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Chapter Thirty-Nine: Empty
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2026-05-02 23:59:06
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Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 135: The Man in the Doorway
PENELOPE "Who is he?" I asked.Adrian hadn't answered yet.The man was still standing in the doorway. He was medium-height, older than us, and had a face that had once been handsome and had hardened without losing its structure. He wore a good coat, and he wasn't afraid of Adrian the way frightened people usually stood.He looked comfortable, and that was why it bothered me."Adrian," I called again."Give us a minute, please," he said to me.I looked at him. "No."He met my eyes. "Penelope...""No," I said. "We've been through this. I don't wait in cars while things get explained to me later."He held my gaze, then turned to the man. "This is Penelope," he said. "She stays."The man looked at me, then back at Adrian. "Your father's business partner," he said. "You know that's what I am."My hand was still in Adrian's. I felt the tension of a hand belonging to a controlled person who wasn't, for once, in control."My father died four years ago," Adrian said."Yes," the man said. "And
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 134: The Confrontation
Penelope's POV I was in the Clerkenwell office when Jonathan walked in through the front door like he owned the building...which technically, for six more months, he did...and stood in the middle of my workspace, looking at me across three desks and two members of staff who suddenly became very interested in their screens. "Outside," he ordered. I looked at him, studying the expression on his face that I had learned to read over the years. This wasn't the controlled Jonathan. This was the other one. I stood up, and we went outside. "Adrian was at my building this morning," he said."What did he say?" I asked "He told me he was going to ask you to be with him," Jonathan said. "He came to my building and told me directly that he was choosing you. He wanted me to know before it happened." "How did that conversation go?" I asked. Jonathan looked at the street. "He said he understood what he was asking. He said he knew the history, and that he wasn't there to ask my permission. H
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 133: She came
Marcus's POVShe arrived in less than an hour, which meant that she left before she even called me.I heard footsteps on the stairs, with no hesitation at the landing. She had looked up the address, confirmed the floor, and come straight up.I opened the door at her arrival, and she was smaller than I expected, nothing I had remembered all these years. Up close, she was just a woman in a dark coat with her hair pulled back, wearing an expression with no performance in it at all.Then she walked in. She didn't glance around the flat the way Jonathan had. She looked only at me, since the flat was irrelevant to her."Sit down," she said. "Why did you say what you said about my daughter? And you implied that it referred to Nora's paternity.""I reported what I heard," I said. "I said others could draw their own...""Enough!"I stopped, then she pulled out the chair across to set a tablet on it. She pressed play.Jonathan's voice came through, tinny and clipped: 'If anyone ever questions t
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 132: Marcus
Marcus's POV The studio was smaller than I'd expected. It was just a converted room above a café in Bermondsey. It had two microphones. Foam padding on the walls. The host, Dan, had 200,000 subscribers and had been perfectly pleasant during our pre-recording chat. Now he was looking at me, having realized a story had grown bigger than he had planned for. "You understand this will go out to a wide audience," he said. "Yes. That's why I chose you." "You could have gone to a newspaper." "Newspapers edit. Podcasts don't." I slammed. He glanced down at his notes. I had been out for three weeks by then. Three weeks in a small flat in Peckham that still smelled like whoever had lived there before me. Three weeks of learning that the world hadn't waited for me, and that it had rearranged itself into shapes I no longer recognized. I had read my second interview while still in prison. Well...I had read the first one, really. The journalist had painted me as the man who wanted
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 131: Camille
PENELOPE "Where is she?" Adrian asked as he was already pulling on his coat. His assistant pointed at the phone. "She said she would be at the Cheng Capital offices. The old ones. She still has keys from when you two were together." Adrian looked at me. "Stay here," he ordered. "Absolutely not. There's no way you expect me to stay here and do nothing." He didn't let the argument escalate, so we left together. *** The Cheng Capital offices sat in Canary Wharf on the forty-second floor. It was a building that still bore Adrian's name on the directory, even though he no longer ran what lived inside it. The receptionist looked visibly uncomfortable. "She's in the main boardroom," she said. "She says she has a right to be here. Her lawyers confirmed she has a shareholder claim." Adrian walked past her without stopping. And I walked with him to the lift to the forty-second floor. There was a corridor lined with floor-to-ceiling glass, the city spread out below. He pushed open th
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 130: Her decision
PENELOPE Three days after the kitchen conversation, I drove to Jonathan's penthouse without calling ahead. I parked the car, took the lift, and knocked on his door. He answered in a shirt that hadn't been properly tucked in. He had clearly been working, as his laptop sat open on the kitchen table, and he looked at me as if he had been hoping for something and didn't want to show it. He stepped back and let me in. I walked to the centre of his sitting room. He stood opposite me. "I'm not going to be with you," I said. "I know you have changed. The man standing in front of me is different from the one who handed me divorce papers and told me our marriage was a mistake. But Jonathan, I spent years building myself around your shape and learning how to exist in your space without taking up too much of it. And even now, even loving you, even feeling what I feel..." I stopped. "I can't go back into that." "That's not all of it. Nora is yours...always. You come twice a week, and t
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 95: The New Address
PENELOPE "Send me the address," I said. "Right now.""Penelope...""Seraphina." My voice had gone past fear into a flatter tone and it sounded more dangerous. "Send me the address or I will call the police this second."She sent the address after much hesitation."Don't bring the police," Seraphin
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Sixty-One: Mrs Park statement
PENELOPE "You don't have to sit here." Mrs. Park said this from her hospital bed without opening her eyes. She had an uncanny ability to sense when someone was in the room. "Nora needs you home." "Nora is with Adrian. She's fine." I said There was a short silence "Adrian?" she said. The
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Fifty-Nine: Coffee date with Adrian
Adrian's POVTHE NEXT MORNING "You've been awake since four," Penelope stated.She sat across from me in a corner booth of the coffee shop two streets from her apartment. It was nine in the morning. Nora lay in the pram beside her, bundled against the November chill, staring at the ceiling with th
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Fifty-Seven: Margaret knows
JONATHAN *** AT A FAMILY DINNER "She has your grandfather's brow." Margaret said this the moment I placed Nora on the large dining room table next to the bread basket, which wasn’t the safest spot, so I quickly moved her to my lap. "She has her own brow," I replied. "All the Blackwood men h
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