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publish date:
2026-07-27 20:52:07
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Reborn as the True Billionaire 124
Morana’s POVHe knocked, which was ridiculous because it was his own penthouse. I was standing in the living room when I heard it and for a full three seconds I genuinely didn’t understand what was happening until I looked through the peephole and found Tristan Rothschild standing in the hallway outside his own front door holding a single flower like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it.I opened the door and just looked at him.“You knocked” I stated the obvious. “It’s a first date,” he said, entirely serious as though this explained everything. “I thought the door should be part of it.”“You live here.”“I’m aware.”I looked at the flower. It was not a bouquet. Not the dozen roses I half expected given his general approach to grand gestures. Just one flower, something pale and slightly crumpled at the edges like it had survived a journey it wasn’t fully prepared for.“Is that a carnation?” I tried to hide my smile. “It’s whatever was closest to the register.”“You panicked
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Morana’s POVDr. Patricia Hale’s office was smaller than I expected, warm in a deliberate way that felt designed to counteract exactly the kind of controlled composure both Tristan and I brought into every room we occupied professionally. Two chairs angled toward each other instead of a couch, which felt oddly more intimate than I’d anticipated.I sat with my hands folded in my lap, aware of exactly how corporate my posture looked and glanced at Tristan beside me, who’d adopted the same careful stillness he brought to board meetings, jaw set, expression unreadable.“Neither of you needs to perform anything here,” Dr. Hale said, watching us both with the particular patience of someone who’d clearly seen this exact tension in every powerful couple who’d ever walked through her door. “This isn’t a negotiation. There’s no outcome you need to secure.”“Old habits,” I said.“Understandably.” She had a legal pad in her lap, though she wasn’t writing yet, just watching us both with an attenti
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Tristan’s POVShe fell asleep on the couch around nine, the exhaustion of the last few months finally catching up with her all at once. I sat across from her for a long time just watching her breathe, the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders for weeks finally releasing into something that looked like actual rest.I’d been sitting on this for three weeks. Not because I was afraid to say it. I’d never been afraid of much, not in the way that stopped me from acting once I’d decided something mattered. I’d been waiting because the timing had never been right because there was always another crisis stacked behind the last one, Xavier’s sentencing bleeding into Iris’s revelation bleeding into the courthouse and the press and eleven patients’ families who deserved answers before either of us could think about anything else.Tonight was quiet for the first time in months. No board meetings tomorrow that required either of us personally. No press circus or legal filing waiting on a si
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Morana’s POVIris caught me in the corridor outside the courtroom, waiting near the elevators while Tristan spoke with our legal team a few feet away, close enough to notice but far enough to give me space if I wanted it.“Can I have a minut?” I glanced at Tristan. He’d already seen her approach, his attention shifting even mid-conversation and I gave a small shake of my head that meant I was fine, that this didn’t require intervention. He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary before returning to the legal team though I knew he wasn’t actually listening to them anymore.“I don’t have anything to trade this time” Iris said, reading the wariness I hadn’t fully hidden. “No documents. No leverage. I’m cooperating fully with the prosecutors on my own charges. Whatever comes for me now, I’ve already accepted it.”“Then what is this?”She wrapped her arms around herself, the grey coat swallowing her thinner frame and looked genuinely uncertain for the first time since I’d known her.
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Morana’s POVThe courtroom was fuller than the arraignment had been, every seat in the gallery occupied and a line of press credentials stretched down the hallway outside. Sentencing day had a different weight than everything that came before it. Arraignments were procedural. Sentencing was an ending.I wore navy this time instead of black, something Catherine had chosen for me specifically because she said black read as performance and navy read as certainty and certainty was what I needed the room to feel when I stood to speak.Tristan sat directly behind me in the gallery, close enough that I could feel his presence without needing to turn around and confirm it. Theodore was beside him. Felix on the other side, uncharacteristically quiet, his usual commentary absent in a way that told me even he understood the weight of what this particular morning required.Iris was three rows back. I hadn’t expected her. She’d flown back voluntarily to face her own charges and I understood from m
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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
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Morana’s POV Xavier mentioned the gala the same way he mentioned everything he didn’t want me involved in which was right before leaving the room. It seems like he wanted to take his LEGAL wife to go there. “It’s a pharmaceutical fundraiser and too formal. You’d be bored.” He adjusted his cuffl
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Morana’s POV By the time Xavier came down for breakfast, I was already seated and was waiting for him. Exactly where I was supposed to be and how it has been for years. I came down early to make sure everything was ready then waited. “The Cook really made my favorites.” I glanced up as he walke
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Morana’s POV I felt air slam into my lungs in a way it does when one drowned and came back to life. I gasped sharply as my body jerked upright. My chest heaved my fingers clawing at the sheets beneath me as if I were still drowning in that cold darkness. That taste of nothingness that felt like
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Morana’s POV “Your name isn’t registered as his wife.” The clerk’s voice was flat as though she was telling me the weather. I blinked slowly because I was certain I’d misheard her. There’s no way she is talking about my marriage. “I’m sorry?” I let out a small laugh glancing briefly at my law
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