Share

108

Author: A. Kale
last update publish date: 2026-07-13 18:00:27

Morana’s POV

I woke up and Tristan was still there. His shoulder warm against mine and his phone screen was casting light across his face while he read something.

He wasn’t pretending to read something. He was actually reading something with the focused stillness he brought to everything that held his attention and he hadn’t left for the gym and he hadn’t disappeared into his office and he was just there.

I lay still for a moment and looked at the ceiling and let that be true.

He noticed I was
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter

Latest chapter

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    119

    Morana’s POVThe Mortaine offices were empty by nine, the cleaning crew long gone, just the hum of the building settling into itself and the city glittering through the windows of my father’s office like it had somewhere better to be.I’d been sitting at his desk for two hours with a legal pad and eleven crossed-out attempts and I still didn’t have anything I was willing to say in front of a courtroom.The first version had been too clinical. Facts and timelines, the extraction protocols, the medical consequences, everything documented and precise and completely bloodless like I was presenting a board report instead of describing what it felt like to watch my own blood move through a tube while the man I loved told a doctor to continue.The second version had gone the opposite direction entirely, raw enough that I’d read it back and felt embarrassed by my own vulnerability sitting exposed on a page that other people would eventually read. I’d crossed that one out fastest.Tristan came

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    118

    MoranaWe went through the drive together at the kitchen island, the laptop between us and the city dark outside the windows and by the third file I understood that whatever I’d braced myself for wasn’t close to enough.The consent forms were the worst part. Not because they were absent, but because they existed, carefully worded documents that used phrases like experimental compassionate protocol and terminal patient participation program while burying the actual substance of what patients were agreeing to somewhere in paragraph nine of a document most of them were too sick to read carefully.Eleven patients. All terminal. All told they were receiving an experimental treatment that might extend their lives. None of them told the treatment was derived from research into my mother’s biology, continued years after my father had supposedly ordered it destroyed.Four of them died within weeks of treatment. The files didn’t specify whether the treatment killed them faster or simply failed

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    117

    Morana’s POVIris was already at the corner booth when I arrived and it took me a full three seconds to be certain it was actually her.She’d lost weight in a way that wasn’t flattering, the kind of thinness that came from a body running out of something it needed rather than discipline or vanity. Her cheekbones stood out sharper than I remembered and there were shadows under her eyes that no concealer was hiding properly. Her hair was pulled back without effort. No emerald silk. No diamonds. Just a plain grey coat and hands wrapped around a mug she wasn’t drinking from.She didn’t perform anything when she saw me. No warm smile, no rehearsed warmth, none of the careful softness she’d deployed at every dinner and every kitchen conversation for years. She just watched me approach with an exhausted kind of directness that felt more honest than anything she’d ever said to me before.I sat down across from her. “You look terrible.”“I know.” Her voice was flat not defensive. Just tired.

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    116

    Morana’s POVThe text came through at 11pm from a number I didn’t recognize.“I need to see you. Alone. It’s about your mother.”I stared at it for a long moment sitting on the couch with my laptop still open to a board report I’d stopped reading twenty minutes ago. My thumb hovered over the delete option. This was exactly the kind of message that could be a trap, could be Iris fishing for something, could be nothing at all.I almost deleted it. Then I read it again. About your mother. Nobody outside my immediate circle knew Mira existed. We’d kept it contained deliberately, Felix and Theodore and the small legal team handling the facility paperwork. If Iris knew, it meant either she’d had access to something we didn’t know about or Xavier had told her before everything collapsed. Either way I needed to know which.I showed Tristan the phone. He read it once, jaw setting in that particular way and reached for his own phone before he’d even set mine back down.“I’ll have Reid pull a t

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    115

    Morana’s POVTristan looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at Tristan with the unbothered energy of an animal that had no concept of reputation management.“Put him down”“He seems comfortable.”“You’re comfortable” I said. “You’re standing in a chicken pen holding Gerald because you don’t want to admit you looked up how to do it and now you’re committed.”He set Gerald down with the same carefully. Gerald wandered away immediately with absolutely no acknowledgment of what had just happened.We spent the next hour and a half doing things I had never done in my life and would not have predicted doing at any point in the last decade. Tristan had apparently watched three videos about property maintenance before we arrived because he knew things about the barn that he definitely hadn’t known before this week and was presenting them as general knowledge.I found actual eggs in the nesting boxes which was somehow both obvious and completely shocking. I stood holding two eggs and stared at them li

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    114

    Morana’s POVI want it on record that I said no to the farm. Repeatedly with reasons. Documented reasons that I had laid out clearly over dinner three weeks ago when Tristan had looked at real estate listings in upstate New York with the energy he usually reserved for pharmaceutical acquisitions. I told him that I was a PhD with a company to run and had no opinions about soil. He bought it anyway.Not a huge farm. That was apparently his argument for why this was reasonable. Just land like a house. Some chickens that came with the property because the previous owners had left them and Tristan had called this a bonus feature like chickens were something a person wanted to inherit.We drove up on a Saturday because he said I needed air. I said Manhattan had air and he said not this kind. I said that was extremely pretentious and got in the car.The property was beautiful. I was not going to tell him that immediately but it was. Rolling land and old trees and a house that had been built

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    36

    Morana’s POV“This is my husband, Tristan Rothschild” I said and watched the color literally drain from their faces.Tristan didn’t stand up. He just turned his head slightly and looked at each of them in turn with the kind of expression that suggested he was calculating exactly how much they were

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    30

    Tristan’s POVI was waiting outside City Hall when the Rolls-Royce pulled up. I didn’t recognize the car at first. I just knew it was the kind of vehicle that made people stop and stare because it screamed money in a way that was impossible to ignore. The engine shut off and I watched the door ope

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    14

    Tristan’s POVReid was waiting when I got to the office. He didn’t have the usual morning briefing energy. He had the energy of someone who’d been awake for thirty-six hours straight staring at data that didn’t add up in a way anyone wanted it to.“Xavier met with Vance Mortaine yesterday,” he said

  • Reborn as the True Billionaire    5

    Tristan’s POV The deal closed at 6:47 on a Saturday morning. I know the exact time because my assistant sent the confirmation while I was still in the car heading to the office and I read it once then put my phone face down on the seat. Four billion dollars for Veltane Pharmaceuticals. We have h

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status