The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53 Finding Her Weakness (2)

“Is she?” Sarah’s strange eyes gleamed. “People get complacent. They get comfortable. They start to think they’re safe.” She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something floral and faintly medicinal. “She’s a woman, Xan. She has routines. She has wants. She didn’t marry a dying man for love. She married him for protection. But protection is a cage. And even birds in beautiful cages get restless.”

She reached out and took his hand. Her skin was always cold. “You wanted a grand spectacle. A public burning but that failed. So now we work in the shadows. We find her weakness.”

“What weakness?” Xan asked, his voice gruff. “She’s an iceberg. I thought I knew her but I was wrong, I didn’t know her at all.”

“Everyone has a lever,” Seraphine whispered, her thumb stroking his knuckle. “Her father is one. He’s a proud and stupid man. He’s trying to spin this marriage into gold for himself. We can use that. Make him desperate. A desperate man will do desperate things… like trying to contact his estranged daughter or setting up a meeting to ‘reconcile.“”

Xan’s mind began to turn, the strategic part waking up. “We get her to leave the house. For a family meeting.”

“Exactly. Somewhere public, but controlled. Somewhere we can watch. We don’t grab her or make a scene.” Seraphine’s voice dropped even lower, a secret just for him. “We just show her that her new walls aren’t high enough. That her past is still out here, waiting for her.”

Xan saw it. Not a confrontation, but a psychological strike. Showing Elera that she wasn’t untouchable. Shaking her sense of security. Making her look over her shoulder in her own fortress.

Seraphine rested her head against his chest, but she wasn’t relaxing into the embrace. She was still, like a statue. “I don’t want bricks, Xan,” she whispered, her voice muffled against his shirt. “I want her to feel what I felt. The walls closing in. The helplessness. The cold. I want her to know there’s no escape.” She pulled back just enough to look up at him, and in her pale eyes, he saw a reflection of the obsession that had consumed him for years. It was a mirror, and it was terrifying. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Xan said, the vow falling easily from his lips. It was the one thing in his life that felt true. “She will pay. However long it takes.”

As they stood together on the gently rocking yacht, a new plan took shape in the dark. A campaign of fear and pressure designed to lure the prey from its den, or to spoil the sanctuary from within.

Xan looked out at the invisible horizon where the cliff house stood. He no longer just saw a man who had stolen his fiancée. He saw a wall to be dismantled.