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2026-08-18 02:10:11
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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
I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot 40
Ivy read the message three times before it fully landed, something warm and disbelieving spreading through her chest despite the heaviness of the hospital room around her."What is it," Sterling asked, noticing the shift in her expression."A job interview. A real one." Ivy held the phone out, still slightly stunned. "The firm my instructor mentioned. They saw the presentation deck somehow, the one from the shareholder meeting, and they want to talk to me about a junior design position."Something genuine and proud broke through the exhaustion on Sterling's face, the first real lightness Ivy had seen from him since the meeting that morning. "That deck saved my company today, and now it's about to get you a real job. I don't think I've ever been more proud of anything in my life.""It's just an interview.""It's the beginning of something you built entirely yourself, with no help from my money or my name, in the middle of the worst week either of us has had." Sterling squeezed her hand
I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot 39
The hall took nearly ten minutes to settle after Sterling left, shareholders murmuring in stunned clusters, reporters typing furiously, and Ivy stood at the front of the room with Reagan beside her, feeling every eye in the space turn toward her at once.She hadn't planned to speak. But watching the room's uncertainty, the particular dangerous vacuum left behind after chaos, Ivy understood suddenly, clearly, that silence right now would let Julian's accusation linger unanswered no matter how thoroughly the evidence had already debunked it."I'd like to say something," she said, and her voice, to her own surprise, came out steady.The room quieted, cameras swinging back toward her."Nine years ago, my father went to prison for fraud he didn't commit, convicted on paper trails built by the same man who just collapsed on this stage trying to do the exact same thing to me." Ivy's voice carried clear across the hall, every word deliberate. "I spent nine years watching people decide my fami
I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot 38
The morning of the shareholder meeting arrived gray and overcast, the kind of light that made everything feel slightly unreal, and Ivy stood in front of the mirror in the apartment, hands steady despite the churning in her stomach, watching Sterling adjust his tie in the reflection behind her. "You don't have to do this," he said, for what felt like the hundredth time in four days, though his voice had lost the desperate edge from earlier in the week, replaced now by something closer to resigned partnership. "I know." Ivy turned to face him, smoothing the lapel of his jacket, a small, grounding gesture that had become theirs over the past weeks. "I'm doing it anyway. Together, remember." "Together." He kissed her forehead, lingering there a moment longer than strictly necessary. "Whatever he's planned, whatever he says up there, I need you to know none of it changes what's true. You're not what he's trying to make you look like." "I know that too." Ivy held his gaze, steady. "I've spe
I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot 37
The statement hit every financial outlet within the hour, Weston Holt's careful, lawyered denial spreading fast, painting himself as a legitimate businessman blindsided by association with a man now facing federal fraud charges and an active manhunt."It's smart," Reagan admitted grimly, reading the statement for the fourth time on her tablet. "If shareholders believe Holt's bid stands entirely apart from Julian's vendetta, they might still vote for it on financial merits alone. He's trying to save the deal by sacrificing the partnership publicly.""Then we make sure they don't believe it," Sterling said, exhaustion carved deep into every line of his face after the apartment, after the letter, after a night neither of them had slept through. "We have photographic proof of at least three meetings between them this past month. Holt doesn't get to rewrite that history just because it's suddenly inconvenient.""Agreed. But that's a separate fight from the one Julian's clearly planning to
I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot 36
The apartment was smaller than Ivy expected, sparse, temporary, the kind of place a man rented when he needed somewhere to disappear rather than somewhere to actually live, and in the center of the otherwise empty living room sat a single sealed envelope propped against a folding chair, Sterling's name written across the front in handwriting Ivy recognized instantly from the notebook that had started all of this.Sterling stared at it for a long moment before he picked it up, hands steady despite everything Ivy knew was churning underneath the surface.Inside was a single page, and a small, worn photograph that fluttered loose when he unfolded the letter, landing face up on the bare floor. Ivy bent to retrieve it before Sterling could, and felt her breath catch at what she found.Sterling, maybe seven years old, sitting on a much younger Julian's shoulders, both of them laughing at something outside the frame, a version of Julian Vane Ivy had never once glimpsed in every terrible inte
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