Please Me Daddy (Gracie) novel Chapter 223

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What is Mona

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What a shame

My heart began pounding so loudly that I could barely hear anything else.

“After the accident,” she continued casually, as if she were discussing the weather rather than confessing to deception on a massive scale, “I obviously couldn’t keep my old face. Too many people would recognize me. So this face,” she gestured to herself lightly, “is not the one I was born with. It’s just another mask. I created a new identity and started working in Apollo’s company.”

Her tone was calm, but nothing about her words was calm.

My mind felt like it was splitting apart as I tried to connect everything she was saying. A fake death. A lookalike. A new face. Working under a false name in the same company as the man she once married.

This was not one of the possibilities I had prepared myself for.

I had imagined confronting a jealous rival, a business enemy, someone seeking revenge for power or money. I had imagined cruelty, greed, and hatred.

I had not imagined this.

I turned to River. “River… what is going on? Is this really true?”

He nodded. His expression remained indifferent, and detached, but his body subtly shifted so that he stood slightly in front of me, shielding me instinctively from Eloise and the men behind her.

My heart sank at the silent confirmation in his posture.

“H–how do you know all of this?” I asked, my voice trembling now despite my effort to stay composed. “And what did she mean when she said you got along with her uncle?”

River exhaled slowly before answering. “Grace,” he said quietly, “you know her uncle too.”

I frowned in confusion. “I do?”

He nodded. “Her uncle is Austin. Apollo’s secretary.”

The world seemed to tilt again beneath my feet. I staggered half a step backward, my eyes widening in disbelief.

“W–what?”

“A year ago,” River continued, “I started suspecting something was wrong with Austin. His behavior didn’t sit right with me, so I kept an eye on him without telling anyone. Recently, he approached me himself.”

“He told me the truth. He said Eloise has killed many people over the years. He said he couldn’t let her kill you or anyone my uncle cares about. He didn’t want to involve Apollo directly, because that would expose too much and put him at risk. So he asked me to help stop her quietly.”

I stared at him, my thoughts racing uncontrollably.

Austin. The loyal secretary who had been by Apollo’s side for years. The calm, dependable presence in the background of so many critical moments.

He knew.

He knew she was alive. He knew she was a killer. And he had been trying to stop her in secret.

My heart pounded painfully in my chest as I looked between River and Eloise, realizing that the web of lies surrounding us was far more tangled than I had ever imagined.

River’s jaw tightened as he continued speaking. “I would have exposed everything already,” he said, his eyes never leaving

13

6 shar

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Eloise, “but she was more cunning than I expected. She planned everything carefully. Every move, every connection. Even if we had gathered enough evidence to send her to prison, the Reed family and the Jones family would have been implicated in the scandal. The damage would have been irreversible.”

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“So I waited, I planned carefully and made sure that when we acted, it would end cleanly without dragging both families into the mud. But…” His gaze darkened. “She must have realized Austin was slipping out of her control. She must have seen through him. That’s why she moved before I could stop her.”

His eyes shifted briefly toward me. “That’s why she kidnapped you.”

My body began trembling uncontrollably. I could not calm myself even if I tried. Every few seconds there was a new revelation, and a new truth that shattered everything I thought I understood.

I had never suspected River. I had only wondered why he was barely present in the company lately, why he seemed distracted, why he disappeared without explanation. I was confused. I never imagined he was planning to save our lives.

Swallowing hard, I finally found my voice. “Where is Austin?”

Even if Austin had once betrayed Apollo, even if he had made terrible choices, River was standing here because of him. That meant he had tried to fix his mistakes. That meant there was still something good in him.

Eloise’s lips curved into a slow, satisfied smile at my question.

“My uncle?” she repeated. “You don’t need to worry about him. After all, he should already be dead by now.”

River and I froze at the same time, and he frowned. “What do you mean?”

Eloise sighed as though we were exhausting her. “Do you want to know why a good man like him was helping me all this time?” she asked, her tone almost playful. “It wasn’t loyalty. It wasn’t greed. It was love. He wanted to protect his boss. The boy he practically raised. Apollo was like a son to him. So I made him a promise. I told him that if he did exactly what I asked, I would leave Apollo alone.”

“And to make sure he stayed loyal to me, I poisoned him. I’m the only one with the antidote,” she said, lifting her shoulders in a careless shrug. “The moment he betrays me, I stop giving it to him. Simple.”

River’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“And that is exactly what he did. He betrayed me. Which means by now, the poison should have destroyed his organs completely. He’s probably dead already.”

She looked almost disappointed as she clicked her tongue. “I can’t believe he chose to die for someone else when I am his own blood. What a shame.”

I stared at her, unable to speak, and move.

My mind struggled to accept what I was hearing. She had poisoned her own uncle. She had used his love and loyalty against him. She had watched him suffer slowly, knowing he would either obey her or die.

At that moment, I was no longer looking at a person.

I was looking at a monster, not someone driven by anger, or someone blinded by jealousy. But a cold, calculated monster who felt nothing while destroying the people who loved her.

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Only a monster would do what you’ve done

Sarah

It amused me.

Watching Grace’s face as I unraveled everything in front of her was far more entertaining than I had imagined it would be. 1 studied her closely, memorizing every flicker in her expression as she tried desperately to piece the truth together, as if understanding it would somehow make it less horrifying. She looked at me like I was a monster, like I was something inhuman standing before her.

That look fascinated me.

I have always found it interesting how people who can never understand someone like me try so hard to force meaning into actions that were never meant to fit into their moral little boxes. They stare at you as if you are broken, when in reality, you simply see the world more clearly than they ever could.

A smile curved on my lips as I watched both of them.

River looked furious. His entire body was tense, his fists clenched so tightly that I could almost hear his bones protest. It looked as though he wanted nothing more than to walk over and strangle me with his bare hands for what I had done. The only reason he did not move was because Grace was standing behind him. He was protecting her.

How touching.

My uncle and River must have grown quite close over the months they worked together in secret. The news of my uncle’s inevitable death clearly affected him more than he expected. I could see it in his eyes.

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