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Chapter 98: Unexpected Allies
publish date:
2026-05-26 14:03:59
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One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX: ARIANA RETURNS TO WORK
I go back to Blackwood Holdings on a Monday morning six months after the shareholder meeting.Not in the same role I left. That is the first thing I establish, not with Lucian, not through a conversation at the kitchen island or a discussion in bed or any of the forums in which important things between us have been decided. I establish it alone, in the three weeks before I return, in a series of meetings with Marcus and the board and the two outside consultants I bring in specifically because they have no prior relationship with the company and therefore no prior relationship with me.I propose the ethics and transparency division myself.Not as a response to Gabriel Kane or Victor's misconduct or the year that just passed. As a permanent structural addition to the company. A division whose function is to ensure that the mechanisms Gabriel exploited, the dormant accounts, the audit vulnerabilities, the compartmentalized assets, cannot be exploited again. Not because Blackwood Holdings
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE: LUCIAN'S FLAW, REVISITED
He tells me on a Tuesday evening in November.Not because I asked. Not because something happened to prompt it. He tells me the way he tells me the things that matter most, quietly, at the end of a day, when the apartment has settled into its evening register and Patricia is asleep and Emma is in her room and the particular quality of the penthouse at this hour, warm and specific and theirs, creates the conditions in which certain kinds of honesty become possible.He says, "I have been seeing a therapist."I set down the book I was not reading.I look at him.He is on his side of the bed with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled and the expression of a man who has said something he has been deciding whether to say for some time and has now said it and is waiting to see what the room does with it."How long," I say."Six weeks," he says. "Since the shareholder meeting. Since the day Patricia was born." He pauses. "Since the day I understood that the things I was most afraid of losing
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR: WHAT EVELYN BLACKWOOD SAID
Evelyn comes for Sunday dinner on a day that is not a special occasion.This is the detail that matters. Not a birthday. Not a holiday. Not a formally arranged family event with a guest list and a table plan and the particular architecture of a Blackwood gathering designed to look effortless and requiring considerable effort. Just Sunday. Just dinner. Just Evelyn appearing at the penthouse door at six in the evening with a bottle of wine she selected herself and the expression of a woman who has decided to be somewhere and is being there.She has been here before with occasion as the pretext.This is the first time without one.She comes in and she does the thing she always does, the inventory of the room, the brief assessment of who is present and what the room requires, but the inventory is different tonight. It does not have the quality of a woman calculating. It has the quality of a woman arriving.Mrs. Caldwell has sent food, which has become the arrangement, Mrs. Caldwell sendin
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE: THE ROOM WITH PAINTINGS ON THE WALLS
Emma's bedroom takes three weeks to assemble.Not because it is complicated. Because Lucian approaches it the way he approaches things that matter, with the particular focused attention of a man who has decided that this specific thing deserves to be done correctly and is therefore not going to be rushed, and Emma approaches it the way she approaches everything, with a clarity of preference that is entirely her own and does not require input but occasionally accepts it.The paint samples have been waiting since before the custody agreement was finalized, which is what I told Emma when the agreement came through, that I had been holding them for three weeks. She looked at me when I said it with the expression that cycles through surprise and then something warmer and then the managed version of that warmth, and she said, you were waiting.I said, yes.She said, for the agreement to be official.I said, for it to be yours.She looked at the paint samples for a long time after that.She
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO: THE CUSTODY AGREEMENT
Judge Eleanor Grant issues the formal custody arrangement on a Wednesday morning.Not dramatically. Not with ceremony. With the particular efficiency of a woman who has reviewed every document submitted, listened to every argument presented, read Emma's sealed session notes, and arrived at a conclusion she has been moving toward since the moment she asked whether anyone had thought to ask Emma what she wanted.Ethan calls at nine fifteen to tell us.I am at the kitchen island with Patricia in the specific hold I have been developing over the past two weeks, the one that allows me to use one hand for coffee while keeping her secure with the other, which Patricia tolerates with the patience of a person who has assessed the situation and determined that the coffee is a reasonable priority. Emma is in the study for her Wednesday visit, reorganizing the bookshelves in the way she has been quietly doing since her second visit, which has resulted in an organizational system I do not fully un
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE: ADRIAN AND OLIVIA
Olivia sends me a text on a Saturday morning, ten days after the shareholder meeting, while I am on the terrace with Patricia in the particular careful way of someone who has been told by Dr. Carter that fresh air is beneficial and by Lucian that the terrace has a wind chill and by her own body that being outside after ten days of hospital and penthouse is the most necessary thing.The text says, I need to tell you something. Is now a good time.I text back, terrace. Come up.She arrives in four minutes, which means she was already in the building, which means she came knowing she was going to ask this and wanted to be close enough to arrive quickly once the answer was yes. This is entirely consistent with Olivia, who plans her approaches the way she plans everything, with the precise efficiency of someone who does not waste motion.She comes through the terrace door and stops when she sees Patricia."Oh," she says."Yes," I say."She's." Olivia pauses. "She has your expression.""She
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 3: The Morning After the World Changed
Silk sheets.That’s my first coherent thought. These aren’t my sheets. Mine are cotton, budget-friendly, bought on sale at Target.These are silk. Cool against my bare skin. Expensive.Oh God.I keep my eyes closed. If I don’t open them, maybe last night didn’t happen. Maybe I’m home. Maybe the cha
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 2: When Strangers Offer What Love Never Could
The scotch tastes like smoke and bad choices.I should care. I don’t.My phone vibrates again in my purse. The buzzing feels distant, like it’s happening to someone else. Someone who still cares what Ethan Cole has to say.The stranger three seats down hasn’t moved. Hasn’t looked at me again since
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 1: The Surprise That Shattered Everything
The champagne bottle sweats in my hand, condensation dripping between my fingers like the hours I spent picking out this lingerie.Three years. Three years of loving Ethan Cole, and I’m about to surprise him two days early for our anniversary because waiting felt impossible. The red lace under my c
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 66: Evelyn’s Change of Heart (Almost)
After Lucian leaves, I sit at the table. Numb. Broken. Lost.Evelyn returns. Without Emma. Without Mrs. Caldwell. Just her.She sits across from me. Silent. Studying.Finally she speaks. “That was painful to watch.”“I ruined everything. I thought I was proving myself. Instead I destroyed our partn
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