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Chapter 9 The Proxy
publish date:
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 83 Bloodsport in Evening Wear
(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
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 82 The Bauer Party
(Natasha)Gloria zips up my dress and steps back with the critical squint of a woman who takes these things seriously."Well," she says."Well what?""Well, you look gorgeous."She hands me my clutch."Bauer is going to be hanging around you like a buzzard."She's not wrong.The party we’re attendi
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 5 The Illusion of Control
(Chase)When I hang up the phone, a faint echo of satisfaction settles over the office.Good. That's done. Surprisingly easy.Tossing the phone onto the table, I shift my attention back to the man sitting across from me.Nathaniel Morton. My new business partner—and more importantly, the capital in
She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife Chapter 4 The Empty Hand
(Natasha)The door clicks shut as Chase steps back into the office.The air tightens, like something invisible has been pulled taut across my skin.He doesn’t bother sitting. He just stands there near the desk, looking down at me.His eyes are empty of anything that even remotely resembles warmth.
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