The Wife He Forgot to Marry (Winona and Yule) novel Chapter 535

He had expected her to be paralyzed by fear. Given his upbringing in the Goddard family, dodging assassination attempts and poisoned food was practically a rite of passage. He was conditioned to handle it.

But Winona came from a normal, quiet world. She was never supposed to be exposed to this kind of darkness. He had spent the entire terrifying flight agonizing over how to comfort her, only to arrive and find she had clinically dismantled the threat herself.

Winona rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not exactly made of glass, Stefan. Plus, after surviving your mother, Maeve, and Ophelia, my tolerance for crazy is at an all-time high. Obviously, I was scared, but panic doesn't solve problems. Taking action does."

She had been forced to adapt, but she didn't view it as a tragedy. If she was going to stand beside a man like Stefan Goddard, she had to forge herself in iron.

Stefan stared at her, his emotions a tangled mess. A part of him was intensely proud of the fierce woman she was becoming, while another part loathed that she had to experience the ugly side of his world at all.

***

The next morning, Margaret received word that her son had ordered a private jet through a category-four typhoon just to get back to Riverton. She was incandescent with rage.

"Does he have a death wish?! Risking his life in that kind of weather for Winona Jowett!"

Her hatred for Winona deepened into something venomous. Stefan had never been impulsive before. It was that woman poisoning his judgment.

Ophelia was having breakfast at the Goddard estate when the news broke. Hearing Margaret's outburst, her eyes darkened.

Retreating to the guest suite, she locked the door and dialed her sister's number, her voice trembling with fury. "If you managed to poison the water, why didn't you use a lethal dose and finish her off? You're dragging this out, and now Stefan is more obsessed with her than ever. What am I supposed to do now?!"

The woman on the other end of the line let out a dry laugh. "You should be thanking me I managed to get nitrites into their secure water supply undetected. Do you have any idea how tight Stefan's security detail is? After this stunt, they'll be testing every crumb of food that enters that penthouse. Slipping anything else in is going to be virtually impossible."

Suddenly, horror gripped Ophelia. "Wait—what if Stefan had drank that water?! Listen to me, whatever you do to Winona, you make sure Stefan doesn't get a scratch on him!"

"Oh, please," her sister sneered. "Keep crying over a man who just flew a jet through a typhoon for another woman. He doesn't give a damn about you, Ophelia. Stop wasting your energy on romantic delusions. Men are stepping stones for wealth and power. When are you finally going to get that through your head?"

A flash of genuine pain crossed Ophelia's eyes. "You don't understand. You can't just turn feelings off."

***

When Wynne heard Stefan had emergency-landed in Riverton the night before, she knew exactly what it meant.

He and his uncle's side of the family had their fair share of vicious corporate warfare, but slipping poison into someone's home? They wouldn't stoop to that.

After having lunch with Winona and leaving a trusted vet tech to monitor Biscuit, they both headed to their respective offices.

The rain was still pouring, but the hurricane-force winds had died down, leaving traffic mostly unaffected.

At Goddard headquarters, several executives were summoned for an impromptu meeting. Finding the CEO sitting at the head of the table left them utterly stunned.

"I heard from the Capital branch that he was in back-to-back meetings late last night," one VP whispered. "With the typhoon, there's no way he flew commercial. Did he really come back?"

Nolan Archer, who was well-connected thanks to his friendship with Samantha, leaned in. "He didn't fly in this morning. He flew in last night. During the absolute peak of the storm."

The executives exchanged shocked glances.

Risking a private flight in a typhoon? Who exactly was waiting for him in Riverton that made the invincible Stefan Goddard completely lose his mind?