questions. Four hours of holding everything together in a room full of cameras and it was done now and the city outside the window looked exactly the same as it always did which felt strange somehow.Judith looked at her phone.Her mother had called twice. She pressed call and held it to her ear.It rang once.“Judith.” Her mother’s voice was wide awake. “I watch