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CHAPTER 124
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2025-12-09 17:00:42The school board victory felt like a sandcastle holding back the tide. Sure, it stood, but you could already see the foundations getting soggy. The drive home was quiet, the adrenaline replaced by a dull, aching dread that settled in my bones. Arthur kept his eyes on the winding coastal road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“He’s a chess player,” Arthur finally said, his voice cutting through the hum of the engine. “And we’re reacting like checkers pieces. He makes a move—poaches an engineer, buys an ambulance company, whispers to a school board—and we scramble to that square. We’re always one step behind, defending.”
“What’s the alternative?” I asked, the fatigue making me sharp. “Not defend Chloe? Not show up for Clara? That’s not checkers, Arthur, that’s just being hum
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FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 132
The letter proposing a joint-funded archaeological survey was a work of art. Arthur drafted it, I polished the prose, and Lanc signed it with a flourish that nearly tore the paper. We sent it to Pryce, the county, and, crucially, to the same local reporter who’d broken the “history halts harmony” story.The response was not a letter. It was a visit.Two days later, as I was elbow-deep in flour for a new batch of “strategic morale” pies (apple-ginger, this time), a black town car purred to a stop outside. Carson Pryce emerged, alone. He didn’t come to the door. He stood in my driveway, looking at the house with the detached interest of a geologist surveying a rock formation.I wiped my hands on my apron, heart hammering, and walked out onto the porch. “Mr. Pryce. To what do I owe the… surprise?”He turned his cool gaze on me. “A conversation. One that doesn’t require an audience, a grizzled archaeologist, or a homemade pastry.”“The pies are a side effect, not a requirement,” I said, l
FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 131
The sixty-day reprieve settled over us like a layer of fine, radioactive dust. It wasn’t peace; it was a tense, ticking quiet. Miranda became a woman possessed, her lab a fortress of core samples and seismic maps. We funded her extra lab assistant with a clandestine bake sale so epic it should have its own documentary.Lanc, meanwhile, worked double-time. With his own site finally moving, he raced against the shadow of Pryce’s postponed behemoth. “I need to have roofs on, windows in, before his planning commission hearing,” he grumbled one afternoon, hunched over blueprints at our table. “Make mine a fait accompli. You can’t contextually dwarf what’s already standing.”“He can if he buys the families out from under you before they move in,” Arthur said, not looking up from his laptop where he was composing letters to every state-level environmental agency he could find.“Cheerful,” Lanc shot back, rubbing his eyes. “Always so cheerful.”The first sign that Pryce was using his sixty da
FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 130
The reprieve was a fragile, glassy thing. For a week, the world held its breath. No new complaints materialized. LJ’s school record was quietly cleared, the “tip” officially deemed “unreliable.” Lanc’s crew poured the first foundations, the concrete setting into something permanent. We moved through our days with the wary grace of bomb disposal experts, waiting for a click that didn’t come.The silence from Apex was the most unnerving part. Arthur, ever the diagnostician, called it “the pathology of strategic patience.”“He’s recalibrating,” he said one evening as we washed dishes, our rhythm a familiar, comforting dance. “We forced him to abandon a set of tools. He’s now designing new ones. Probably quieter. More elegant.”“I miss the loud tools,” I grumbled, scrubbing a pie plate with more force than necessary. “At least you could see them coming.”The new tool arrived not with a bang, but with a glossy, full-color brochure. It was slipped under Clara’s door, left on windshields in
FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 129
The confrontation required a stage. We couldn't go to his rented cliffside mansion; that was his territory. The school was a warzone. Our homes were sanctuaries, now violated. So Arthur proposed neutral ground: the back room of The Salty Dog, the oldest, most stubbornly un-renovated pub on the coast. It smelled of decades of beer, fried fish, and unvarnished truth. Old Bob, the owner, owed Lanc for fixing his roof after a storm twenty years ago. He asked no questions, just handed Arthur the key.The room was a time capsule of wood paneling and faded nautical charts. We arrived early. Tanya, a wisp of a girl with bitten nails and enormous, frightened eyes, sat between Chloe and me, sipping a Coke like it was lifeline. Arthur and Lanc stood by the foggy window, a study in contrasts: Arthur, still and watchful; Lanc, a live wire of contained fury."He won't come," Lanc muttered, checking his watch for the tenth time."He'll come," Arthur said, his voice calm. "Curiosity is a lever. And h
FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 128
The principal’s office smelled of industrial cleaner and quiet panic. LJ sat hunched in a plastic chair, his face pale, eyes red-rimmed and fixed on the floor. Clara stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder, her face a masterpiece of suppressed maternal fury. The school resource officer, a man named Briggs with the weary eyes of someone used to being the bad guy, leaned against a filing cabinet.Arthur entered first, his usual calm replaced by a glacial, focused intensity. “Officer Briggs. Principal Atkins. We’d like to speak with our son. Alone.”The principal, a reed-thin man who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, gestured weakly. “Of course. But the policy is clear, Dr. Gonzalez. Possession on school grounds mandates—”“We’ll discuss policy after we’ve es
FORSAKEN WIFE, NOW A BILLIONAIRE'S GREATEST REGRET CHAPTER 127
The crack in the monolith was microscopic, but I felt its presence like a seismic shift. Ben Sorrel’s haunted look, his muttered data point about soil percolation, was a breadcrumb dropped in the dark forest of Pryce’s empire. We weren’t armed, but we had a scent.I reported the non-conversation back to the war council in my living room. Arthur listened, eyes closed, as if parsing a complex melody. Lanc paced, a caged bear. Chloe, now a permanent fixture, scrolled through her phone with a scowl.“A conscience is not a strategy,” Lanc grumbled, stopping by the fireplace. “It’s a liability. For him. He’ll either squash it or quit, and we’ll be back to square one with a six-month delay.”“Maybe,” Arthur said, opening his eyes. “But Gwen’s right. It&r
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