Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 106

CHAPTER 106

LYRA POV

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I checked my phone at 5am again. There was no thread of conversation linking me to what had happened, After a few minutes, I checked again because I had always been careful. It was easy to be clean but feeling/ clean was going to take a lot more than deleting a few pieces of damning evidence. I stared at my phone for a while before I dropped it on the nightstand.

The fire still lived in my head. I recalled the silence I felt when I learned she survived and the façade I had to put on around her to cast away any form of suspicion from me.

I had deleted the messages but the knowledge of what I had done refused to leave.

I thought about the trail. I, two middlemen and then the man did the job. I had removed myself from the equation; if anyone followed the thread, it ended with him, a professional who had no interest in identifying his clients and significant interest in not being identified himself.

I told myself it was enough and then my mind went to Kieran. Kieran never reacted like other people. There would be no threats, screaming profanities or violent confrontations. He waited, watched and gathered information like a predator stalking its prey. He never moved except he was closing in for the kill, by then it was already too late for any precaution.

I had watched him do it to other people over the years. I had always understood this about him and had somehow failed to apply it to my own situation.

The messages were gone but the patterns that had created the messages and existed after the messages were still there if someone knew where to look. I felt a shudder as the thought passed through me.

If Kieran suspected me, cozying up to him or confronting him wasn’t going to work. It would draw more attention to me and that wasn’t what I wanted.

There was no other choice but to carry on as I have done before because Kieran would notice any slight change in my behavior.

I opened Marco’s message. It had been three days and I still hadn’t given him a reply.

My head started to play the merits of his proposal: A second powerful name alongside mine. Political insulation that didn’t depend on Kieran’s goodwill. A husband who had no emotional investment in what had happened to Denise or in whatever investigation Kieran was quietly constructing.

Before the fire, I wouldn’t have thought twice about his offer before rejecting it. Now, I needed all the help I could get, if I was going to beat the heat I knew that would eventually come my way. Marco Marchetti was one of the ways and nothing else to me,

I locked the phone without replying. The bridal shower was mid-morning.

I chose a dress in pale green that seemed appropriate. I fixed my hair with the attention the event required. I answered my mother’s questions about the seating arrangement with the air of a woman who

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14:42 Sat, Sep 196.

Chapter 106

had nothing important to do.

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I arrived smiling at everyone, accepted a glass of something sparkling and moved through the room with the ease of someone who belonged there completely.

The dramatic irony of it was not lost on me. I was performing the role and I could see myself performing it like some kind of conscious out of body experience.

I found Denise; she was talking to someone near the window. Apparently, the person must have said something she found hilarious because she bent over laughing and had to stifle the sound and stop a jet of whatever she had been drinking from flying out of her mouth.

The quality of her laugh made me frown a bit. It made her a person and not the obstacle or competition that needed to be handled. She was the complication that had taken my rightful place besides Kieran. Complications shouldn’t be laughing like that.

People did. I understood something then that I wished I hadn’t understood. Denise was living in her life oblivious to the fact that the space she took was an inconvenience to someone else. She had nearly died because I had decided her existence was inconvenient.

I hurriedly took a sip of the drink to push down whatever was trying to dig its way out of my stomach.

Kieran came into the room at some point. He crossed toward Denise, whispering something in her ears. He said something else, very quietly, and I noted the slight resistance in her eyes followed by the compliance that looked like a choice rather than a concession. He had told her to sit down and she did.

He didn’t have to act the care. He simply moved toward her the way people moved toward things that mattered without requiring a decision to do so.

My whole justification for doing what I did that seemed reasonable just crashed to the ground. I had always assumed that Denise was a temporary person who could be easily replaced but behavior didn’t fit that certainty anymore.

I looked away. Later I reached for my phone.

Marco’s message was still there. My thumbs hovered over the screen as I began to think about a reply to it. Then I looked up and saw Kieran watching me. He didn’t move towards me or make any gestures he just stood and simply watched me from across the room. There was nothing to say or do because his stare carried nothing for me to give any reply to.

I smiled and he still gave me nothing.

I held the smile and then looked away first, which was the correct move, and returned the phone to my bag without sending anything.

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