Chapter 100
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Mimi kept pacing around the living room like a caged animal, her feet moving back and forth across the expensive rug. She was wringing her hands, her face filled with concern and worry. Somehow, she seemed even more stressed about this whole situation than Elara, and it was Elara’s life falling apart.
Elara just sat on the couch with her head buried in her hands, trying to process everything that had happened in the last couple of hours. Aurora moving into the guest house, finding out that Penelope lives upstairs. Luca looking like a banker and showing up cleaned up and dressed in a suit instead of a drunk and gamble addict that he was. All of it felt like pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t quite see the full picture of
yet.
“So what do I do now?” Elara finally asked, her voice muffled by her palms. She lifted her head to look at
Mimi.
“You know if it ever comes to light that this marriage is fake and it’s just a contract between me and Marcus, Marcus would lose everything. The company, his shares, all of it. His grandfather’s will said it had to be a real marriage.”
“Mhmmm,” Mimi said, stopping her pacing to tap her forehead with her fingers like she was trying to physically knock an idea loose. “We have to get the signed contract and lock it somewhere safe. Somewhere nobody can access it. Where is the contract?”
Elara thought back to that day in Marcus’s office, sitting across from him and Dante while they explained the terms. “Marcus gave it to me with Dante present that day at the office. I was supposed to sign it and return it back to them, which I did.”
“Okay, good.” Mimi said, nodding quickly. “Good, good.
So it’s with Marcus now. He knows how to protect important documents. He probably has it locked in a safe or with his lawyers or something.”
She started pacing again, her mind clearly racing through scenarios. “Uhmmm, okay. What else could they possibly find out? What other evidence is there that the marriage is fake?”
That’s when it hit Elara. The memory crashed into her brain like a moving train at its highest speed, and before she could stop herself, she screamed.
“Wait!”
The sound was so loud and sudden that Mimi actually jumped, her hand flying to her chest. She spun around to face Elara, eyes wide with alarm.
“Babe, what is it? Why did you scream like that?”
“Oh my God. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” Elara stood up from the couch, her hands going to her head.
“What is it?” Mimi rushed over to her, grabbing her shoulders. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on? What did you remember?”
Elara’s breathing was getting faster, panic setting in as the full weight of her mistake became clear. “Okay, so after Marcus gave me the contract that day, I had to make a decision quickly, right? Sign it or walk away.”
Chapter 100
“Right, right yeah so what happened.”
55/veachers
“Well, before I signed, I photocopied the entire thing. Made like three or four copies and kept them for myself. Just in case, you know? I didn’t know if this whole thing would go well or if it would blow up in my face. I wanted my own evidence of what we’d agreed to, something I could use to protect myself if the deal went south somehow.”
Mimi nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense. That’s actually pretty smart. So where are those copies now?”
She looked around the penthouse. “Are they upstairs in your room? In a drawer or something? In your bag?”
Elara shook her head. Slowly: Very slowly.
The realization started to dawn on Mimi’s face, her expression shifting from confusion to understanding to absolute horror.
“No. No, no, no.”
“Mimi-”
“Please don’t tell me what I think you’re about to tell me.”
“Mimi-”
“Please don’t tell me you left those photocopies at the house where Luca has been staying. Please, please don’t tell me that’s what happened, Elara.”
Elara’s voice came out small and broken. “I left them, Mimi. They’re over at the house. In my old room.”
“Girl!” Mimi let go of Elara’s shoulders and threw her hands up in the air. “What’s wrong with you? You know how Luca is! That man is unpredictable and desperate and broke! He could just decide to turn that entire house upside down today for no reason at all! You didn’t think he might find them? When were you even planning to go back and pick them up?”
The questions came rapid-fire, each one hitting Elara like a physical blow because she didn’t have good answers for any of them.
“I don’t know,” Elara admitted, feeling tears starting to prick at her eyes. “Shit, I forgot about them. With everything happening so fast, the wedding and moving in here and finding out about the pregnancy and dealing with Aurora and Penelope, I just completely forgot they were still there.”
The whole idea of Luca laying his hands on those files made her feel sick. If he found them, if he figured out what they meant, he would drain her and Marcus of every single penny they had. He’d threaten to go public with the information, to expose the fake marriage to the media or to Marcus’s board of directors or to whoever would pay the most for the story. And with Penelope backing him, giving him resources and connections, the damage they could do would be catastrophic.
Marcus would lose the company. Seventy percent of Thorne Dynamics would be redistributed to the other shareholders, meaning Penelope and her husband would end up with complete control. Everything Marcus had worked for, everything his grandfather had built, would be gone.
15:04 Mon, May
Chapter 100
And it would be Elara’s fault for being careless enough to leave evidence lying around in a house where her alcoholic, gambling-addict father had access.
“Oh God,” Elara whispered, feeling the tears start to fall now. “What have I done?”
Mimi grabbed her by both arms again, giving her a small shake. “Hey. Hey, look at me. We’re not doing this. We’re not spiraling. We’re going to fix this.”
“How? If Luca already found them…”
“We don’t know that he has. For all we know, they’re still exactly where you left them and he hasn’t touched them.
Luca’s been drunk and useless for months, right? You think he’s been doing deep cleaning and organizing in that apartment?”
Elara sniffed, wiping at her eyes. “I mean, probably not.”
“Exactly. So there’s a good chance those papers are still there, just sitting wherever you left them. We just need to go get them before he does.”
“But what if he’s there right now? What if Penelope took him there to search?”
“I doubt, what would they be doing there, they wouldn’t possibly think of that, and even if they are we’d deal with that when we get there,” Mimi said firmly. “But sitting here panicking isn’t going to help anything. We need to move. Like yesterday.”
She pulled Elara toward the stairs. “Go get dressed. Something you can move in. We’re going over to that house right now to pick up those papers and anything else you might have left behind that could be used against you.”
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