Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Chapter 100

RIVERA

“From what?” Klaus demanded. “From information? From choices? From the reality of her situation?” He moved closer, his expression intense. “Or are you trying to protect yourself from the possibility that if she knows her son is here, she might choose to see him?”

The words landed like a physical blow.

“That’s what this is really about,” Klaus continued, his voice gentler now. “You’re terrified that if Bianca knows. And that might make her reconsider this new life she’s built with you and Louis.”

I couldn’t answer. I promised them I would tell her, but I still hadnt brought it up.

“You’re afraid she’ll leave,” Elijah said quietly. “So you’re controlling information to prevent her from making choices you don’t like. Which, ironically, is exactly what her ex–husband did to her.”

The comparison made me flinch.

“I’m not–I would never-”

“You’re doing it right now,” Roy said, not unkindly. “Withholding information about her son because you’re scared of what she might choose if she has all the facts. That’s control, Lucian. However well–intentioned, it’s still control.”

I stood abruptly, moving to the window to stare out at the guards positioned around the property.

“I don’t know how to tell her,” I admitted. “Any of it. That I’m the Alpha King, that her ex–husband is here, that her son is receiving therapy twenty minutes from where she works. How do I explain keeping all of that from her without making it sound like I’ve been manipulating her this entire time?”

“You start with the truth,” Klaus said. “You tell her you were scared. That you made bad choices out of fear of losing her. That you know you should have been honest from the beginning.”

“And if she leaves?”

“Then she leaves,” Klaus said bluntly. “And you deal with it. But Lucian, you can’t build a relationship on lies and omissions. It doesn’t work. It never works.”

I thought about Bianca in the guest suite right now, working to save Vera’s life.

She deserved better than this. Better than a man who claimed to love her while keeping massive secrets.

“There’s a complication with the Matthew situation,” Elijah said, pulling up something on his tablet. “According to my contacts, Matthew is staying at the Riverside Apartments. The same complex where Dr. Fisher has her practice.”

“So?”

“So that’s three blocks from BloodMoon General Hospital,” Elijah continued. “Where Bianca works. The chances of them crossing paths aren’t just non–zero–they’re actually quite high.”

My chest tightened. “How high?”

“Given their respective schedules and locations?” Elijah calculated quickly. “I’d estimate a seventy percent chance they encounter each other within the next two weeks if Matthew’s therapy continues on its current schedule.”

“And if he recognizes her?” Mikael asked.

“Chaos,” Roy said simply. “Complete chaos. Because either Matthew believes he’s seeing a ghost, or he realizes Bianca faked

Chapter 100

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her death. Either way, it exposes everything.”

I moved back to my desk, feeling trapped by circumstances I’d created through my own cowardice.

“You have to tell her,” Klaus said, his voice firm but not unkind. “Tonight. Before she finds out another way. Before Matthew sees her or someone mentions it casually or the universe decides to stop protecting you from your own poor decisions.”

“She’s trying to save a woman’s life right now-

“Then tell her tomorrow,” Klaus interrupted. “First thing. Before she goes to work, before anything else happens. You sit her down and you tell her everything. The Alpha King revelation, Matthew being in the city, all of it.”

“That’s going to destroy her,” I said quietly.

“Maybe,” Klaus agreed. “But it’s better than letting her find out when Matthew walks into her hospital cafeteria and has a breakdown seeing his supposedly dead wife buying coffee.”

He was right. They were all right.

I’d been so focused on protecting what Bianca and I were building that I’d failed to see I was actually undermining it with every secret I kept.

“There’s one more thing you need to consider,” Roy said, his historian’s perspective cutting through. “If Matthew is here receiving therapy, and if that therapy is successful, at some point he’s going to want closure around Bianca’s death. He might request access to medical records, cremation documentation, anything that provides official confirmation of what happened.”

“And those records are falsified,” I finished. “Created by Dr. Hartwick before he was killed.”

“Exactly. Which means if Matthew digs too deeply, if he starts questioning the official story, the whole carefully constructed

narrative starts to unravel.”

I sat down heavily. “How did this get so complicated?”

“You made it complicated,” Elijah said. “By trying to protect everyone from difficult truths instead of trusting them to handle

reality.”

Klaus moved to sit across from me, his expression more sympathetic now.

“Lucian, I understand why you did this. After your wife died, after you lost her so suddenly, the fear of losing someone else you love–it’s overwhelming. It makes you want to control everything, prevent every possible source of pain.”

“I just wanted to keep her safe,” I said.

“I know. But safety built on lies isn’t real safety. It’s just borrowed time.” Klaus leaned forward. “You need to tell Branca everything. Give her the information she needs to make informed choices about her life, her son, her future. And then you need to trust that what you’ve built together is strong enough to survive the truth.”

“And if it’s not?”

Klaus’s expression softened. “Then it was never going to work anyway. But Lucian, I’ve seen the way she looks at you. The way she is with Louis. The way she’s built a life here with both of you. That’s not going to disappear just because you’ve been an idiot about timing.”

“A significant idiot,” Mikael added. “Let’s not minimize the scale of the idiocy.”

Despite everything, I almost smiled.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll tell her tomorrow. Everything. Before she leaves for work”

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