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publish date:
2026-07-13 18:00:52
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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
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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
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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 113
Morana’s POVReid sent the notification at 8:23am and Tristan showed me his phone across the breakfast table without saying anything. Just turned the screen toward me and watched my face.-Xavier Lancaster taken into federal custody. Processing underway. Arraignment scheduled 11 AM.“I want to be there,” I said.“I know,” Tristan said.“Is that—”“Yes.” He was already standing.I had forty minutes. I went to the closet and stood in front of it for thirty seconds and then reached for the Valentino. The black one with sharp shoulders. That cut that meant business in a way that left no room for interpretation. Heels that added three inches and clicked against marble like punctuation.I did my makeup in twelve minutes. The version that said I had arrived somewhere intentionally and understood the weight of the moment. Dark liner with red lip. The diamond earrings from the Mortaine vault because my father built something that had survived everything including him. I was going to stand in a
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Xavier’s POVThe warrant came on a Wednesday morning. With two federal agents at the door of the Brooklyn apartment at 7 AM with the particular quiet efficiency of people who’d done this enough times to understand that restraint was more effective than force.Xavier had been awake already. He’d been awake since four because sleep had become something that happened to other people over the last three weeks. He was sitting at the small table with coffee he’d made himself and his phone face down in front of him and the whiteboard on the wall behind him still covered in a plan that had stopped being relevant approximately ten days ago.He heard the knock and understood immediately what it was. Because he’d been waiting for it. That was the thing nobody understood about Xavier Lancaster. He always knew when something was coming. He’d built his entire career on anticipating movements before they happened. He’d seen Morana’s return coming six months before she walked into that gala. He’d s
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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
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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
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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
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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
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