Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 191

Chapter 191

RIVERA

The study felt smaller than usual with three people in it.

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Klaus had arrived at noon with Elijah, which was not unusual in itself-they came to the house regularly enough that Louis had stopped treating their presence as an event and started treating it as ordinary, which I had taken as a sign of something good settling in all of us. What was unusual was the specific quality of purposefulness they’d brought with them today, the sense of people who had come with an agenda they hadn’t announced yet and were deciding how to raise it.

I had made coffee. We had talked about the intelligence work for twenty minutes, the ongoing effort to locate Voss’s preparation site, the communication failures with Thorne’s office, the tactical profile of the attackers who had gone after Theo Morrison four days ago in Silver Moon territory. All of it real, all of it necessary, and underneath all of it the thing none of us had said yet.

Klaus said it.

“How is she?” he asked, setting down his mug.

I looked at the desk for a moment. “She needs time,” I said.

“That’s not an answer,” Elijah said, not unkindly.

“It’s the answer I have.” I leaned back in my chair. “She’s been home for two days. She’s tired. She’s processing something difficult. I’m giving her room to do that.”

Klaus was quiet for a moment in the way that meant he was choosing his next words rather than working up to saying the ones he’d already chosen. With Klaus, there was a difference, and I’d learned to read it.

“Louis asked Roy something,” he said.

I looked at him.

“When they were together at the safe house. The last evening.” Klaus kept his voice even, which was its own kind of signal — the evenness he used when the content of what he was saying was something he wanted me to hear without the distraction of his own reaction to it. “He asked Roy if Bianca hated him.”

The study was very quiet.

“Roy told him she didn’t,” Klaus continued. “Which is the right answer. But Matthew, the question is the thing. A five-year-old asking a near-stranger if his mother hates him-”

“She doesn’t hate him,” I said immediately.

“I know that,” Klaus said. “The point isn’t whether it’s true. The point is that Louis believes it might be, which means something about how she’s been with him has given him room to construct that possibility.” He paused. “What else did he say to Roy?”

I waited.

“He said he felt like a replacement,” Klaus said. “His words, according to Roy. A replacement that didn’t work well.” Another pause, shorter this time. “He said maybe she would be happier if she went back to Theo.”

I sat with that for a moment.

Louis. My son, who had identified Bianca as his mother with the absolute certainty of someone who’d found something they’d been looking for and recognized it on sight. Who had given her the notebook with the list of things he wanted to do with a mother who stayed, and who she had looked at and chosen, clearly and without reservation, in a way that had changed both of

them.

Chapter 191

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My son believed he was a replacement that hadn’t worked.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said.

“Yes,” Klaus said. “You should. But Rivera-” He stopped, and the pause had something in it I wasn’t used to hearing from Klaus, something careful. “Not just Louis. Bianca.”

ked at him.

much as she’s hurting,” h ng about Matthew and Si de that radius.” He pau her. And now he lim naging her emotion ncertain of his wel

I didn’t answer in

Because Klau

time, that

evidenc

ld be aware of what’s happening with him. Because right now, whatever she’s ything that happened – she’s carrying it in a way that has a radius. And Louis ow her from room to room. You know that. He couldn’t get enough of being or the living room, and he doesn’t go looking for her, and that’s not Louis ouis protecting himself because something in how she’s been has made him

w he wasn’t wrong, and the thing I’d been telling myself for two days – that she needed processing and not directed at anyone, that it would resolve ther she intended it to or not, and the diretion was toward my son.

was running up against the

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tched her with him for months. I ing. I’m saying that people who a oing it. And Louis doesn’t have th it as about him.”

rough most of this, which wa eone who had something to

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r him.” He leaned forward slightly. ometimes hurt the people nearest to them and that the withdrawal isn’t about him.

glanced at him. He was looking at his coffee with ether the moment was right.

thinks Matthew is

went to his street. That she saw Mia’s car and the lights were on used. “That’s the thing she’s been carrying. Not just Silver Moon

his house and she’s drawn a conclusion from it, and that conclusion

la was there. That’s what she saw.

泡酒

ew Morrison’s household since we returned,” Elijah said, with the slight

Something without being asked and was aware it might be questioned. “Because the

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