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Chapter 2
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2026-04-25 02:46:49Valerie.
"Mrs Valerie. I have told you the honest truth. Mr. Collins is a busy man and since he has a board meeting, I am not sure you will be able to see him right now." One of the managers explained to me.
"When will he be done with the meeting?" I asked.
"I don't know. But I have a suggestion. How about you convey whatever you want to tell him and I inform him later." The young man who had a long mustache asked.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Dorian." He replied politely.
"Well Dorian. Whatever I want to say to Collins is none of your business. I don't mind waiting till he is done with the meeting." I said to him and walked away from the reception.
I checked my wristwatch and realized that the time was far going and evening was fast approaching.
Perhaps I could use this moment to start looking for a new apartment. Even if Greg allowed me to stay, I still wouldn't be able to find peace with myself.
Scrolling through my phone for a house agent, someone cleared their throat behind me and I turned around to see a man dressed in a long trench coat and a black hat over his head.
I couldn't see his face because the hat was big enough to only reveal his lips.
"What do you want?" His deep voice resonated with me immediately.
"Goodness! Mr. Collins." I said and he placed his hand on his lips to keep.me silent.
"No one has to know that I am outside." He said, scanning around the environment. "Listen, how about we go to my favorite restaurant and have dinner. Maybe we can talk better." He suggested.
"That will be amazing," I replied.
He held my hand and we both walked into the parking lot. He pulled out one of the finest cars on the spot and opened the front seat door for me.
The road trip was a silent one at first. I was trying to gather my thoughts on everything that I had to say to him.
"How is Greg?" He asked calmly as we cruised through the bridge.
"I don't know," I replied and turned to the other side of the window.
"Sounds like both of you are not on good terms." He said.
"Greg and I had a divorce."
"Wait what?" He pressed the brakes and packed by the side of the road. Collins turned off the ignition and turned around to face me.
"Why would he do something like that," Collins asked.
"I caught him cheating with another woman. I was about to break the news of our baby to him and then he served a divorce letter."
There was silence for a brief moment and I turned to face him.
Collins had the most beautiful set of eyes and this was the first time I even took notice of it.
"I am not surprised that Greg would do such a thing." He said.
"So it has always been a thing with the both of you? Clearly, I still remember the headlines with Jasmine and you parting ways as well."
"That was different!" He snapped but calmed down afterward.
The short temper flair made me seal my lips and Collins turned the ignition of the car back on.
The ride to the restaurant was a silent and tense one. Maybe I had gone too far with calling out Jasmine.
Collins and Jasmine were the talk of the town. Everyone wished they had the same type of love they shared until the news came out that they broke up with each other.
We arrived at the restaurant a couple of minutes later and Collins still didn't say a word as we headed into the restaurant.
The manager was at the entrance to greet us before helping the both of us to the VIP section. We took our seats respectively on arrival and the menu cards were brought.
Collins was the first to place his order and I did the same thing before the waiter would eventually leave the room.
"Jasmine was a serial cheat and I never knew it. The love that you saw on screen was simply a facade that we had to face." Collins spoke to me for the first time since the car incident.
"I am sorry for bringing back the old wounds," I replied calmly.
"Not a problem. I figured Greg would be a better man, but I guess I was wrong." Collins said and in that minute, the waiter arrived with our meal.
The rest of the evening, we shared good talks and healthy conversation. It almost felt like Collins knew how to engage with his words unlike Greg who takes everything personal.
By the end of our meal, a bottle of alcohol was served but I refused for the sake of the baby that I was going to have.
"So you are having a baby huh?" He asked and I nodded my head.
"I am three months in already," I replied.
Collins pulled the bottle of wine aside and placed his entire attention on me. This act made me nervous.
"I have an offer for you Valerie. I don't know if you would like it." He said.
"What is the offer?" I asked.
"There are top investors coming from China by the weekend. I told them I am happily married but we both know it's a lie." He said and paused to gaze into my eyes.
"I want you to be my wife for the time being. You don't need to do anything special. I show you off to them and that's the end of the deal."
Collins' offer was attractive but at the same time it was unpredictable. I didn't want a situation where I had to take the deal further than it already is.
"Are you in or out?" He asked.
At the same time, seeing that it has always been a thing to get back at Greg. It wouldn't be a bad idea starting off with being Collins' wife.
"I am in," I concluded.
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VALERIEThe word does not cover it.The word is the smallest possible container for the thing that the completed picture was.She saw me first.This is the part I have not yet arrived at and I am arriving at it now with the precision it requires, Jasmine saw me before Collins knew I was there. The specific quality of the moment in which her eyes found the door, found the gap of it, found the woman standing in the gap. Her face in the low lamp light.I watched her see me.The moment, the specific moment of mutual recognition that was not mutual because it was only her eyes finding me, not Collins knowing I was there, not the room knowing I was there, only Jasmine and I in the specific locked recognition of two people who have seen each other in a moment that will not be unseen.Her expression.I am going to account for her expression because her expression was information and I was, even then, even in that moment with the document in my hand and the room in front of me, a woman who rec
Claimed by my Ex-husband Billionaire Brother CHAPTER 40: THE FINALLY THING'S
VALERIEI want to give this its accurate timestamp because the timestamp matters, not in the way that timestamps matter for the operational record, the calendar notation, the Diane scheduling, but in the way that certain moments require their precise time in order to be held correctly afterward. Eleven forty-seven. The Moreau call had ended at eleven-thirty and I had spent the intervening seventeen minutes with the summary document and the specific quality of concentration that followed a difficult call, the concentration that was the mind's return to its own register after the sustained performance of another.The Hargrove notification came through at eleven forty-seven.I will not detail the content of the notification. The content was the content it was, the category of news that arrives without warning in the form of a document, the kind that requires immediate escalation, the kind that changes the shape of the following days in ways that are not yet fully visible at the moment of
Claimed by my Ex-husband Billionaire Brother CHAPTER 39: THE DISCOVERY
VALERIEI knew before the test confirmed it.This is the accurate starting point and I give it without the softening that would make it sound like the language of instinct, the romantic register in which women simply know things about their bodies in the mystical way of a thing that cannot be accounted for. I knew in the way I knew most things, from the evidence. The accumulation of small evidence across several days, each piece individually insufficient for a conclusion, the pieces together forming a picture that the trained attention of a woman who paid close attention to evidence could not, in the honest reckoning, fail to read.The tiredness had been the first thing.Not the tiredness of the weeks after the hospital — I knew that tiredness, had the full vocabulary of it, the specific quality of exhaustion that was the body's response to significant loss, the heavy particular kind that lived in the bones rather than the muscles and that did not respond to sleep in the ordinary way
Claimed by my Ex-husband Billionaire Brother CHAPTER 38: THE ASSESSMENT
VALERIEShe was acquiring information.The assessment phase.I had been in enough rooms with enough people who were in the assessment phase to recognize the quality of it, the particular way a person moved through a space when they were building the full picture, the specific attentiveness to the ambient information, the way the questions they asked were never the questions they were asking. Jasmine in the house for the full afternoon was Jasmine in the assessment phase and I tracked her in the peripheral way with the full understanding of what the tracking was.She had lunch with Collins.I knew this because Diane mentioned it in passing, the Diane passing that was not passing, the specific delivery of information in the form most likely to be received. The Edinburgh debrief had extended through lunch. This was normal, debriefs extended through lunch with the Collins efficiency, the working lunch being a Collins standard. I held this in the professional register and did not perform a
Claimed by my Ex-husband Billionaire Brother CHAPTER 37: THE RETURN
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Claimed by my Ex-husband Billionaire Brother CHAPTER 36: THE FIRE
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