Snatched a Billionaire to Be My Husband – Episode 32
Adrian’s invitation turned the stolen evidence into a threat without stating one directly. Cora kept the phone on speaker as he gave her an address in the hills and a deadline of ten the next morning. When Byron asked to speak with him, Adrian laughed softly. “This is a Vale matter. Husbands are temporary. Blood is not.”
Cora ended the call before Byron could answer. Rage moved through him in a controlled, dangerous current, but she was angrier at the assumption beneath Adrian’s words. Easton once believed an engagement entitled him to judge her choices. Adrian had known she existed for less than an hour and already considered her a possession of his family.
“You are not going alone,” Byron said. Cora looked at him until the old command changed shape between them. He exhaled and corrected himself. “I am asking you not to go alone. He stole from our wedding and threatened your mother. He has already shown that his conditions mean nothing.”
They reviewed the options with Carter, who had stayed to oversee reception security. Police could investigate the theft, but Adrian’s call contained no explicit promise of harm. Approaching the estate with officers would warn him and might cause the original evidence to disappear. Refusing the meeting would leave Evelyn exposed to a family whose resources rivaled Byron’s.
Cora proposed accepting the meeting while defining “alone” narrowly. Byron would not enter the estate, but Carter could track her from a vehicle outside, and an attorney would receive a live recording. She would wear no obvious wire that Adrian’s security might discover. Her wedding necklace could carry an encrypted transmitter small enough to escape a routine scan.
Evelyn objected from the doorway. Exhaustion bent her shoulders, yet fear made her voice strong. “I disappeared so you would never have to stand in that house.” Cora crossed the room and knelt beside her. “You disappeared so I would have the freedom to choose. I am choosing to end their power over us.”
Before dawn, Cora and Byron sat on the edge of their bed, still surrounded by unopened wedding gifts. Nothing about their first morning as husband and wife resembled the quiet happiness they had imagined. Byron fastened the transmitter behind her necklace and promised he would not enter unless she used the emergency phrase.
“And if I decide to leave before that?” she asked. “You leave,” he replied. “No evidence is worth your safety.” The answer eased a tension she had not admitted. Byron wanted the truth as fiercely as she did, but he no longer confused protecting her with overruling her.
The Vale estate looked less like a home than a private institution. Stone walls followed the curve of the hill, cameras watched every gate, and uniformed guards inspected Cora’s bag before escorting her through a gallery filled with severe family portraits. No image included Evelyn, but one young Roland watched from a photograph with Cora’s unmistakable gray eyes.
Adrian received her in a glass conservatory. He was perhaps fifteen years older than Cora, elegantly dressed and too polished to mistake courtesy for kindness. The stolen photograph lay on the table between them. It showed Evelyn beside Roland at a seaside hotel, one hand resting protectively over the first curve of her pregnancy.
“You have her face,” Adrian said, “but his instinct for inconvenient timing.” Cora remained standing. She asked why he had stolen Charles’s evidence instead of approaching her openly. Adrian replied that public proof of Roland’s daughter could fracture the Vale board and invite claims against the family trust.
Cora told him she wanted neither a title nor an inheritance. Adrian smiled with the patience of someone hearing a child misunderstand a contract. Intent did not matter. If Roland acknowledged her, shares reserved for his lawful descendants could transfer automatically. Adrian and his sister Celeste would lose controlling interest.
He slid a document across the table. In exchange for the original evidence, Cora would deny any biological connection to Roland, waive all claims, and submit to a permanent confidentiality agreement. The draft also prohibited Evelyn from discussing her relationship with him. Adrian had prepared to erase both women legally before confirming whether Cora wanted anything.
“You could have asked,” Cora said. “People with nothing to gain are usually the most expensive later,” Adrian answered. The remark exposed the logic governing his family: affection was a negotiation conducted before betrayal became costly.
Cora refused to sign. She said Charles’s photograph and agreement belonged to her, and theft would not become lawful because Adrian placed a contract over it. His expression cooled. “Then perhaps you would prefer to discuss your mother’s settlement.”
He produced a copy of an agreement carrying Evelyn’s signature from twenty-seven years earlier. It stated that she had accepted five million dollars to terminate all contact with Roland and surrender any child born from their relationship. A handwritten receipt claimed the money had been paid through Lane Capital.
Cora knew the document was wrong before she finished reading it. Lane Capital did not exist under that name until years after her birth. Charles had founded the firm from a small accounting partnership, and she had studied every stage of its incorporation during the fraud hearing.
She said so, watching the first crack appear in Adrian’s certainty. Then an elderly voice came through the open conservatory doors. “Because that agreement is a forgery.” Roland Vale entered with a cane and two medical aides, his attention fixed on Cora. “And no one will threaten my daughter in my house.”