2024-08-21 09:43:49As Alex approached the house entrance, Sophia noticed that Alex
was behind her."Haven’t you had enough?"
"Believe me," Alex replied, "running into you is the last thing I wanted today."
Sophia stepped out, blocking his path.
"So, what is it then? Are you here to remind me of the biggest mistake of my life?"
"Mistake?" Alex’s tone grew colder.
"I could say the same. You think I enjoyed waking up and realizing I’d wasted my time with someone so shallow?"
"Shallow?" Sophia’s eyes flashed with anger.
"You’re just bitter because you know I’m right. You’re nothing but a loser, a gold-digger."
Alex laughed, shaking his head.
"You’re delusional. I don’t need anything from you, least of your money."
Sophia stepped even closer, her finger jabbing the air between them.
"Then what do you want? To ruin my life even more?"
"No, I’m not here to ruin anything." Alex locked his eyes with hers. "I’m meeting my fiancée."
"Your fiancée? You have a fiancée?" Sophia shocked.
"I’m here to meet someone named Sophia Lancaster at this address," Alex’s patience wearing thin.
"I’m not looking for you. So, if you can help me out, call her, and I’ll leave as soon as possible."
WTF?!
Sophia paused, her expression shifting from shock to realization.
"Wait... you're here for that Sophia Lancaster?"
Alex coldly replied.
"Yes! Can you please just get her? I don't have time for games."
Sophia bit her lip, trying to mask the confusion swirling inside her.
"There’s no need to call anyone. I’m... I’m Sophia Lancaster."
They stood there, staring at each other in stunned silence.
Just then, a voice called out from inside the mansion.
"Alexander Leonhart!"
An old man stepped out, his face lighting up with a wide smile.
"Master told me you would come today! What are you doing out there?"
"Grandfather," Sophia called.
The old man, Abraham Lancaster, turned towards them, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
He looked between them, his smile growing even wider as if he had been waiting for this moment.
"So, you've met Alex, your fiancé. It’s great to know you both know each other."
Sophia quickly interjected, "We are not—"
"Call your parents, Sophia," Abraham said, cutting her off.
"Gather everyone in the Great Hall. I have an announcement. You both are going to get married today."
Sophia stood, shocked.
"Finally, my long-held wish can be fulfilled today," Abraham’s voice trembled with happiness.
He walked over to Alex, his hand reaching out to grasp Alex’s.
"Come, let’s go to the Great Hall. You’ll meet your in-laws."
Sophia watched them walk away, disbelief and anger surging through her.
She had lost her virginity to that man, and now she was supposed to lose her future too.
"This can't be happening!"
She had dreamed of an extraordinary fiancé, someone worthy, someone heroic, not any rubbish!
Instead, she was now being handed to a man she could have picked off the street.
As CEO of Lancaster Group, known for her beauty and bright future, how could she marry such a man?
What would people think?
"No," she decided. "I'll stop this marriage, no matter the cost."
***
In the Great Hall, Abraham guided Alex to an honored seat.
"How is Master?"
"Still healthy after a hundred years," Alex replied.
"You’re young, successful, and humble. I’m fortunate to have a grandson-in-law like you. Sophia is a good person; please give her a chance to get to know you better."
Alex nodded politely, but he doubt the possibility.
Sophia didn’t look like she wanted the chance.
"Wonderful, wonderf—" Abraham laugh joyfully.
However, just then, an angry voice cut in.
"Are you insane?! Sophia cannot marry him!"
Lady Lancaster, Abraham's wife, angrily stormed into the Great Hall.
She was flanked by their two sons and two daughters-in-law, with Sophia trailing behind them.
