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Chapter 53: Way back
Last Updated:
2025-04-01 13:28:55
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My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 54: He's with her
Callum’s grip on my hand was firm yet hesitant, like he was afraid I’d pull away. But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t. We sat in silence, watching the steady rise and fall of Ryan’s chest as he drifted off to sleep. The beeping of the monitors was a steady, rhythmic reminder of just how fragile he was.I exhaled slowly, exhaustion pressing down on me like a heavy weight. My body ached, but my heart ached more.Callum’s thumb brushed against my palm absentmindedly. It sent a ripple of warmth up my arm, an old familiarity that both comforted and unsettled me.“Athena,” he murmured after a long pause.“I meant what I said earlier. I don’t know how to be what you need.”I turned to face him, searching his expression for deception, for walls, for the Callum who always pulled away before I could hold on. But all I saw was a man who looked just as lost as I felt.“Then learn,” I said softly. “Because I can’t keep doing this alone. And Ryan—” My voice broke. “Ryan needs you, wheth
Last Updated : 2025-04-02My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 55: Brother's battle
Dr. Patel’s eyes softened, her voice gentle but firm. “We start treatment immediately. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, is aggressive, but it's also one of the most treatable forms of childhood leukemia, especially with early intervention. We have options. The sooner we begin, the better his chances.”My mind struggled to process the words, each one a weight that sank deeper into my chest. Ryan. Leukemia. It was too much to take in all at once. I felt like I was drowning in the wave of panic that threatened to engulf me.Callum squeezed my hand, his voice steady. “What does treatment look like?”Dr. Patel nodded, glancing down at the chart in her hands before answering. “The first step is chemotherapy. We’ll start with an intensive induction phase, which will last about a month. During that time, Ryan will need to be monitored very closely. After that, there will be consolidation and maintenance phases, which will continue for the next two years.”Two years. The word echoed in my
Last Updated : 2025-04-05My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 56: With him
But in that moment, with Callum by my side and Ryan lying peacefully in front of us, I allowed myself to believe that we could face whatever came next. Together.The next morning, the whirlwind of medical appointments, phone calls, and endless forms began. It was almost like I was on autopilot—nodding along, signing papers, answering questions I didn’t fully understand. The pediatric oncologist arrived, a woman named Dr. Thompson, with a warm smile and a calm presence that somehow made the chaos feel less overwhelming. She explained in greater detail the specifics of Ryan’s chemotherapy regimen, the medications, the rounds of tests, and the side effects we’d need to prepare for. She outlined the schedule for the first round of treatment, which would begin the following week.I couldn’t quite bring myself to listen to all of it. I kept looking at Ryan, small and fragile in his hospital bed, his tiny fingers curled into a fist. His innocence seemed so out of place in the sterile, harsh
Last Updated : 2025-04-06My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 57: Dangerous
As the days stretched into weeks, the rhythm of hospital visits, treatments, and restless nights became our new normal. There were moments of relief when Ryan showed signs of recovery, but just as quickly, there were those dark moments when we feared the worst. We spent our days waiting—waiting for tests, waiting for updates, waiting for the next treatment round. Each day was a fragile thread, and we clung to it, not knowing what the next one would bring.It was during one of these long, quiet evenings that Callum and I found ourselves standing outside the hospital, our faces bathed in the faint light of the setting sun. The world felt so distant, so out of reach, and yet, in that moment, we were still tethered to each other, even if we didn’t have words to say.“Do you ever think about what comes after?” Callum asked, breaking the silence. He didn’t look at me, but I could hear the question in his voice—the same uncertainty I’d been carrying with me since the moment Ryan had been dia
Last Updated : 2025-04-07My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 58: Could I trust him?
