Chapter 497
[ 525 words ]
Chapter 497:
She smiled, a faint, sleepy expression of contentment. The thought of sleeping in the room he grew up in, surrounded by the faint echoes of his past, felt right. It felt like coming home. She turned and followed Agnes up the grand, curving staircase, her footsteps silent on the thick Persian runner.
General Romero stood at the bottom of the staircase, listening until Caroline’s soft footsteps faded down the second-floor hallway. A look of fierce, unyielding determination settled on his face.
He turned to Carson, who had been waiting silently in the shadows of the foyer.
“The girl is exhausted,” the General stated. “She is not to be woken up. Under any circumstances.”
The next morning, Caroline’s internal clock, honed by years of early nursing shifts, tried to pull her from the depths of sleep. A subconscious alarm went off in her brain: the stew. Get up. Start the stew. She had a point to prove. She wasn’t some decorative freeloader. She was a contributor, a partner. She would earn her place with her own two hands.
But her body staged a rebellion. The profound, bone-deep exhaustion from weeks in the disaster zone, an accumulated debt of adrenaline and sleepless nights, finally came to collect. It was a leaden weight, pulling her back down into the soft, enveloping darkness of the mattress.
In the bedside table, the digital alarm clock she had set the night before remained dark and silent. Its power cord lay coiled on the floor, unplugged hours earlier by a dutiful Agnes acting on the General’s explicit command.
𝖢𝗵іne𝘴𝘦 𝗻𝘰𝗏е𝗹ѕ 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘯𝘀𝘭𝘢t𝗲𝘥 𝗼𝗇 𝘨а𝗅n𝗈𝘷еls.с𝗈𝗺
At eleven o’clock, the General was pacing the great hall again, but this time his anxiety was of a different sort. He frowned at the silent staircase. Was she ill? Had she caught something in that wretched camp?
By noon, a sliver of bright sunlight had managed to pierce a gap in the heavy, blackout velvet curtains, striping across the bed. Caroline didn’t stir.
Downstairs, in the formal dining room, the rest of the family had assembled for lunch. The long, polished mahogany table gleamed, set with sterling silver and sparkling crystal.
Harper Romero, dressed in a Chanel suit that cost more than a nurse’s monthly salary, cast a pointed look at the empty chair to the General’s right. Her lips pressed into a thin line, but beneath her practiced sneer, a deep, churning unease coiled in her stomach. She had heard what happened at Union Station. By now, the whispers had rippled through the family’s network of gossip: how Carson Finch had publicly declared Caroline as Mrs. Romero, how the name had shut down every doubt in the station. It was no longer just a paper marriage. Caroline’s position in this household was becoming real, public, and terrifyingly solid. And if Caroline had the General’s ear, if she had his affection, then every scheme Harper and her mother had been nursing could crumble before it even launched. She had to find cracks. She had to find them now.
Agnes, standing rigidly by the sideboard, made the formal announcement. “Mrs. Romero is still resting from her journey. The General has given her leave to sleep as long as she requires.”
.
.
.
If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.