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Chapter 9 The Proxy
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2026-03-16 18:40:54
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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
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 397 The Night
(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'
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 395 You'll Know
(Julian)"I'm giving a toast," I tell Gloria."Nobody asked you to give a toast.""Which is exactly the kind you want. The requested ones sound like hostage videos.""Is this the poem conversation again? Because the poem was vetoed.""The poem was your idea, and I vetoed it myself, on Natasha's behalf. This is a toast. Different genre entirely."There's a pause where I can hear her deciding whether this is a fight worth having."There's no line for a toast on the schedule," she says."There's no line for me on the schedule at all. I checked. I'm correcting an oversight.""Fine. You go after the food, before the dancing. How long do you need?""As long as it takes.""Two minutes.""We'll see.""Julian.""Gloria."She hangs up.So that's settled. I owe the happy couple a toast.I sit down at the kitchen table with a pad and a pen and write Natasha and Chase at the top and underline it twice.Then nothing happens for a while.Everything I try comes out wrong.To the bride and groom gets
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 394 The House
(Clarice)"Gloria says you've gone quiet in the group chat.""Gloria reports on me now.""Gloria reports on everyone. It's her way of loving us."Natasha comes in, drops her keys in the bowl by the door like she's been doing it for years, which she hasn't, which is why I like watching her do it."She thinks you're plotting something.""I was thinking. There's a difference.""Not in this family."I put the kettle on.She sits at my kitchen table and takes the good chair without being told which one it is anymore, and picks up the salt cellar, and puts it down."How's Lily?""Currently against sleeves. It's a whole position. She has arguments."She turns the salt cellar again."You'll have heard about the hotel.""I have.""And the glasshouse, and the two after the glasshouse.""I’m co-chair of the wedding committee, I heard about all of it."I bring the cups over."Gloria wanted a war council. I didn't have anything to say in a war council.""No," Natasha says slowly. "You went quiet i
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 393 Cathedral
(Natasha)"We’ve been approved," Gloria says, instead of hello."The letter came this morning. We're officially on the list.""Gloria. That's enormous. Congratulations!""It only means we’ll be considered, not that anything will happen anytime soon. Could be a month. Could be two years. The woman on the phone said, and I quote, try to live your life."A pause."I've put the letter in a drawer so I stop reading it. Anyway. That's not why I called. Sit down.""People keep telling me to sit down. What now?""The hotel fell through.""Which hotel?""The last one. The ballroom with the ceiling. The one the committee spent two weeks calling a cathedral because Eleanor said the word once and it stuck."I switch the phone to the other ear."Fell through how?""Renovations," Gloria says, in the voice of a woman reading a word she doesn't believe."Sudden, urgent renovations. To a ballroom that got redone eighteen months ago. Deposit's back already. They're very sorry. They sounded sorry the wa
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 139 On the Steps
(Natasha)The hearing is set for nine.It does not start at nine.It does not start at nine fifteen, or nine thirty.By the time the bailiff opens the courtroom doors at nine forty-two, I’ve been standing in a corridor in shoes that hate me, holding a six-month-old who’s decided this is the morning
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 136 Postcards from Nowhere
(Sonia)Paris is a scam.I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve already figured it out.It’s supposed to be this great romantic city, but it sucks.The light is grey.The food portions are tiny.Every restaurant expects you to have made a reservation in 1987.The men on the street don’t look at me
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 129 The Illusion
(Julian)The text comes through at nine fifteen.I’m at the bar at the Beverly Wilshire. Drinking alone. Don't tell anyone.I stare at my phone for a full ten seconds.Three weeks of charm offensive.Orchids.A handwritten card after the gala.Several coffees dropped at the Stein M&A reception desk
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 125 The Closed Door
(Clarice)I tell myself to stop.Nat is a closed door.She has been a closed door for twenty years, and one afternoon with James Bailey on my doorstep is not enough to open it again.I press my fingers to my temples and breathe in slowly.Four counts in. Eight counts out.It does nothing.Her face
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