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Chapter 23
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2024-04-19 11:28:20Related chapters
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 24
[Atlas] Watching Cordelia fall into the street, knowing that I was the one who put her there, made my blood run cold. Regardless of how things may have turned out between us, I would never do anything to risk her safety. And yet, that is exactly what I did when I let my anger get the worst of me. I hope she can forgive me. I was going to send the rest of her things from our house to her new address, but it’s close enough to my office that I decided to hand deliver it. That way I can check in on her at the same time and make sure her injuries do not need greater care. She may not be my wife anymore, but I will always feel honor-bound to be responsible for her. It is what her sister would have wanted. But also, it is what I want. I want her to know that she can always depend on me and that she never needs to fear me again. The drive to her place from my office is short. Soon I am standing on the sidewalk underneath her balcony, looking up at the warm light coming from her
Last Updated : 2024-04-19Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 25
[Cordelia] Jude pauses at the door, his face a bit uncertain as he touches his lips where I had just kissed him for the first time. “I know this is sudden but I was wondering if maybe you’d be open to going out later today?” he asks with a small smile. “Maybe we could head to the beach, get a bit more sunshine, and you could come to my lab after,” his eyes are bright with hope, “ What do you think?” I usually avoid the beach. I am terrified of the water. But he looks so earnest and hopeful that I agree. “Great!” he claps his hands. “That’s settled. We’ll do a little swimming and then…” “Swimming?” my nervous voice hitches, raising an octave. The problem is, I never learned how to swim. I’ve always been a bit afraid of the water. Silly, I know, living near the coast. But I rarely made it out to the beach. I tell Jude all of this and he laughs. “Oh don’t worry about that,” he brushes aside my fear. “I am an excellent swimmer. I used to spend my summers in the Catalina Islands.
Last Updated : 2024-04-23Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 26
[Cordelia]Just as I am about to give up, a strong set of arms wrap around my torso, pulling me up to the surface. “Hang in there, Cordy,” his words are like a prayer. It is strange, but my mystery rescuer sounds a lot like Atlas. No, it couldn’t be. He’d never call me “Cordy.” He hates that nickname.Someone is pressing down on my chest. Their lips press air into my lungs and I am turned to my side so that the seawater can cough it’s way out of my stomach and chest. The saltwater burns as it leaves my body, but I don’t care as I take a deep, grateful breath. I open my eyes. Kneeling next to me is Jude, who is covering me with a warm, thick towel, his eyes full of worry, and someone who looks a lot like Atlas.“Clark?” I realize as my eyes regain their focus. “How? I?”“I like to come to this beach and surf when I’m in town,” he points to his board, the one that carried me to shore. “It’s a lucky thing that I found you when I did. We almost lost you forever.”I take a few minutes to
Last Updated : 2024-04-23Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 27
[Atlas] When Sydney said “bonfire” with some “friends, " she didn’t tell me that it would be more of a nightclub on the beach. Future Hollywood starlets in bikinis mingle with shirtless college athletes with sculpted abs and perfect California beach tans. The closer we get to it, the more I am certain that coming out tonight was a bad idea. I am in no mood to socialize, especially with a bunch of overgrown children. Sydney leads me to a group of jocks wearing board shorts and tank tops. They are all giving Sydney appreciative glances as they see her approach in her bright bikini and cut-offs. “This is my boyfriend, Atlas,” she announces proudly. She tells me their names but I don’t bother with remembering them. I don’t plan on spending time with them in the future. “Hey Boyfriend Atlas,” one of the large college boys laughs as he punches me playfully in the arm and he hands me a beer. “You’re going to need this. We’re about to play “Two Truths and a Lie.” You drink every time you
Last Updated : 2024-04-25Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 28
[Cordelia] Nothing in my life had prepared me to be treated like a common criminal. It felt like everyone at the party was watching me being dragged off by two uniformed officers. I could hear whispers as I passed asking, “Who is she? What did she do? - Did someone get hurt? Robbed? Killed?” A few flickering faces glare at me, their eyes averted as their lips twist in cruel judgment. Nobody stops them. Not even Atlas who stands as still as a statue, his face frozen in disbelief. “What is this all about?!” I demand as they push me against the hood of their car. “I refuse to come with you until you…” I hiss in pain when my leg connects with the side of the car, my bruise searing in agony as they tighten the handcuffs and toss me into the back of a police cruiser. Once we arrive, I am escorted through the police station to be fingerprinted, photographed, and thrown into a dark cell smelling faintly of urine and dry vomit. “I want to talk to my lawyer!” I scream as the bars cr
Last Updated : 2024-04-25Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 29
[Cordelia]“Cordelia, please sit down,” Atlas makes enough room for me to sit next to him. I stand in the doorway, stubbornly refusing to budge, preferring to shiver in the cold than to spend any more time with him. “Look, I promise I won’t do anything but talk to you,” he holds up his hands in surrender. “If I do, you can just punch me.”I glower at his cavalier attitude over his previous attack and my threat. Does he really think I’ll be okay with him in the back seat of the car after he had treated me so roughly?“Please Cordelia,” he pleads. He is usually so arrogant but right now he seems so vulnerable. “I just want to make sure you get home safely.”I think of fighting back, of waiting out in the cold just for spite, but that would be useless, silly, and only hurt me. Hesitantly I agree to his offer for a ride home. His whole body relaxes as the door shuts behind me. Atlas doesn’t look like his usual self. It isn’t just that he is still dressed in his beach clothes, but he lo
Last Updated : 2024-04-26Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 30
[Sydney]“Agh! She did it again!,” I scream at the phone as I pace back and forth. “I even…well, you know…and he left me to rescue her!”I am pacing back and forth in my bathrobe, my father on speakerphone. He woke me up with news of Cordelia’s daring escape from her prison. Atlas swooped in and rescued her like a white knight. “Now Sydney-bear, calm down,” my father cooed through the phone. “We have other ways to get Greyson Mills away from Steele,” he refers to both the company and the woman, Cordelia. “You’ll get the best of her. You’re a Bryant. We Bryants never quit. Especially against a Greyson,” his growls his distaste, the word sour on his tongue.“I’m just so tired of this game. I really like him, Daddy. I want Atlas.”As my father gives me assurances, I replay the day in my mind, trying to make sense of what went wrong. The trap was perfect. [FLASHBACK–YESTERDAY AFTERNOON]“Are you sure these will work?” I text my father. “Of course, it will work,” he replies, “Trust me.”
