The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 24

a’s fingers froze over the screen. Her heart gave a funny little jump. He was reading her book. The book she’d poured a piece of her real, unfiltered mind into. The thriller about a woman who assumes a dead woman’s identity to uncover a conspiracy, only to find she can’t remember which life is real.

She had to be careful. Elera: I think I’ve seen the cover. Is it good?

Drakonius: It’s exceptional. The psychological detail is… unnervingly accurate. The author understands isolation, the weight of secret identities. It feels less like fiction and more like a confession.

She stared at the words, a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning creeping up her spine. Unnervingly accurate. A confession. Did he suspect? Or was he just a perceptive reader?

Elera: High praise. You’ll have to lend it to me sometime. She wrote, forcing a casual tone.

Drakonius: I would like that. I think you would appreciate the protagonist. She is a master of wearing masks, but the author never lets you forget the woman underneath. It’s a rare thing.

The conversation was veering into dangerous, intimate territory. He was talking about her book, about the themes she lived every day, and he had no idea he was talking to the author. It was the strangest, most surreal feeling. A part of her she’d kept completely separate was now being discussed in the quiet, text–based intimacy they were building.

Before she could formulate a reply, another message came through.

Drakonius: I have to go. Another meeting where I will be instructing my board on the merits of a nine o’clock bedtime. Wish me luck.

And Drakonius Vex, in his quiet, dying fortress, had stumbled into the edges of two of them without even knowing it. He knew the doctor. He was reading the author. He had no clue about the fashion mogul, or the true scale of the fortune he was inviting into his life with a pre–nuptial agreement.

A slow, determined smile touched her lips. The gala was Xan’s stage. But she was writing the script. And when the curtain fell on his little drama, she would walk away, not as a humiliated runaway bride, but as a woman stepping into a new role. A role that would finally, perhaps, allow all the scattered pieces of her soul to exist in the same room.

She just had to survive the performance first. And with a man like Xan Valdris, the final act was always the most dangerous.