The days that followed Daniel’s unexpected call were a blur of conflicting emotions. Ryan’s treatment continued, and the routine of hospital visits, medication schedules, and sleepless nights persisted. But now, between the sterile walls of the hospital and the sterile walls of my mind, I couldn’t shake the unease that Daniel’s presence had stirred. His offer had been made in a seemingly harmless tone, yet something about it unsettled me.Callum and I fell into a strained silence, our once easy conversations now punctuated with awkward pauses and unspoken tension. He noticed my withdrawn demeanor, my distracted gaze, the way I’d stare off into space when he wasn’t looking. He could tell I was carrying something, a secret or a weight, but he didn’t press. It was as if he was giving me space to figure it out on my own, but I knew he was growing more and more concerned. The strain was evident in the way he would look at me, the edge in his voice when he spoke, but I didn’t know how to ex
Last Updated : 2025-04-07My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 59: Evident
The days that followed my conversation with Callum were a blur, but they weren’t a peaceful blur. Every moment felt like it was suspended in the tension of what could be, what might come, and the relentless weight of the choice that was looming over me. I could feel Daniel’s presence pressing in from the outside, waiting for me to make a decision, but I was trapped in this space between past and future, between trust and doubt.Ryan’s treatment continued, a rhythm I had grown all too familiar with. The sterile smell of the hospital, the beeping of monitors, the soft hum of nurses moving through the halls—it had become a part of my life, an unchanging backdrop to the turbulence of my emotions. I tried my best to be strong, to hold it all together for Callum, for Ryan, for myself, but there was a crack in my resolve, and it seemed like it was getting wider with each passing day.Callum’s worry was evident in his eyes every time he looked at me. His attempts to shield me from the weight
Last Updated : 2025-04-08My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 60: Scared
The days that followed my meeting with Daniel were some of the hardest I had ever faced. I couldn’t shake the weight of the decision that loomed over me, pressing down with increasing force. The tension between Callum and me was palpable, thicker than ever. He hadn’t asked about the meeting, not directly, but I knew he could tell something had changed. My silence was heavy, my distraction obvious. And still, I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth.Ryan’s condition was worsening. Every day, there were moments when I thought the fight would be over, when I would watch him sleep and wonder if I was seeing him for the last time. And yet, in the same breath, I clung to the hope that we could make it through, that things could get better. But the uncertainty was suffocating. Every medication administered, every round of treatment, felt like a reminder that we were running out of time.I wasn’t sure what I was searching for. Maybe I was looking for a sign, something that would make th
Last Updated : 2025-04-08My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 61: Enough
The days that followed my decision were anything but easy. Even though I had chosen to stay with Callum, to lean on the bond we had built over the years, the weight of my choice pressed down on me like an iron vice. I had rejected Daniel’s offer, but in some quiet, hidden corner of my heart, I still questioned whether I had made the right decision. I hadn’t fully embraced the idea of the future without his help, his promise of an escape from the suffocating reality I had been living in.But as I spent more time with Callum, as I saw the way he fought for us, fought for Ryan, I began to feel that flicker of hope grow a little brighter. Maybe we didn’t need Daniel. Maybe we just needed each other.Ryan’s condition was still precarious. Some days, he seemed like he was doing better, his color returning to his cheeks, his voice stronger when he spoke. But those moments were fleeting, like sunshine breaking through a storm, only to be swallowed by clouds once more.We had a good day here a
Last Updated : 2025-04-10
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My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 95: Trigger
The snow came in thick that morning.It blanketed the ridge in silence, muting the world until everything beyond the windows blurred into shades of white and grey. Callum stood outside, barely a silhouette against the swirling flakes, wrapped in that old green coat he found in the closet and claimed as his own. I watched him through the frost-laced glass, my hands cupped around the ceramic mug—his coffee, still bitter, still undrinkable.But I sipped it anyway.Because he’d made it for me. Because the effort mattered more than the taste.I opened the door slowly. The cold slapped my skin, immediate and bracing.“Morning,” I called.He turned slightly, his breath visible in short puffs. “Didn’t want to wake you.”“You didn’t.” I stepped beside him. “You okay?”His jaw tensed. “I’m… almost.”I waited. We’d fallen into a rhythm like that—one of pauses and offerings. No pressure. Just space, held gently.He finally said, “I dreamed I was back in the vault. But this time, I walked in willi
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 94: Shut down
The safehouse in the Scottish Highlands didn’t look like much—half-buried in moss and stone, tucked beneath a crooked ridge. But after what we’d been through, it felt like the world’s last cathedral. Quiet. Empty. Untouched by programs and wires and memories that weren’t ours.Callum barely spoke the first day. He slept. For once, real sleep—not the restless, drug-induced recovery that followed every mission. I watched him from the armchair across the room, wrapped in the heavy plaid blanket someone had left behind, eyes tracking the rise and fall of his chest as if I still didn’t quite believe he was breathing freely.I wanted to reach for him. But after Reykjavik, after the screaming and seizures and crimson light inside that vault—I was afraid of shattering something fragile. Not him. Us.So I waited.On the third night, the fireplace crackled back to life, and so did he.“You should sleep,” Callum murmured from where he stood by the window, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “I
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 93: Memory