Last Updated : 2024-04-26Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 31
[Cordelia] I’ve been stuck on the phone with my mother for the last hour listening to her unending rant about her “situation. She is speaking so rapidly and with so much force I haven’t had a chance to say more than two words. I am exhausted from the day before, sore from the accident and my experiences in jail, and listening to her jabber is taking the last bit of energy I have remaining. “...And now our lawyer is saying there is no way out of this without at least one of us going to prison!” She starts to moan and weep. I pull the phone away from my ear. “I’m sorry, Sweetie, but it looks like you might have to spend some time in jail.” I startle at her implication. She doesn’t know what I know, so I try to feel gracious as she explains how she’ll let me take the fall for everything in order to save the company. She then spends the next ten minutes wailing about our family’s misfortune–one daughter missing and the other daughter in prison. I am glad she cannot see me roll my e
Last Updated : 2024-04-26
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Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 407
[Cordelia] Today is our 20th second anniversary. We've lost count of the first one, forgetting it entirely as a moment of sadness. Instead, we honor the day when we took our vows and meant them, 7 years later in Napa. Usually, we leave Los Angeles and take the week for just the two of us. Even after two decades, we haven't lost our hunger for one another and I look forward to our time away where we can just be two people together and in love. But this year, my husband is feeling a bit nostalgic. This is why I'm in the lobby of the Steele Hotel and Resort, recreating a memory I wish I could forget. When he sent me the cryptic text this afternoon, I confess I was more than a little bit confused. Why, of all places, would he want me to meet him there? At least this time I'm not wearing a hoodie with a dress tucked into a pair of loose sweats. And while my face is covered with large sunglasses, it's more to protect my identity and not draw too much attention. I am far too recogniza
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 406
[Clark] "Come on. Dad!" My daughters pull me along by my arms. I've never been able to deny them anything they wanted but tonight they are asking too much. "It's only a blind date!" "Girls," I admonish, "What have I said, I'm not ready to let someone new into my heart. Your mother was more than enough for me." Cassie stares up at me with her starlight eyes, as deep and black as her mother's, and doesn't relent. "You promised you'd let us have anything we want for our birthday. Grandma helped us pick her out. You have to try, Dad. For us!" "Grandma Suzanna or Grandma Jenny?" I grump, "Who do I need to send a thank you note." "Both!" the girls giggle. "You owe us, Dad," Cassie counters. Her red curls bounce as she stomps her foot. "Do you know how weird it is to look on a DATING AP for potential girlfriends for our father? It's so gross. You should be grateful" "Yeah," Maddie chimes in, swinging her hair over her shoulder as she twists her lips just like Tilly used to, her hand
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 405
[Jude]If the universe were fair, I wouldn't have lived to see today. If karma took her toll, I wouldn't be friends with Clark and Atlas Steele, our children growing up side by side. Once the shadow of Magnus was lifted from our shoulders, and Angelica and I were finally able to go about our lives the way we always should have been able to do, It became easier to make good with my life. Angelica and I were married shortly after Mathilda's funeral. It was a small ceremony on the family medical boat, just before the two of us set sail with our daughters, Melanie and Veronica. When the DNA showed that they were indeed my children, and NOT Magnus', that his experiment had never stuck, it was easy to adopt them. In their mind, Angelica is their mother. When they are old enough, we'll tell them the truth about Aunt Sydney, but for now, we are sparing them the burden of her insanity.And we give them love, all the love of a couple who has always wanted children of their own.Angelica, it tu
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 404
[Cordelia]15 hours later I place my feet back in LA for the first time in 6 months. We have been gone for so long that I had forgotten how loud it is, or how oppressively hot it can be in summer. Clark met us at the runway alone, the girls with their grandparents. "I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to drive you home. We could have sent a driver but," he explains, "I wanted to be the one to welcome you home." He does his best to smile, but as his melancholy grin drifts to how I hold on to my husband's hand, I can see how much this is costing him. "I'm glad it was you," I reach forward to give him a hug. "Thank you." Atlas, who has been receiving a slew of messages from Theo as soon as we landed, asks to be dropped off at the new Steele Industries building. "Looks like they need me," he apologizes, kissing my hand. "I'll make it up to you tonight," he whispers in my ear and I shiver in anticipation. "I'm going to hold you to that," I whisper discretely in his ear, trying to be mi