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Chapter 694
The knock came at the hour when decent visits have already ended.Feby was at the little table with her one good blouse laid out over the chair back, pressed twice and inspected three times, and a borrowed almanac of New Avalon's great firms open to the chapter on the Regent Group.She had read the same page four times without retaining a word of it. Tomorrow sat in her chest like a swallowed coal — bright, secret, hers.She had told Alex nothing. He had asked nothing, which was its own kind of noticing.Three knocks. Softer than Wilhelmina's, more certain than a stranger's. Feby knew the hand before she reached the door."Mother."Adeline Rydell-Steinmeyer entered the way she entered everywhere — perfume first, apology never.Her eyes made the same slow circuit of the flat that Wilhelmina's had, arriving at the same verdict by a politer road. Then she stepped aside, and the doorway filled with a man.Tall. A charcoal traveling coat with silver thread worked through the collar, cut by
Chapter 693
Alex bought his clothes off a street rack because they let him move, and he had never once cared what this city's money thought of that. He cared even less this morning, walking toward the Regent building with his hands in his pockets.He didn't make it past the parking lot."Well. Look who's slumming it at a real company." Leon Rydell pitched it to carry, and it did — across the lot, off the glass, into every ear within fifty feet. He stood by the entrance with Julian Thorne on one side and Wilhelmina on the other, three people dressed like they'd rehearsed belonging somewhere they didn't."Leon." Alex kept walking. One word was already more than the man had earned."Careful." Julian's smile never touched anything below his mouth. "Last time we saw this one, he had opinions about who gets to speak in rooms he wasn't invited to." He tipped his head toward Wilhelmina. "This is the fiancé. The unemployed one.""I remember," Wilhelmina said, the way you'd recall a stain on a carpet.Heat
Chapter 692
The ink on the tile contract wasn't dry when the door didn't knock. It slammed."Beatrix." Cornelius Hargrove filled the doorway the way he filled every room he'd ever walked into — loud first, right second, if at all. "Twenty minutes. I sat in that boardroom for twenty minutes."Beatrix didn't stand. "Uncle—""Don't." He threw a folder onto her desk hard enough that it slid into the tile Alex had set down an hour ago. His eyes found Alex, flicked once, and dismissed him completely. "And you're in here with — whoever this is."Nobody had ever looked at Alex like he was furniture. It was almost restful."Two years." Cornelius's voice cracked down the middle of the word, somewhere between fury and something rawer underneath it."Two years watching Ferrowgate eat us alive, quarter by quarter, and every time I ask what the plan is, I get told to trust you. I don't trust you. I trust numbers. And the numbers say this company's a corpse that hasn't stopped twitching yet.""We have something
Chapter 691
The knight behind the desk wasn't Walsh. She didn't offer a first name, and she carried the particular briskness of someone who had decided how this conversation would end before Feby and Alex ever sat down."Inspector Thackeray," she said, by way of introduction. For half a second her eyes caught on Feby's face and something flickered there — recognition, maybe, or the memory of it — before she smoothed it back into procedure.If Feby noticed, she didn't have room for it. She was watching the thin folder the inspector had slid halfway across the counter — and then, after a moment's reconsideration, slid back."We appreciate you both coming in," Thackeray said. "The inquiry's closed."Feby's hand stopped in the air, halfway to the folder. "Closed.""Reviewed and closed. No suspects worth holding." The inspector didn't quite meet her eyes when she said it."The men involved weren't organized. Weren't working for anyone we could substantiate. It happens more than you'd think, Miss Stein
Chapter 690
The apartment had a rhythm now, and Feby was ashamed of how quickly she'd learned it by heart.Alex left before she woke. He came home after dark. And every night he set two hundred dollars on the counter — sometimes three — peeled off whatever the day had paid him, without being asked, the way another man might take off his shoes at the door.Like it was nothing. Like it didn't cost him twelve hours of his body to earn it.She'd stopped arguing around the fourth night. There was a certain kind of stubbornness that wasn't worth fighting, and his was cut from the same stone as her father's had been.Or so she imagined. She'd never known her father well enough to be sure, and that small hollow ache surfaced at the strangest times — like now, watching money she hadn't asked for sit quietly on a counter that wasn't really hers.She was at the little table doing what she'd done every night for a week — filling out another application, this one for an assistant coordinator role two rungs be
Chapter 689
Alex's hand crossed the counter.The slap wasn't hard. That was the frightening part — the economy of it, one crisp crack of palm against cheek and then Alex's hand was simply back at his side, relaxed, as if it had never moved.The loupe clattered to the floor. Somewhere in the back room, something stopped rustling and listened.The broker touched his own face like he was checking it was still attached. Then his shock caught fire."You dare — you dare hit me?" He shot up from his chair, knocking it over, and his voice cracked into a roar. "Guards! Guards, throw this man out!"The back room emptied.Five of them came through the curtain — big men, the kind bought by the pound, shoulders filling the doorway one after another. Iron bars in their fists. Faces arranged to make ordinary people apologize for existing. They spread across the shop floor with the lazy confidence of men who had done this before and never once lost.Alex exhaled through his nose. Almost a sigh.Then he moved.If
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Reader Comments
but he doubted the possibility
good novel
like seriously