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2026-04-29 01:38:26
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Reborn as the True Billionaire 100
Tristan’s LOVI watched it happen and filed it. The warmth she’d deployed without calculating it. The way she’d given the girl something real instead of something performed. There’s more depth to Moran that I thought about. The requirement to become better than me delivered like it was the most natural expectation in the world. She’d been doing that her whole career. Raising the ceiling for everyone who came after her without making it about herself. She already said it around a decade ago that she wants girl children not to be scared of becoming CEOs. I’d known that from the 2017 newspaper clipping. From watching her present at a conference in 2018. From following the arc of a career that kept reshaping the field it moved through.Knowing it and watching it happen two feet away were different things.We walked back through the park with the light getting lower and the temperature dropping slightly. She pulled her coat tighter and I reached over and took her hand. Didn’t look at he
Reborn as the True Billionaire 99
Tristan’s POVSaturday arrived with no agenda and I didn’t know what to do with that. No board meetings or Reid appearing with updates or case files requiring immediate decisions. No Xavier doing something that required a counter move. Just the penthouse and grey morning light and Morana’s alarm going off at eight which she ignored for twenty minutes. And then she got up anyway because she was constitutionally incapable of sleeping past a certain point regardless of how late she’d been up.I was already at the island with coffee when she appeared from the bedroom in the oversized shirt she’d been systematically stealing from my wardrobe. Her hair doing something that suggested she’d tried to put it up and changed her mind halfway. “I want to cook something” she said.“Okay.”“Something that takes time. With actual steps.”“The kitchen is there.” I pointed, hiding back a smile.She moved into it like she owned it which she increasingly did. Within fifteen minutes there was flour on
Reborn as the True Billionaire 98
Morana’s POVThe journalist’s name was Diana Park and she’d been at the Times for twelve years. She sat across from me in a private room at the Mortaine offices with her recorder on the table between us. I’ve read her last six profiles before agreeing to this. She was precise and fair . She didn’t editorialize and she didn’t flatter and she didn’t let people hide behind careful language. She asked what she wanted to know and she waited until she got it.Good. I didn’t want to be flattered. I wanted to be heard accurately.She started with the company. Research division restructuring, patent pipeline and stuff. Then we moved to where I saw Mortaine in five years. Safe territory covered thoroughly. She asked smart questions and I gave her real answers because vague answers in the Times looked like someone managing a narrative. I wasn’t managing anything. I was just telling the truth.“Five years is a long time to be away from an industry you were reshaping. People assumed you’d left p
Reborn as the True Billionaire 97
Tristan’s POVMy press conference was at Rothschild headquarters. The floor-to-ceiling windows were behind me showing Manhattan because context mattered.The room was full and way more than I’d expected. Financial journalists. Industry publications. Three television cameras I hadn’t requested but had anticipated. People who’d been covering Rothschild Pharma for years and people who’d never covered us before today but were here because Xavier Lancaster had attached our name to a headline.I stood at the front without a podium because podiums created distance and I didn’t need distance. I needed them to hear me clearly. I didn’t have notes.Reid had offered to prepare talking points and I’d declined because talking points were for people who needed reminding of what they believed. I didn’t need reminding.The room settled as cameras focused. I looked at the room for exactly three seconds before speaking. Long enough that everyone understood I wasn’t rushing. “Rothschild Pharma has oper
Reborn as the True Billionaire 96
MoranaI saw the alert come through before I’d finished my first coffee. Felix sent it in the morning with no commentary which meant it was bad enough that even he didn’t have a joke ready. Xavier Lancaster had filed a civil claim against Rothschild Pharma. Improper acquisition practices. Using a marital relationship with a pharmaceutical heir to gain unfair competitive advantage in the sector.I read it twice. Then I read the financial press coverage that had already started running because the financial press never slept and bad news moved faster than anything else.The allegation was vague. Xavier’s lawyers had written something that any competent judge would eventually dismiss and that every financial publication in America would run before that happened.I got dressed in a Chanel suit and put my hair up. The board meeting felt different the moment I walked in.Gerald was already seated and he had his phone face down on the table which meant he’d been reading something he didn’t
Reborn as the True Billionaire 95
Morana’s POVThe villa packed up faster than it should have. Five days of pretending the real world didn’t exist and suddenly the real world was in the car waiting.I took one last photograph from the terrace before we left. The pool. The water beyond it. The lemon trees doing their thing in the morning light. Posted it with a single word.Goodbye.The comments were immediate and dramatic in the way the internet was dramatic about everything.-she said goodbye like she’s leaving a person not a location-morana mortaine and italy had a situationship and she just ended it-the way i felt that goodbye personallyI put my phone in my bag and didn’t look at it again until we were airborne. The private terminal on the Italian side was smaller than JFK but operated on the same principle. No lines or announcements. Just efficiency dressed up in good furniture.Someone photographed us leaving the villa. Then again at the terminal. By the time we boarded the photos were already circulating with
Reborn as the True Billionaire 62
Morana’s POVThe third glass of champagne hit differently from the first two. I could feel it moving through me in the best possible way. So warm and fizzy and loosening things that had been wound tight for so long I have forgotten they were supposed to relax. The music was doing something to my
Reborn as the True Billionaire 61
Tristan’s POVI was standing by the window checking my phone when I heard her heels on the hallway floor. I looked up and immediately forgot what I was checking my phone for.The dress was green. That was the first thing that registered. Then everything else registered at once and my brain did some
Reborn as the True Billionaire 58
Tirstan’s POVThe car cut through Upper Manhattan traffic in the rain and I watched Xavier’s location pulse on my phone the entire way. He is moving like a man who still believed he had the right to go wherever he wanted.He was heading toward Theodore’s townhouse. My jaw tightened and I forced it
Reborn as the True Billionaire 57
Tristan’s POVBy the time I left Morana at Theodore’s townhouse, Manhattan was already drowning in rain. She barely looked back before walking inside.That should not have irritated me as much as it did. After what we did in the bathroom, I felt like I deserve a kiss. I don’t go down on women. Ever
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