He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 06

He Jilted Me at the Altar. I Married His Enemy by Midnight. Chapter 06

Not yet?J

T’spun around. He stood in the doorway, still in his travel coat, flight-rumpled, looking at the paintings like

they were open wounds.

What does yet mean, Damian? What is this room? What am I-J my voice cracked, -how long have you

known me?j

For one second, I saw it-the truth, rising in his eyes, enormous and terrifying.

Then he did the worst possible thing.

He shut it down.

“It’s late, he said. Flat. Final. You shouldn’t have come in here.J

Are you serious-J

“The doctor said no stress in the first trimester.

own face to the wall-turning dozens of me away.

He picked the fallen canvases up, one by one, turning my

Go back to bed, Aria. Go back

‘Don’t you dare handle me. I married you blind, on a clock, because you’told me the truth when nobody else

would. So tell me the truth now! Who am I to you?!J

He stopped, back to me, shoulders rigid.

“You’re my wife, he said. “For eleven more months.J

He might as well have slapped me.

I walked out. He didn’t stop me.

We lived like polite strangers for a week. Breakfast in silence. Corridors timed to avoid each other. Every

gentle thing he’d done now reread in a new, sinister light-he knew me, he studied me, he was waiting outside

that cathedral-and I couldn’t tell anymore whether I’d been rescued or collected.

Then, Thursday night, passing his study, I heard my name.

His voice, low, on the phone. I know eavesdroppers get what they deserve. I stopped anyway.

r-no, she doesn’t know anything.J A pause. Aria isn’t the point. She was never the point-she’s the

instrument. Once the board vote closes and Hale signs over control, the arrangement’s done and I move to the

endgame.j

The instrument

The arrangement.

The exact vocabulary Julian had used, in a dining room full of champagne, about me

I don’t remember getting back to my room. I remember sliding down the door to the floor, both hands over my mouth so no one would hear, learning that a heart can break twice in one month and the second time s

quieter.

Fool, said my father’s voice in my head. Paperwork, said Julian’s. Instrument, said the man whose hand I’ started reaching for in my sleep.

Fine.

Fine.

I’d survived being the paperwork. I’d survive being the instrument. I would take his name and his protection for exactly the contract term, feel nothing, want nothing, and walk out in eleven months with my baby and my shares and my heart in a lead-lined box where no man would ever-

My phone lit up.

Forty-one missed notifications. Sixty. Ninety. Climbing while I watched.

Virginia-my old college roommate, the only person who’d texted me every single day since the cathedral- was calling. I picked up and she didn’t even say hello.

Aria. Honey. Do NOT read the news. Do not open Twitter. Promise me-okay, you’re opening Twitter.J

I was opening Twitter.

The top trend in the country had my name in it.

EXCLUSIVE: Sienna Whitmore breaks her silence – “My sister’s unborn baby is my husband Julian’s. Damian Cross has been deceived. I have proof.”

Below it: a blurry photo of Julian entering my old apartment building. Dated three weeks before my wedding. Recaptioned into filth.

The article had 2 million shares. The comments were a sewer with my face on it. Gold-digger. Trapped a billionaire with another man’s baby. No wonder Julian left her.

And at the bottom, a breaking-news banner, eleven minutes old:

Cross Industries announces emergency press conference 9 AM tomorrow Sources say the marage is fiveT

He hadn’t called me.

He hadn’t texted me.

The man who flew home from Singapore when I found a painting had gone completely. perfectly silent.