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 403
[Cordelia]The rest of that day went by in a blur. I insisted we rush back to the compound even though everyone had received the news that Tilly was gone. I couldn't believe it. My mind couldn't process the possibility of a world without Mathilda Madison. She wasn't just my best friend, she was my sister. So I couldn't let her go. Clark was distraught. He and Tilly took a while to find one another, and when they did finally make the right connection, they fell for one another hard. It was beautiful watching my two best friends fall in love--they were perfect for one another. But not all stories end with a happily ever after. That was a hard lesson for me to learn as well. I wanted nothing more than to watch Tilly raise her daughters. When we made it back an hour later, her body had already been collected. I had wanted to see her, to give it a chance to see if I could have brought her back: just one touch, one spark. I was convinced that I could have been the one to save her. The
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 402
[Sydney]Why can't they just let me die? It would be so easy, I'm already cut and bleeding. Why bother with the IVs and the monitors? It doesn't matter anymore. Did it ever matter?My entire existence has been a fraud. If my hands were free I'd count the ways on my fingertips all the ways I've been lied to and used.A madman altered my DNA and injected me into the wrong mother. I was raised believing I was special only to discover I was the offspring of my enemy. The man of my dreams was married to the daughter my mother was supposed to have, and I was just a cheap copy of the woman he once loved, my genetic twin, Angelica. Was this life ever really mine to begin with? Even now they aren't honoring my desire to die. "She needs more blood," the doctor announces over my head, her clear voice cutting through the din of the operating room chatter. "Her blood pressure has dropped to dangerous levels. We can't use the anesthesia. She'll need to be awake for the procedure."Procedure?"I d
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 401
[Clark]The dissection of Magnus' brain was one of the most intensely fascinating and uniquely horrifying things I have ever experienced. Using my computer to guide the charge, we attached wires to his brain, fed through a divide that my mother had retrieved from her vault. "This will disrupt his signal. It will keep him from making a full memory transfer. Hopefully whomever he's jumped into will have a fighting chance." Everything my mother has said since I volunteered for this task has sounded like something from a science fiction movie. The duplicates we had seen in Delilah's footage of her father's secret lab were all designed to hold Magnus's memories in an artificial extension of his life. Not all of them looked like his current body, as often it was useful for him to become someone entirely different for spying purposes. "Is this how he always seemed to know everything?" I ask aloud. We had wondered how he managed to get around all of our codes, to find ways to learn about wh
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 400
[Cordelia]"Wally?" Holding my hand above his head, I pause, hesitating. Just a moment before I was about to take this man's life without even the smallest shred of remorse. It was necessary to protect my family. My children and my husband. "Cordelia," He blinks, his eyes roving my face and the surroundings like a caged animal. Licking his dry, salty lips, his body is otherwise completely still. "I don't have much time. He's fighting me...I..."Wally's muscles spasm, shaking Atlas as well as he holds him in place. Closing his eyes, his body stills, as if the effort of keeping still is so great that he cannot do anything else at the same time. He whispers something that I can't quite make out, so I lean in, trying to capture his words.As my hair brushes his cheek, he repeats himself. "You need to end this, Cordelia. Don't let him escape to harm another. His other mind is gone, Suzanna saw to it, but he can still jump to someone else.""Wally, what are you saying," I shake my head. "No
Stealing the Heart of Mr. Steele Chapter 399
[Cordelia]Atlas and I raced down the hall to the exit, soldiers moving out of our way as we passed, nobody bothering to stop us as my husband's icy glare and dominant aura kept them pinned in place. Magnus is dead and I have never been more terrified in my life. The door to the outside pushes open and we are instantly blinded by the overhead sunshine that covers the beach with an oddly bright gray that stings the eyes. It is warmer than it had been earlier, the wind having died down, trapping the moisture of impending rain, held in place by the gathering storm. "Jasper," I call out gently, scanning the beach. "Wally?""Atlas do you see Jasper?" I grab my husband's arm. His pulse is rapid beneath my fingertips as we move forward as one and find the abandoned picnic blanket and Jasper's little galoshes next to a much larger pair. "Wally!" I scream out towards the waves and find him standing in the water, at the far edge of the beach. There is no sign of my son. None. It's as if the
