Mag-log inShare
Chapter 7: Romilly Draws A Line
Petsa ng paglalathala:
2026-07-24 00:09:03“Gerald,” she said. “A word.”
He didn’t argue. He just stood there, a coffee cup abandoned on the desk, watching Margaret the way a man watches weather he can’t do anything about. I gathered the manuscript pages, said something polite I don’t even remember saying, and left before I could hear whatever conversation was about to happen behind that closed door. I went straight to Romilly’s office. She took one look at my face and set down her pen like she already knew whatever I was about to say was going to ruin her evening. “Sit,” she said. “Talk.” I told her everything in a rush — the bouquet, the standing order, the eight months, Gerald’s shaking hands, Margaret cutting him off mid-sentence like she’d been listening at the door the whole time. Romilly’s jaw got tighter with every sentence, until by the time I finished she looked like she was chewing glass. Then she stood up so fast her chair rolled back and hit the wall. “That’s it.” She was already moving, already pulling a legal pad toward her. “I’m drafting something tonight. A statement. A formal complaint. Something with teeth, Elena, because this isn’t gossip anymore, this is—” “Romilly.” “—this is a documented pattern, a florist’s records, a father-in-law who clearly knows something, and I am not going to sit here and let them—” “Romilly, stop.” She stopped pacing. Looked at me like I’d slapped her. “You want me to stop? They lied about your body, Elena. In writing. On a legal document with your name on it.” “I know what they did.” “Then why aren’t you angrier?” “I am angry.” My voice came out quieter than I meant it to, which somehow made the point land harder than shouting would have. “I’ve been angry since the morning I signed that envelope. But angry isn’t the same as ready.” She crossed her arms, unconvinced, still standing. “I don’t have proof yet,” I said. “I have a delivery date. I have a man who almost said something before his wife walked in and stopped him. That’s not evidence, Romilly. That’s instinct. And instinct gets you laughed out of a courtroom and straight back into the tabloids as the bitter ex-wife who couldn’t let go.” She was quiet for a second. Then, slowly, she sat back down. “So what do you want to do instead? Nothing?” “No.” I leaned forward. “I want them to think I’m doing nothing. That’s different.” “Explain.” “Right now, everyone’s watching me. Margaret’s watching me. Gerald’s terrified of me. Whoever’s been texting me from some unknown number is watching me closely enough to know when I’m standing outside a ballroom in the rain.” I said it steady, even though saying it out loud made my skin crawl a little. “Broken people don’t investigate, Romilly. Broken people cry in their apartment and don’t ask questions. If I let them believe I’ve fallen apart, they’ll stop watching so carefully. And that’s when I find out what they don’t want me to find.” Romilly studied me for a long moment. Something shifted behind her eyes — not agreement exactly, more like she was recalculating who I’d become in the last few days. “Let them think I’m broken,” I said. “Broken people don’t investigate.” “And if they figure out you’re not actually broken?” I didn’t answer right away. My phone buzzed on the desk between us. I glanced down. Unknown number. Again. Same message as the one that had chased me out of the rain outside the ballroom. I know what really happened. Call me when you’re ready to hear it.
