I Choose Him, Your Worst Enemy novel Chapter 163

Wynette lay still and watched the stars drift overhead in their slow, ancient procession.

Beside her, Adriel's voice came low and unhurried. "Noah is back."

Word was that Adam had summoned him personally.

Adam wanted to revise his will and apparently had a new candidate for grooming as his heir, which had Justin in an absolute uproar.

The Shepherd household was anything but peaceful right now.

Wynette's expression didn't flicker at the news even slightly.

She just curved her lips into a faint, measured smile. "Noah is already irrelevant. Justin is another matter entirely. He's managed the Shepherd empire for years and built genuine loyalty doing it. Adam won't topple him just by wanting to.

"Justin's still a few percentage points short of Adam's shares to have total control," she continued, "but the people who back him inside Shepherd Group aren't going anywhere. Even if Adam pulls someone from a side branch to groom, that doesn't mean Justin falls."

Adriel turned his head to look at her. "How do you know the Shepherds this well?"

"Three years with Noah wasn't exactly a waste of time," Wynette said, with a small, private laugh.

Three years was long enough to learn a great deal, if you were paying attention.

Adriel cleared his throat. "I've had a question sitting with me for a while. Can you answer it?"

"What?" Wynette turned her head, and her gaze met the quiet, searching weight of his.

Her heart dropped half a beat. Does he know something?

"Lorelei going back to Noah," Adriel said. "Was it really just about his money?" He watched her without looking away. "After everything Eve put her through, I don't buy that she walked back into that on her own. Lorelei doesn't have that kind of nerve."

He let the pause land before he finished it. "Unless someone pointed her in that direction, that is."

Wynette didn't answer immediately.

Adriel had looked into Lorelei before, and what he'd found was interesting. Edgar had drained a significant amount from her accounts, but Noah had also poured a considerable sum into her over the years, and what remained was still enough for a woman to live comfortably on for the rest of her life if she managed it carefully.

She didn't need Noah. He wondered why she had gone back. Wynette's voice came out easy and conversational. "Something you might not know. Edgar was Eve's man from the start. Eve never intended for Lorelei to have a peaceful life. The abuse, the money, all of it was Eve's idea.

"And you think Eve didn't know exactly how much Noah had spent on Lorelei over the years?" Wynette went on. "Once Edgar cleaned out what was left, Lorelei had nothing. She had to survive somehow."

Eve had wanted Lorelei broken or dead, and she hadn't much cared which outcome she got.

She had the means to clean up after Edgar, after all.

Edgar had known it, and he'd acted accordingly every time he put his hands on Lorelei.

Adriel followed the thread of her words to its logical end. "So you found a way to send Lorelei back to Noah," he said, his voice low and certain. "That's what you did."

With Lorelei back in the picture and Edgar's violence still fresh in her memory, she'd have clung to Noah like he was the only solid ground left in the world.

She couldn't go back to Edgar without risking her life, and that left her exactly one option: holding onto Noah and refusing to let go.

And to hold onto Noah, Lorelei would've had every reason to push Wynette, his girlfriend, completely out of the picture.

Adriel's eyes stayed fixed on her face. "The three times you and Noah almost registered the marriage, Lorelei found out every time. You told her deliberately."

All three were failed attempts.

Wynette had never actually intended to marry Noah at all.

Lorelei was a piece Wynette had placed herself.

Then Adriel's gaze shifted, something quieter moving into it. "Wynette... was registering with me part of the plan too?"

He didn't sound angry. Not even close.

The smile on his face deepened as he said it.

He didn't feel used in the slightest.

He'd been the one to propose it. And thank everything that he had.

The thought that he'd been useful to her, that he'd slotted into her world in a way she'd actually needed, made something warm and quietly triumphant move through his chest.

Wynette caught a glimpse of his expression from the corner of her eye and didn't quite know whether to laugh or sigh.

He'd just asked whether he was part of her scheme, and she'd genuinely braced for irritation, and instead the man looked like someone who'd just been told he won something.

Adriel noticed her watching him and shifted the subject smoothly. "Now that Noah is back, what's your next move?"

"I haven't decided yet," Wynette said honestly. "The Shepherds have been bleeding from enough directions lately that I've been quietly picking up contracts they've dropped. Noah and Payton aren't threats worth worrying about right now." She paused briefly. "Justin is a different story."

She let the silence sit for just a moment before continuing. "I still haven't found Dawn. Without her, I can't prove it was the Shepherds that nearly drove my family into bankruptcy all those years ago. And Betty still hasn't woken up. All I can really do right now is find ways to make Justin's life inconvenient."

Adriel looked at her with a trace of skepticism. "Just that?"

What he'd turned up in his own investigation suggested the picture might be a good deal larger than that.

Wynette felt the weight of his gaze and had the distinct sensation of being read like an open book.

"Yes," she said, keeping her voice light. "Just that. We'll deal with the rest as it comes."

She let her eyes drift back to the stars and held her thoughts carefully to herself.

Adriel watched her for a moment, then let it go without pushing further.

If she wasn't ready to say it, she didn't have to. As long as she knew what she was doing, that was enough.