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Chapter 233 Not Okay

Author: Olivia GW
last update publish date: 2026-06-06 12:25:52

(Liam)

Natasha texts Come over, nothing else.

No other words usually means something's wrong, so I bring pastries.

Sweet treats has never made anything worse.

Julian's leaving as I get there.

He claps my shoulder in the doorway and tells me I've got the face of a man about to have his week ruined.

I don't know what he means yet.

Natasha's at the kitchen counter.

No hello.

She watches me set the bag down like she's deciding whether to say it at all.

"Sonia's getting married."

A laugh comes out o
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  • She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife   Chapter 398 The Portrait

    (Natasha)"The chairs stay empty," Eleanor says, in the voice she uses on caterers and governments."Both of them. We wait.""They said noon," Chase says."Then they'll be here at noon. Photographer, you're being paid by the hour, look happier about it."The photographer, who has been rearranging us on the Warren Estate staircase for forty minutes, looks at the empty chairs and wisely says nothing.The gallery wall goes up the stairs beside us.Generations of Warrens in oil, sitting very still, not one of them smiling.Nobody in this portrait can manage either.Elias has claimed the center chair on the grounds of seniority and his cane."In my day," he announces, "A family portrait was four people and a dog.""You hated the dog," Eleanor says."The dog hated me. There's a difference. It still made the painting.""Where's the dog now?" Elijah asks."In the painting. Immortality was wasted on it."Elijah's on the step behind him, tugging at a collar Hannah has already fixed twice.Mason

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    (Chase)"You said one dance," I remind her, against her hair."I'm renegotiating.""You can't renegotiate mid-dance.""Watch me. Lily's asleep on your mother, and if I wake her to say goodbye she'll scream, and then I'll cry, and this makeup was applied by professionals.""So we just leave our daughter?""With her grandmother, who's always angling for more time with her. Don't look at me like that, it's one night."My mother is predictably delighted about keeping Lily for the night, and scandalized that we want to sneak off.She tells me to drive carefully, twice.We make it up the beach at a pace just under suspicious.Julian spots us and turns the music up to distract the others from our exit, because he misses nothing and tells no one.Then we’re in the car, speeding along the dark road, and my wife is sitting with her shoes off and her feet on the dash, eating cake off a napkin she stole on the way out."Is that my slice?" I ask."It's community property now. Keep up."My wife.I

  • She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife   Chapter 396 The People I Love

    (Natasha)I go down the cove before anyone can miss me.The dress isn't built for rocks, so I take it slow, holding my shoes in one hand.The spot's easy to find.The long flat piece of driftwood is still there, wedged up where the tide doesn't reach.I stand there a while with my feet in the cold sand.He's not here. He washed away a long time ago and I know that.I talk to him anyway."I'm getting married in an hour," I say. "Up at the house. Everyone I love is on that beach."The water comes in.Goes out."I'm happy, Dad. I wanted you to hear it from me."That's all of it.Sand crunches behind me, and Elijah picks his way down the rocks in a suit, tie already loose."Grandma Eleanor sent me. She says the light's going and the photographer's getting emotional about it.""We don't have a photographer.""She means Julian. Also Lily ate sand. Twice. The second time she looked right at me while she did it.""Noted.""You okay?" he asks, in the tone of somebody who was told to check."I'

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  • She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife   Chapter 82 The Bauer Party

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    (Nathanial)My mother has put flowers on every surface.It's a good instinct.Flowers fill space, give the eye somewhere to land, make a house feel inhabited rather than merely occupied.She’s thought carefully about this afternoon and it shows.What she hasn't thought about, or perhaps has thought

  • She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife   Chapter 84 The Beach House

    (Chase)The invitation arrives on a Wednesday, addressed to the entire household in handwriting I don't recognize.Sonia picks it up from the hall table before I do and I watch the color leave her face in real time."What is it?"She turns it over in her hands."My mother bought a house.""That's g

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    (Gloria)I have attended enough industry parties to know that the real entertainment is never the canapés.It's the people in the room.Specifically, tonight, it's the corner near the bar where Nathanial is standing with a glass of scotch.Wearing the expression of a man who’s recently had his enti

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