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CHAPTER NINETY FOUR: THE RULING
publish date:
2026-11-02 05:31:12
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CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY EIGHT: WHAT HE LEFT
My mother was sitting on the floor.I noticed that before anything else, that she had lowered herself onto the carpet beside the coffee table with her back against the sofa, like a girl, and that the box in front of her was smaller than I had imagined, plain dark wood with a brass clasp gone green at the edges.Marcus stood by the window with his arms folded.He had clearly been standing there for a while, because the stillness in his shoulders was the kind that takes effort to keep, and when I came in he looked at me and then at our mother and gave me a small nod that said, she hasn't touched it."I waited."Her voice was thin."I wanted you here, both of you, I didn't want to be the only one who heard him."I sat down beside her on the floor.Adrian had stopped in the doorway, and I turned and found him watching me with that careful uncertainty, asking without asking, and I thought about it for exactly one breath."Stay," I said."Are you sure.""It's your father's fault it was hidd
CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN: ONE THING LEFT
I decided at four in the morning.Not because anyone persuaded me, because I lay awake in the apartment with my hand on my stomach and the baby turning slowly beneath it, and I realised I was not afraid of what Richard Ashford wanted to say, I was afraid of spending the rest of my life wondering.I told Clara at seven.She didn't argue, she only put her pen down and said, "Then we do it properly," and by nine the terms were set, a consultation room at the remand facility, a glass partition, two officers inside the door, her own office informed, every word recorded with Richard's lawyer's written consent."You can leave the moment you want to.""I know.""Say the word and the officers end it.""Clara, I know."She almost smiled.Adrian drove me.He had asked that morning, quietly, whether I wanted him to, and I had said yes before I could examine why, and he hadn't made anything of it, he had simply picked up the keys.We sat in the car outside the facility for a minute with the engine
CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY SIX: ONE SILENCE
"Explain it."My voice came out steadier than I felt, and I kept my eyes on Victor Knight's face and my hand flat on my father's letter, as if the page might slide away if I let go."Explain how a silence becomes the rest of it."Victor opened his eyes."He asked me for one small thing, and I knew, the moment I read it, that I would keep it, because keeping it was easy, it cost me nothing, and it let me feel loyal to a man I was about to fail.""That isn't an explanation.""No, it's the beginning of one."He folded his hands on the table, and I noticed they were shaking slightly, an old man's tremor, and he made no effort to hide it."Your father left something with me that night, a box, recordings of his voice, letters for you, a photograph of your mother laughing, things meant for a daughter who was too young to hear them, and he asked me to hold them until you were strong enough.""You had them.""For twenty years.""And you didn't give them to me.""I told myself you weren't ready
CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY FIVE: THE MAN WHO LANDED
Victor Knight's plane touched down at nine forty that night.I knew because Clara told me, and then told me again an hour later, and I understood that she was repeating it for her own benefit, the way people tap a wall they already know is solid.We were in a conference room on the fourteenth floor of a building that belonged to nobody I knew, plain walls, a long table, a jug of water nobody touched, and I had chosen this room myself because it had no windows and no history.Adrian stood by the door.He had been there since we arrived, not pacing, not sitting, just standing with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on a point on the carpet, and I had looked at him twice and both times decided to leave him alone, because some things a person has to hold by themselves."You don't have to be in the room."I said it quietly."He's your father.""I know who he is."His voice was flat, then it cracked a little at the edge, and he looked up."I want to be in the room, I just don't know if I
CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY FOUR: THE RULING
Lunch was a sandwich I didn't taste in a side room with the blinds half drawn.Clara ate standing up, reading her notes between bites, and Adrian sat across from me with his untouched coffee going cold and his eyes on the table, and for a while none of us said anything, which felt less like silence and more like three people holding the same breath."You told them about the others."His voice was low."In your answer, you named everyone who helped, I noticed.""They did help.""I know, but you could have made it about you alone, it would have sounded stronger.""It wouldn't have been true."He looked up then, and something in his face softened in a way he didn't seem to notice, the look of a man hearing his own old instincts being gently corrected by someone who didn't even need to try."You said, the man I was once married to.""That's what you are.""Once.""Yes."He nodded slowly, took it, and didn't argue with it, and I felt the baby shift beneath my hand as if even she, or he, ha
CHASING THE WIFE HE FORCED TO DIVORCE CHAPTER NINETY THREE: UNDER PRESSURE
"Let's talk about the night you entered Richard Ashford's office."I looked at the judge, not at Cole, the way Clara had told me to, and kept my hands still in my lap and let the question sit for exactly the amount of time a truthful answer required."I entered the building voluntarily, took the elevator to the top floor, walked through an open door, and sat across from a man who had been expecting me.""You entered voluntarily.""Yes.""Nobody compelled you to go there.""No.""And yet the reason you went was because Adrian Knight was in that building.""Adrian Knight was there, yes.""You believed he was there under duress.""I believed he had been taken there as leverage to bring me to that meeting, yes.""Which means you went knowing that someone you had a personal relationship with was being used to pressure you into attending.""I went because I chose to, the circumstances around Adrian's presence informed my awareness of the situation but they didn't remove my choice, I made th
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