The corridors beneath Reykjavik were colder than death. The walls hummed faintly with latent energy — the kind that made your skin crawl, like the building itself remembered violence.We’d split into two groups. Julian and Will were planting the disruptor arrays across the upper levels. Sage was syncing the transport failsafe. I stayed with Callum.He was quiet beside me, moving slowly but steady, hand trailing lightly against the steel walls like he needed to touch something real. The tremors in his body had lessened, but I could still see the fatigue in his eyes.“Pain okay?” I asked, adjusting my grip on the rifle slung across my shoulder.He gave me a faint smile. “Manageable. I’ve had worse.”That much was true — but it wasn’t his body I worried about. It was what they had done to his mind. What they had put inside him.We reached a chamber lit only by our headlamps. The walls narrowed here, funnelling down into the main vault. The Eidolon core was just beyond.Callum paused at t
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 92: Reclaim
The chopper thumped across the burning skyline like a bleeding heartbeat, rhythmic and urgent. I sat beside Callum, cradling him against my side, his blood soaking through my sleeves. He was slipping in and out of consciousness, and every time his eyes fluttered open, I reminded him, “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”Julian sat across from us, checking a battered tablet that had somehow survived the inferno. The glow on his face was pale and grim.“We didn’t get it all,” he muttered. “Their central servers were offline before we reached the lab. Everything in Callum’s head may be the last uncorrupted copy.”Will glanced over his shoulder from the cockpit, voice tense. “And now they know that. Which means we’ve got a target painted on our backs the size of a continent.”I turned my head, looking back at the black column of smoke curling into the sky. Calidus wouldn’t mourn the loss. They didn’t grieve — they adapted. A fallen lab was just another lesson. A reminder to harden the next one.B
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 91: The Fire we bring
He looked at me like a dying man trying to remember sunlight.The flickering fluorescent light above cast shadows across his face, deepening the hollow beneath his cheekbones, making the bruises bloom darker on his skin. I reached out, but he flinched.“Callum,” I said again, gentler this time. “I know what they’ve done. I see it. But they don’t get to keep you.”He swallowed, and the sound felt deafening in the silence. “You don’t know what I’ve given them, Athena. What I had to give.”Julian appeared behind me, scanning the room with his weapon drawn, tense and ready. “We need to move. This place won’t stay quiet for long.”I looked back at Callum, still shackled to the cot. “We can’t leave him like this.”“There’s no time,” Will’s voice crackled through my comm. “Guards converging. Eastern hallway. You’ve got five minutes, max.”I turned to Julian. “Cut him loose.”Julian hesitated only a second before crossing the room. “He’ll slow us down.”“Then we’ll move slower,” I snapped.Ca
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 90: He's Alive
And he was trying to reach me.“I thought he died,” Will said, hands trembling as he decrypted the next packet.“He was supposed to,” I whispered. “He wanted us to believe it.”Julian joined us ten minutes later, still bruised but sharper than ever. He scanned the metadata twice before nodding.“This wasn’t sent from the convoy,” he said. “It came from inside the Calidus fallback grid. Probably rerouted through a relay station using a clean identity.”“So he’s behind enemy lines,” I said.“Or being kept alive by someone with an interest in not killing him.”“Leverage,” Will said. “Or… bait.”The thought made my stomach clench.“Either way,” Julian added, “he sent this for a reason. He’s telling you he made it. That he’s waiting.”I looked at the screen again.Echo. Down. Survived.Not help. Not run. Not goodbye.Just three words.A signal in the dark.We flew to Montenegro the next day.Julian tracked the signal’s bounce path to a portside comms hub buried in a crumbling Cold War-era
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 89: Bring him home
Three days had passed since Will told me Callum was dead.Three days since the convoy firestorm — since the smoke, the silence, and the sound of nothing on the other end of the line. We buried his name in an encrypted memorial on the darknet, posted beneath a single phrase: Some ghosts burn brighter than the living.The world kept moving.The children were safe — scattered across hidden sanctuaries with new identities and guardians who still believed in justice. Nora-3 was adapting faster than we thought possible. Her neural scans had begun to normalize, as if freedom was rewriting her brain.But me?I was static.Functioning. Breathing. Moving.But not feeling.Not really.Until the ping.It came through Will’s system at 2:17 a.m. — a ghost packet embedded in a relay node we’d used back in Prague, long since scrubbed and mothballed.I was the one who saw it.The days were a blur of comms and half-formed plans. Every hour that passed with Callum’s message sitting like a hot ember in m
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 88: Feel empty
There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty.The kind that wraps around you after a moment so sharp, so unforgiving, that your brain hasn’t caught up yet. Like the second after a gunshot, or the pause before someone says, “It’s not what you think.”I sat in that silence, staring at the message on Callum’s encrypted tablet.It had lit up when he stepped away to take a call — some logistics check-in with Will. He’d left it open. That alone should’ve been a red flag. Callum never left anything unsecured.But maybe… maybe part of him wanted me to see it.The message was from Lara.Lara: The flight from Riyadh is booked. If we do this, there’s no turning back.Below that, a location ping.Not Novus-related. Not a safehouse.A villa. Remote. Coastal. Private.There was a follow-up message, timestamped an hour earlier.Lara: Are you sure about her? You said she’d never find out.And then — the worst part — the reply.Callum: She’s distracted with the child protocols. Let’s finish this
My Ex, the Widowed Billionaire Chapter 87: Not even Callum
I didn’t leave Berlin.Not really.I stayed close enough to watch Callum from a distance — to feel the gravity of him without getting pulled back into orbit. He didn’t chase me. That was worse than if he had. Because it meant he knew I wasn’t ready to hear anything that would make this less real, less raw.I stayed in an old Cold War-era substation the resistance had converted into a shelter for journalists and data couriers. The air smelled like copper and engine oil. The beds were steel slabs with thin foam. It was perfect. Unemotional. Unattached.I needed that right now.Because I couldn’t stop thinking about the messages.Not just the words Lara wrote — but the pauses. The silences in between. The way Callum had answered her, and more damning: the way he hadn’t.He hadn’t denied it meant something.He hadn’t told her to stop.He hadn’t told me the truth.I’d trusted him with my life. With my mind. With my body. And in the end, it was something so simple — a lie by omission — that