Pinakabagong kabanata
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 13: The Name I Never Said
I said his name out loud three times that night, just to see if it would start meaning something different the fourth time.“Adrian Ashford.” Once, quiet, testing the shape of it in my empty kitchen. “Adrian Ashford.” Again, like maybe the second time would jar something loose. “Adrian Ashford.” A third, and it still sounded like nothing — a name I’d heard in passing for years, attached to headlines I never fully read, a man I’d never once had a reason to think about.I sat at my kitchen table, laptop open in front of me, cursor blinking in an empty search bar. I hadn’t typed anything into it yet. I’d been sitting like that for almost ten minutes, staring at the little vertical line pulsing on and off, on and off, like it was daring me to move.I’d avoided looking him up for years. Not because of anything specific — just the way you avoid a name attached to something you sense might be painful, something that isn’t quite yours to grieve, so you leave it alone out of a strange kind of
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 12: The Director's Office
I told myself I was only going back for answers, not because a stranger with my name in his folder had gotten under my skin in under two minutes.Ask him about the folder. Zara’s voice was still sitting in my ears, that cracked half-whisper, refusing to let me walk away and pretend the whole encounter hadn’t happened. I found his office by the sound of it before I ever saw the door — boxes being shifted, tape peeling off cardboard in long, reluctant strips, the particular chaos of someone who hadn’t finished moving in yet and didn’t much care that it showed.Degrees leaned against the wall, still wrapped in brown paper. A desk half-buried under packing material. One framed photo sitting face-down on the windowsill, like he hadn’t decided yet whether he wanted anyone to see it.He looked up when I knocked against the open door frame.Unsurprised. Like he’d been expecting this exact visit, maybe even built the shape of his afternoon around it.“Elena.” He set down whatever he’d been unp
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 11: The Name On The File
The door didn’t just open — it opened like whoever was on the other side already knew they didn’t need permission.“Then who was it about?” I’d just asked. Zara’s mouth was still open, the answer sitting right there behind her teeth, close enough that I could almost hear the shape of it forming. And then the door swung wide and whatever she was about to say disappeared back down her throat, swallowed whole before it ever reached me.I turned to look. Zara’s face changed the instant she saw who was standing there — not fear exactly, something faster than that, something practiced. A woman rearranging her entire posture in half a second flat. Spine straighter. Chin up. Hands folding themselves back into that composed, doctor’s-office stillness. Whatever had been open on her face a moment ago — the wet eyes, the cracked voice — sealed itself shut like it had never been there at all.A man stood in the doorway. Tall, dark suit that fit like it had been tailored recently, a folder tucked u
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 10: Zara's Silence
“Florian, wait—”But he was already gone. I stood in my doorway a long time after that, cold air pressing in from the hallway, holding onto half a sentence and one word — Aspen — that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop chasing. I didn’t sleep much that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face right before he turned, that look people give you when they’re saying goodbye to something and don’t know how to tell you.By morning I’d made a list in my head of everyone who might actually answer a straight question, and there weren’t many names left on it. Gerald had tried and been cut off. Florian had tried and lost his nerve. Margaret wasn’t going to give me anything she didn’t want me to have. That left one person who’d known me longer than anyone else in this city, someone who’d sat across from me through every ordinary appointment for six years and never once had a reason to lie to me before.Zara.Zara had known me for six years, which meant she also knew exactly how to l
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 9: Florian's Almost-Confession
“I don’t know. He had a folder with your name on it. I just assumed you knew.”I didn’t answer her right away. I couldn’t. I mumbled something about needing to go, and I walked out of that hospital fast, past the plaque, past the elevator, past three years of my life sitting under someone else’s name, and I didn’t stop moving until I was back in my own apartment with the door locked behind me.I spent the rest of that day turning it over. A folder with my name on it, in the hands of a man I’d never met, in a building I used to run. I didn’t have an answer by nightfall. I didn’t have one by the time I gave up and went to bed either.That’s when the knock came.Florian had never once shown up at my door without calling me first, so I knew before he said a word that something in him had finally broken.I opened the door and found him swaying slightly, tie loose around his collar, eyes red — not drunk enough to be sloppy. Drunk enough to be honest. Which is worse.“Florian.” I stepped bac
The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife Chapter 8: The Hospital Wing
I know what really happened. Call me when you’re ready to hear it.I stared at that message until Romilly leaned over and looked at my screen too. Neither of us said anything for a second. Just the two of us in that office, city lights coming on outside the window, both of us reading the same six words over and over like they might rearrange themselves into something less unsettling.Then she reached for a pen and wrote the number down on her legal pad, underlined it twice, hard enough that the pen almost tore through the paper.“We’re not calling it yet,” she said. “Not until we know who’s on the other end.”She was right. I didn’t call it. I put my phone away, finished the conversation with her, gathered my coat, and went home to a night of staring at my ceiling instead of sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the message glowing there in the dark. I know what really happened. Not I think. Not I heard. Known, stated plain, like a fact somebody had been sitting on for a while,
Maaari mong magustuhan
The Untouchable Ex-Wife
Mizuki Sei2.7M viewsMommy, Where Is Daddy? The Forsaken Daughter's Return
LiLhyz3.4M viewsYou're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone
Cora Smith692.5K viewsWrong Ride, Right Lover
Rainweather670.7K viewsI Accidentally Married The Billionaire Alpha
Law54 viewsA MATE WORTH HATING
Soraya9 viewsThe Mafia King's Untouchable Rose
Sage_Ryuuzen63 viewsThe Sweetest Stepmom
Maria Azli 29 views
