Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 192

Chapter 192

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Chapter 192

Chapter 192

RIVERA

I sat very still.

Two nights ago Mia’s car. Th over som

with her cold tea, telling me she’d sat outside that house for twenty minutes and seen The particular quality of it that I’d read as grief over something confirmed rather than grief

What

as Callahan’s, dark in the street, and she’d sat in the dark already carrying the weight of everything and had seen what she was afraid of seeing.

ken the account at face value because I trusted her, because she didn’t construct things, because her was almost always precise.

xhausted and emotionally exposed and ound his way to Mia, had wrapped up

gs to even precise people.

ow that’s what happened,” Elijah s

n sitting with for two days is a con

ouring everything,” Klaus finis ght place to be or whether t

d at the window.

afternoon was gre garden had the

ife right now

that street already carrying the fear that Matthew had marriage in a way that closed every door.

“I’m saying it’s possible. And if it is possible, then what incomplete evidence, and it’s-” He stopped.

Louis. How she’s with you. Whether she believes that staying here as building is built on something that’s already over.”

ay that had given up on weather and settled into a neutral holding pattern. tion it hadn’t been getting, which was a fair description of several things in

said things that needed to be said clearly and without construction. “Matthew er he did and however badly it went she loved him. I’ve always known that. The

1. It just became part of the damage.”

–

he’s found his way to a life that works, that he’s become someone better, and that Mia is ot a small thing to carry.”

g,” I said. “Because I don’t know if it’s wrong. I know what Elijah has told me about a car that

is not the same as knowing anything for certain.”

But you can talk to her. Not to c

wo days doing laundry and

ng rather than sitting

to-” He stopped, chose differently. “She’s

hinks and asks questions and moves

The woman in your house right

ke herself. And w

King B

1 trom the very

ath of it was

Louis believing he was a replacement that hadn’t worked.

YOR

“I’ll talk to her,” I said

“Tonight,” Klaus said. It wasn’t a command. It was Klaus knowing me well enough to know that I would find reasons to delay it. if he left the timing unspecified, not because I was avoiding it but because I was afraid of what it cost her if I was wrong, and afraid of what it cost us if I was right

“Tonight,” I agreed.

Klaus picked up his mug. Elijah leaned back slightly, the relief of someone who’d said the difficult thing and had it received without damage. The study settled back into the ordinary register of three people who’d been working through something serious and had reached the point where there was nothing more to say that would be useful.

“The intelligence work,” I said, after a moment. “The anchor sites. Anything new?”

“Some,” Klaus said, and his voice shifted back into the professional register. “Roy has a possible lead on a secondary location somewhere they might have moved operations after the assembly night. It’s not confirmed yet.”

“When will it be confirmed?”

“Tomorrow, maybe. The day after.” He paused. “Rivera. We are going to find her.”

I knew he meant Bianca. The real question in the room that we hadn’t said out loud, the one that sat underneath all the Louis and Matthew and Mia questions – where was she, what was happening to her, what was Voss doing with the days she had her

“I know,” I said,

“The window is shrinking,” he said. “For Voss. Which means the pressure on what she’s trying to do is increasing. And pressure makes things visible.” He set down his mug and stood, which was Klaus’s signal that the meeting had concluded and we were moving into the part where action replaced talking. “We find Bianca. We stop the ritual. And in the meantime–

“I talk to her,” I said.

“Tonight,” he said again.

He and Elijah left.

I sat in the study alone for a while, in the particular quiet that followed a conversation that had changed the shape of how I was thinking about something.

She had gone to that street. Had sat in her car in the dark and seen something that had confirmed her tear and driven back without going in. Had come home and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window and been quiet in a way that had been getting quieter for two days.

And Louis had asked Roy if she hated him.

I stood up,

The house had the afternoon sounds of a space that was occupied but quiet

somewhere above me, Louis was in his room.

doing whatever he was doing in the careful contained way he’d been doing things since we’d come home. Bianca was somewhere in the house, present and not present in the specific way of the past two days.

I was going to talk to Louis first. Because he was five and he was carrying something he shouldn’t be carrying alone, and because some things couldn’t wait for tonight.

Then I would find her.

And I would say the true thing, or as close to it as I could get with the partial information I had.

That was what we did now.