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ผู้เขียน: Wunmi Ijaola
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-08-24 03:37:17

Ivy went back to her apartment that night for the first time in three days, exhausted past the point of thought, and found herself standing in front of the small box she'd never fully unpacked from her father's arrest, the one she'd shoved into her closet six years ago and never opened since.

She almost didn't open it now. But something about the day, about her father's bruised face and Webb's shaking hands and Julian's smooth, terrible voice at the podium, made her finally pull it down and sit
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  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   46

    They cut the trip short by a day, the Singapore partnership signed and celebrated hastily before boarding a red-eye flight home, and Ivy spent most of the eighteen hours back turning Reagan's message over in her mind, the small unease from the office hallway resurfacing sharper than before."Ashford Transit," Sterling said, once they'd landed and settled into Reagan's office directly from the airport, exhaustion carved deep into both their faces. "Small company, but it operates almost entirely in the same regional corridor we just secured expansion rights to in Singapore. That's not a coincidence.""He's trying to box you in," Reagan said, spreading a map across the table, the same grim efficiency Ivy had come to associate with genuine crisis rather than routine business. "If he controls enough smaller logistics operations along that corridor, he can make your international expansion considerably more expensive and complicated than it needs to be, even without ever touching Vane Corp'

  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   45

    Ivy stood frozen in the hallway for a long moment, the document in her hand suddenly feeling very heavy, torn between walking away and confronting whatever she'd just overheard directly.She knocked instead, deliberate and audible, giving Reagan enough warning to end the call before Ivy stepped fully into view."Ivy." Reagan's voice was carefully neutral, though something tight had settled behind her eyes. "I wasn't expecting you.""I heard part of your call." Ivy kept her voice steady, direct. "You were talking to Weston Holt. About an offer."Reagan's jaw tightened, and for a long moment she said nothing, the silence stretching taut and uncomfortable between them."It's not what it sounds like," Reagan said finally."Then tell me what it actually is." Ivy set the document down on the desk, steady despite the unease coiling tight in her chest. "Because from where I'm standing, you told me weeks ago that you turned him down immediately, and now I'm hearing you discuss what he's actual

  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   44

    Dinner with Ivy's parents that weekend felt, for the first time in longer than Ivy could remember, entirely unremarkable, her father grilling in the small backyard of the house he and her mother had finally, cautiously started renting again, her mother directing from a lawn chair with the same stubborn insistence on supervising that had governed the move weeks earlier."You're glowing," her mother said, catching Ivy alone in the kitchen while Sterling and her father debated the merits of charcoal versus gas with the particular intensity of two men who barely knew each other yet but had decided grilling was safe, neutral territory. "New job glowing, or something else glowing.""Both, maybe." Ivy busied herself with the salad, feeling her face warm despite herself. "Things feel steady, Mom. For the first time in years, actually steady.""Steady's good." Her mother studied her with the particular sharp attention that had never once, in Ivy's whole life, missed anything important. "Is he

  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   43

    The design firm's office occupied two floors of a converted warehouse, exposed brick and industrial windows and none of the sterile, gleaming grandeur of Vane Tower, and Ivy walked in on her first Monday with a nervous energy that had nothing to do with billionaires or fraud investigations and everything to do with simply, ordinarily, wanting to be good at something new.Her supervisor, a sharp, warm woman named Kennedy, walked her through the studio with brisk efficiency, introducing her to a small team of designers who seemed, refreshingly, entirely uninterested in the fact that Ivy's face had been splashed across half the financial press for the past two months. "We don't really do the celebrity thing here," Kennedy said, catching Ivy's slight surprise at the lack of curiosity. "We care whether your work's good. That's genuinely the whole criteria." "I appreciate that more than you know." "Your interview deck was one of the best pieces of crisis communication design I've seen in ye

  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   42

    The funeral drew exactly the kind of press circus Sterling had feared, cameras clustered thick along the cemetery's edges, reporters murmuring theories about Julian Vane's final months into microphones just out of earshot, and Ivy stood beside Sterling through all of it, steady and present, refusing to let the spectacle steal what small, private grief the day still deserved. Delilah arrived alone, dressed simply, standing slightly apart from the small cluster of board members and old associates who'd come more out of professional obligation than genuine mourning."I didn't know if I should come," she admitted quietly, finding Sterling and Ivy near the edge of the gathering. "We hadn't spoken in years, and the last conversation we did have wasn't exactly warm." "I'm glad you're here," Sterling said, and Ivy watched something in his voice soften toward his mother in a way she hadn't heard since the café weeks ago. "Whatever else he was, he was your husband once. You're allowed to grieve

  • I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot   41

    They found the apartment two weeks later, a bright, modest space with good light and none of the sterile grandeur of Sterling's old penthouse, chosen specifically, at Ivy's insistence, because it felt like somewhere two actual people could build an actual life rather than a stage set for photographs.Moving day arrived on a Saturday that felt, for once, blessedly ordinary, boxes and mismatched furniture and Ivy's mother directing traffic from a folding chair, still recovering but steady enough now to insist on supervising despite everyone's protests."You're not lifting anything," Ivy said, for the third time, catching her mother reaching for a box."I'm not lifting. I'm supervising. There's a difference." Her mother settled back with the particular satisfied stubbornness Ivy recognized as entirely her own inheritance. "Besides, someone needs to make sure Sterling doesn't put the couch facing the wrong direction. Men never think about the light."Ivy's father arrived an hour later, ha

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