Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 62

Chapter 62

Chapter 62

BIANCA

The card burned in my pocket for three weeks before I finally worked up the courage to call.

I’d pulled it out a dozen times, traced my fingers over the simple black numbers, rehearsed what I’d say when Vera answered. But each time, fear won out. Fear of what I might learn. Fear of opening doors I couldn’t close again. Fear of becoming the kind of target my mother had been.

But Louis’s curse wasn’t getting better. The temporary fix I’d managed was holding, but barely. I could feel it weakening day by day, the dark magic eating away at my work like acid through cloth. And if I was going to break it completely, I needed to understand who’d cast it and why.

Which meant I needed Vera’s help.

I waited until Rivera left for one of his mysterious phone meetings, until Louis was absorbed in building an elaborate LEGO castle in the playroom. Then I slipped into the library, closed the door, and dialed before I could talk myself out of it again.

She answered on the second ring. “I wondered when you’d call.”

“You said you knew my mother,” I said without preamble. “That you could tell me about her work. I need to know.”

A long pause. “Not over the phone. Can you meet me today? There’s a café in the industrial district, corner of Fifth and Ashwood.

Two o’clock.”

The industrial district. Rivera had mentioned it once in passing, his voice carefully neutral as he’d suggested I avoid that part of the city. “Wrong kind of people,” he’d said. “Not safe for someone without pack protection.”

But I needed answers more than I needed safety.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“Come alone,” Vera added. “And Bianca? Be careful who you trust. Even the people who seem safe.”

She hung up before I could ask what she meant.

I told Rivera I was meeting future colleagues from the hospital for lunch. The lie came easily, sliding off my tongue with practiced smoothness that made me feel sick.

But this was different, I told myself. This was about protecting Louis. About understanding the curse that had nearly killed him. Rivera would understand if he knew.

Except I wasn’t ready to tell him. Wasn’t ready to explain about Vera, about my mother’s past, about the dangerous investigation I’d been conducting in secret.

So I lied.

Rivera looked up from his laptop when I mentioned it, his expression unreadable. “Which colleagues?”

“Just some people from the staff,” I said, the details getting more elaborate as I tried to make it sound convincing. “They wanted to welcome me officially, talk about the exam coming up. Nothing exciting.”

“Mm.” He turned back to his computer, but something in his posture had shifted. “What time will you be back?”

“By three, probably. Louis will be fine until then, right?“.

“Louis will be fine.” But his voice was cool, distant in a way I wasn’t used to.

I almost came clean right then. Almost told him the truth about where I was really going, who I was meeting. But the words

Chapter 62

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stuck in my throat, and I left instead, feeling his gaze on my back all the way to the door.

The industrial district looked exactly like Rivera’s warnings had suggested–all crumbling warehouses and abandoned factories, the kind of place where bad things happened to people who made poor choices.

I parked my car in front of the café, a surprisingly charming little place tucked between two derelict buildings. Through the window, I could see mismatched furniture, local art on the walls, the warm glow of Edison bulbs.

Vera sat in the back corner, her body angled so she could watch both the door and the rear exit. She’d aged since our encounter at the grocery store, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed the deep lines around her eyes, the gray threading through her dark hair.

“You came,” she said as I slid into the seat across from her.

“You knew I would.”

“I hoped.” She pushed a cup of coffee toward me. “I already ordered for you. Black, two sugars. Same way Elara took hers.”

The casual mention of my mother’s habits made my throat tight. “You really knew her well.”

“She was my sister.” Vera’s eyes met mine, and I saw the grief there, old and deep. “Not by blood, but by choice. We worked together for years before the council came for us.”

Sister. My mother had never mentioned having someone that close, someone she’d considered family.

But then again, my mother had never told me much about her life before I was born. Before we’d become rogues running from something she’d never fully explained.

“The council,” I repeated. “What did they want with curse–breakers?”

“Control.” Vera’s voice was bitter. “Curse–breakers are dangerous to people in power. We can undo their work, expose their methods, break the magical chains they use to keep others in line. So about fifteen years ago, the Council of Elders decided to eliminate the threat.”

She pulled a worn photograph from her pocket and slid it across the table. It showed a group of about twenty people, all wearing the same tattoo I’d seen on Vera’s arm. All smiling, standing in front of what looked like a training facility.

“This was our network,” Vera explained. “Curse–breakers from across the territory. We worked outside official pack structures, helping people the councils had abandoned or actively harmed. Breaking curses that were often placed by powerful pack members to maintain control or exact revenge.”

I studied the faces in the photo, searching for my mother. Found her in the back row, younger than I’d ever seen her, her arm around Vera’s shoulders.

“What happened to them?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“The council discovered us. Systematically hunted us down.” Vera’s voice went flat, emotionless. “They executed some publicly, made examples of them. Others disappeared into prisons no one talks about. A few of us managed to go into hiding”

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