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Chapter Thirty-Nine:
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2026-07-16 17:31:18
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OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Forty-One:
The restructuring meeting is on a Wednesday.Marcus brings three people from the legal team and a woman named Harriet Cole, who runs endowment strategy for two of the largest private foundations in the country. She is sixty, small, and looks at spreadsheets the way Sophia looks at blank paper. Like they are telling her something nobody else in the room can hear yet.Sophia sits at the head of the conference table.I did not suggest this. I arrived at the room first and took the chair to the left of center, and when Sophia came in, she paused for half a second, read the room, and sat at the head without being asked. Harriet noticed. I noticed Harriet noticing."Walk me through what you are envisioning," Harriet says. She has a legal pad, but she has not opened it yet. She is looking at Sophia.Sophia has a folder. She made it herself, I know, because the tabs are labeled in her handwriting and the paper inside is a mix of printed documents and pages torn from a notebook with charcoal s
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Forty:
The article publishes on a Monday.I know it is live before Sophia does because Marcus sends me the link at six twelve in the morning with a single line beneath it: “Clean. Accurate. Read it before she does.”I read it standing at the kitchen counter in the gray early light. Nadia gave it the full treatment. Not a sidebar. Not a response piece buried in the business section. The front page of the Times' weekend magazine was pushed to digital Monday morning for maximum reach. The headline is simple.Her Name Was Claire.I read it twice. Then I put my phone face down on the counter and make coffee and think about what it is going to feel like when Sophia reads her own life rendered in someone else's sentences, even honest ones. Even careful ones. There is something specific about seeing yourself in print that has nothing to do with accuracy. It is the permanence of it. The fact that it exists now outside of you and cannot be taken back.She comes downstairs at seven. Hair loose. My shir
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Thirty-Nine:
She decides at nine forty-three.I know because I am in the study going through Marcus's revised legal response when I hear her come down the stairs. Not hurried. Not hesitant. The specific footfall of someone who has finished thinking and is now moving.She appears in the doorway. Still in the clothes she wore to lunch. Hair still undone from the wind on the terrace."Call Nadia Reeves," she says.I look up from the documents. "Tonight?""Leave a message if she does not pick up. I want it done before I change my mind."I reach for my phone. Sophia does not move from the doorway. She stands there while I dial, watching me the way she watches things she needs to confirm are real. Nadia picks up on the third ring, which surprises me. It is nearly ten."Kane," she says. Not a question. Journalists who cover finance keep late hours and irregular instincts. "I wondered when you would call.""Sophia Bennett wants to sit down with you. Her story. Her terms. One condition.""What condition?"
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Thirty-Eight:
The filing hits the news cycle at eleven forty-seven on a Wednesday morning.I am in a board meeting when Marcus sends the alert. I feel my phone vibrate twice in my jacket pocket, and I do not reach for it because I am mid-sentence and because I have learned that reaching for a phone in the middle of a sentence tells a room something about your priorities. I finish what I am saying. I let the discussion continue for four more minutes. Then I excuse myself.Marcus is waiting in the hallway outside the conference room. He does not look alarmed. Marcus never looks alarmed. It is the quality I pay him most for."Three outlets," he says. A legal correspondent at the Tribune picked it up first. The filing names her twice. Once as a recipient of proprietary documents. Once as a potential material witness.""Who leaked the filing?""Derek's legal team. Deliberately. They want the public narrative established before we can counter it."I look at the wall across from me for exactly three secon
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Thirty-Seven:
The call comes at six forty-three on a Tuesday morning.I am already awake. I have been awake since five, the way I always am awake before the city decides to be, sitting at the kitchen counter with coffee going cold beside me and a Kane Global quarterly brief open on my laptop that I have not read a single word of. I have been listening to Sophia sleep instead. The particular quiet of someone who finally went under after hours of not being able to. She fell asleep around two. I know because I was watching the ceiling and tracking her breathing until it changed.The number on my phone is one I recognize but have not seen in eleven years.I answer it anyway."Alexander," Richard Hale's voice. Derek's father. My oldest friend, before he became something more complicated than that. "I need to talk to you.""It is six in the morning, Richard.""I know. I am sorry. I would not call if it were not important."I close the laptop. Stand up. Move to the window where the city is gray and just b
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Thirty-Six:
I am in my room working on the new series when my phone rings. Unknown number. I almost do not answer. But something makes me pick up anyway."Hello?""Sophia. It is your father."I go very still. I have not spoken to my father in six months. Not since the night I left Chicago with one suitcase and a folder full of my mother's medical bills. Not since he sat me down in his office and told me I needed to think about next steps. Not since he chose Vivienne and Chloe over me without even pretending it was a difficult decision."How did you get this number?" I ask."Vivienne found it. She has been keeping track of you. She saw the article about the foundation. About Alexander naming it after your mother."Of course she has been keeping track. Vivienne does not let things go. She catalogs them. Files them. Waits for the right moment to use them. "What do you want?" I ask."I want to talk to you. To apologize. To explain." "There is nothing to explain. You made your choice. You chose them o
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Seven:
"Whoever is doing this has been inside my company for longer than three weeks. I need to know who it is before they know I am looking."Alexander is on a call at six in the morning, standing at the window of his office with the city still grey below him. Marcus Reeves is on the other end. Head of i
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Five:
The cedar and sharp, expensive cologne that has become one of the most familiar things about this penthouse hits her first when she walks into the living room. Tom Ford Oud Wood. He is standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows with his back to her, looking out at the city. When he turns and sees the
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Four:
I cannot sleep. Again. It is becoming a pattern, and I do not know how to break it. Midnight comes, and I am wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Derek and the gallery and the way Alexander held his hand at my back like he was holding me in place. Like he wanted me there. Not because
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Three:
I wake to sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and have no idea what time it is. I reach for my phone. Ten thirty. I have not slept past eight in years. I sit up and look around the room. My room. In Alexander Kane's penthouse. This is real. This is actually happening.I get out of be
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