Alpha's Abandoned Daughter is the Secret Heiress novel Chapter 440

< Chapter 440 A Secret Affair?

Chapter 440: A Secret Affair?

Chapter 440: A Secret Affair?

(Celine’s POV)

Sherry’s hands trembled as she stared at the bundle of fabric in the servant’s arms.

“I can’t wear that,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Griffin’s expression shifted instantly.

The relaxed indifference drained from his face and was replaced by something colder, harder.

“Stop asking questions,” he snapped. “I told you to change. Change.”

His voice cracked through the room like a whip.

Sherry flinched so hard she nearly stumbled backward.

Then she turned to me.

Her eyes were wide, desperate, searching my face for something – reassurance, rescue, anything.

“Celine,” she whispered. “I don’t want to do this. You told me this was a job interview. A real job.”

I kept my expression smooth.

+25 Points

I pressed one hand lightly to her shoulder and let my voice go soft, honeyed, the way I’d learned to do when I needed someone to stop thinking and start complying.

“Listen to Griffin,” I said gently. “Be a good girl. If you make him happy – really happy – your whole life changes. No more struggling. No more working yourself to the bone just to get by.” I tilted my head and smiled. “You’d never have to worry about money again.”

Sherry stared at me.

For a moment I thought it had worked.

It hadn’t.

She stepped back, out of my reach, and shook her head slowly.

“I just want to learn a skill,” she said. Her voice had gone quiet and flat. “Something real. Something I earned.” She glanced toward the door. “I’m not interested in shortcuts. I’m not interested in attaching

myself to anyone. I want to leave.”

She turned.

I moved before I even decided to.

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< Chapter 440 A Secret Affair?

My hand shot out and grabbed her arm, spinning her back around.

The warmth vanished from my face.

“You’re not leaving,” I said.

“Let go of me-”

“Take the clothes,” I said, my voice dropping low. “And change. Now.”

She pulled against my grip, panic flashing in her eyes.

“Let me go! You lied to me, this isn’t-”

F

The slap landed before she finished the sentence.

The sound of it was sharp and clean in the silent room.

Sherry went still.

+25 Points

Her hand flew to her cheek. Her eyes filled immediately, tears spilling over before she could stop them.

I shoved the clothing against her chest.

“Put it on,” I said.

She was shaking. Her breath came in ragged, uneven pulls. But she was alone in this room with two people who were not going to let her walk out, and eventually the fight drained out of her the way it always

did.

She changed.

Standing there in front of both of us, her arms wrapped around herself, her face burning with humiliation and tears running silently down her cheeks.

Griffin leaned back against the sofa cushions.

His gaze moved over her the way a predator assesses something it hasn’t decided whether to eat yet.

“Show me something,” he said. “A talent. Anything.”

Sherry’s head came up.

The shame in her eyes hardened into something else.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice cracked but held. “I can’t do this.”

She lunged for the door.

She made it two steps.

Griffin’s expression didn’t even flicker.

<Chapter 440. A Secret Affair?

“Bring her back,” he said.

His men moved.

They dragged her back to the center of the room and held her in place.

Griffin stood.

He walked toward her slowly, unhurried, and then drove his foot hard into her abdomen.

The sound she made was awful.

(b) +75 Pointa

She folded in on herself and collapsed to the floor, gasping, curling into a tight ball with her hands pressed

to her stomach.

I watched from across the room and said nothing.

*Stupid girl.* The thought moved through me without much feeling. *You could have made this easy.*

Griffin stared down at her without expression.

I knew what he was calculating – I’d learned to read him well enough for that. Zoey had slipped out of his control. Zane Jenkins was furious about it. Griffin needed a replacement, something close enough to Jade to smooth things over and buy back Zane’s patience.

This girl was a tool. Nothing more.

He turned to me.

“One week,” he said. “Train her. If she still can’t perform by then-” his eyes moved to me with flat, cold meaning- “you’ll answer for it alongside her.”

The humiliation burned all the way down to my bones.

I smiled.

“Understood,” I said.

I got Sherry out of the Drake house and into the back of the car.

The door had barely closed before I hit her.

My palm connected with her cheek – the same one I’d struck before- and she cried out and pressed herself against the far window.

“What is wrong with you?” I snarled. “I told you to cooperate. One simple thing. Why can’t you just listen?”

She was shaking.

Her whole body trembled against the car door, her shoulders hunched, her breath coming in small, broken

sobs.

Chapter 440 A Secret Affair?

“You lied to me,” she whispered.

“I gave you an opportunity,” I snapped. “You’re too stupid to recognize it.”

I leaned toward her, close enough that she pressed back harder against the glass.

25 Points

“One week,” I said. “That’s what we have. If you haven’t learned to behave by then – I promise you, I will make sure you suffer for it long before Griffin gets his chance.”

She said nothing.

She just cried, quietly, her face turned toward the window.

I sat back.

The rage was still there, hot and restless under my skin, with nowhere to go.

I cracked the window open. Cold air rushed in, cutting through the stale warmth of the car.

*Amelia.*

The thought arrived the way it always did – sudden, sharp, trailing something that felt like poison.

Every piece of this. Every humiliation, every compromise, every moment of swallowing my pride and smiling through it – it all traced back to her.

If she had never come back, none of this would have happened.

I would still have the Stone family’s support. I would still have Rhys. I would still have a position worth

protecting.

Instead I was sitting in the back of a car threatening a crying girl because Griffin Drake needed a

replacement toy.

*I hate her.*

The thought settled in my chest like a stone.

*I hate her, and one day-*

My eyes drifted to the window.

And stopped.

Amelia was walking out of a building across the street.

Not the hospital. Not the Stone River Pack House.

A residential tower. High–end, private, the kind of building that didn’t have its name displayed anywhere

visible.

I sat up straighter.

< Chapter 440 A Secret Affair?

And then I saw who was with her.

Not Theodore.

Not Marcus, not Jaxon, not any of the Stone family.

A man. Dark hair. Tall. The kind of face that photographed well from any angle.

I recognized him in an instant.

Jasper Calder.

+25 Points

One of Starlight Entertainment’s most talked–about artists. A writer turned public figure, currently on every

trending list in the territory.

They were walking side by side, close, coming out of the same building.

“Stop the car,” I said.

My driver pulled over without a word.

I already had my phone out.

I raised it to the window and pressed the shutter once, twice, five times, ten.

Frame after frame. Amelia and Jasper, side by side, stepping out of a private residential building together.

I lowered the phone and looked at the photos.

There it was.

Theodore’s fiancée, walking out of a private apartment building with another man. Alone. No entourage, no

explanation.

The smile that spread across my face was the first real one I’d felt all day.

*So that’s how it is.*

Theodore was careful, controlled, impossible to manipulate directly. He trusted Amelia in a way that had made every attempt to wedge between them fail.

But this?

This was something else entirely.

I scrolled through the photos slowly, savoring each one.

I already knew which outlets would pay the most for something like this. The ones that didn’t ask questions. The ones that ran the story first and printed the corrections never.

The hashtag formed in my mind without effort.

*#AmeliaStoneAndJasperCalder.*

Chapter 440 A Secret Affair?

Clean. Simple. Devastating.

By the time Theodore saw it, the damage would already be done.

H