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Chapter 97: Naomi's Goodbye
publish date:
2026-08-31 18:17:18
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The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 98: Dominic's Toast
POV: Lena Moretti The gathering was Dominic's idea. He pitched it as "a small dinner to celebrate not being under federal investigation anymore," which was his way of saying he wanted to bring people together without admitting he cared enough to organize it. Dominic expressed affection through logistics. Always had. The man who had managed Ezra's legal affairs for seven years and survived a corporate war and been pelted with peas by my daughter showed love by making reservations and coordinating schedules and then pretending the whole thing was purely administrative. The brownstone wasn't built for parties. The kitchen was too small. The living room could hold maybe twelve people if everyone agreed to be friendly about personal space. But that was fine because the guest list was short. Dominic. Naomi, who drove back for the occasion. Two members of Blackthorn's senior team who had become genuine friends rather than just colleagues during the prosecution. A woman named Grace from Cam
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 97: Naomi's Goodbye
POV: Lena Moretti Naomi told us on a Sunday morning. She came to the brownstone for breakfast, which she'd been doing every few weeks since the trial ended. Not as security. As a friend. The transition from one to the other had happened gradually, the way all real transitions happen, not through a declaration but through the slow accumulation of shared experiences that outgrew the professional framework that originally contained them. She sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and watched Sera eat scrambled eggs with her hands and said, without preamble, "I'm leaving Blackthorn." Ezra set his fork down. I stopped wiping egg off Sera's chin. The kitchen went quiet except for Sera's enthusiastic chewing, because babies don't observe dramatic pauses. "Not because of anything wrong," Naomi added quickly. Reading our faces. The professional in her still calibrating communication based on the audience's response. "The war is over. The prosecution is complete. The security threats
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 96: Six Months Later
POV: Lena Moretti The sentencing was on a Tuesday in March. I didn't attend. I'd said everything I needed to say to Victor in the prison meeting room months ago and watching a judge deliver a number wasn't going to add anything to what I'd already closed. Wells called me afterward. Brief. Professional. The tone of a prosecutor completing the final administrative step of a case that had consumed a year of her career. "Thirty-five years," she said. "No possibility of parole." I was sitting on the brownstone's front porch watching Sera crawl across a blanket spread on the grass. She'd mastered crawling two weeks ago and had been using the skill primarily to pursue the neighbor's cat, who tolerated her with the patient resignation of an animal that understood the tiny human wasn't going anywhere. "Thirty-five years," I repeated. Running the math. Victor was sixty-two. Thirty-five years meant ninety-seven. He would die in federal custody. The man who'd spent three decades building sys
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 95: The Vows
POV: Lena Moretti I wrote the vows on a Saturday morning while Sera napped and the house was quiet. Not on a laptop. By hand. On a piece of paper from the same pad I'd used to draw the web diagram with my mother's name at the center months ago. Different words this time. Different map. Instead of lines connecting crimes and victims and conspiracies, I was drawing lines between two people and trying to find the language for what those lines meant. The first marriage had been a contract signed in darkness. Shaking hands. Blood on my scalp. A man I'd known for less than an hour offering me a door that wasn't locked and me walking through it because the alternative was Julian. There were no vows. No ceremony. No promises beyond the transactional terms of a deal designed to serve his revenge and my survival. We'd stood in a study in the east wing and I'd signed my name next to his and that was it. A legal formality. A strategic arrangement. The beginning of everything that came after, bo
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 94: The New Empire
POV: Lena Moretti Ezra signed the papers on a Monday morning. No ceremony. No press conference. No dramatic moment where he stood in a boardroom and renounced his father's legacy with a speech and a flourish. Just a kitchen table, a stack of legal documents Dominic had prepared, and a pen that he used to transfer Crane Industries into a restructuring trust managed by an independent board with no Crane family involvement. I was feeding Sera at the time. Mashed banana. Most of it ending up on her chin and my shirt rather than in her mouth. Ezra sat across from us, reading each page with the focused attention he gave everything, and signed at the bottom of each one with the same signature he'd used on our marriage certificate and the trust documents and every other paper that had reshaped his life over the past year. "Done," he said. Setting the pen down. Looking at the stack with an expression that wasn't relief exactly. More like the feeling you get when you set down a bag you've be
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 93: Hana's Freedom
POV: Lena Moretti Hana left Paul on a Tuesday. She called me from the road. Her voice was shaking so badly that I could barely understand the first three words. "I'm in the car," she said. "I'm driving. I don't know where I'm going. I just got in the car and I drove." She'd waited until Paul was at work. Packed one bag. Left the house in Connecticut that she hadn't left in three years. Got in the car whose odometer Paul checked every Tuesday afternoon when he came home. And drove. No destination. No plan. Just the act of leaving. The physical motion of a body passing through a doorway that had been a boundary for years and discovering that the other side existed and was real and contained air she could breathe. "Pull over at the next gas station," I told her. Calm. The same voice I used when directing case logistics and coordinating witness preparation. The voice that said I know what to do even when I'm figuring it out in real time. "I'll send you an address. Naomi has a contact i
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 7: The Sister
POV: Lena Moretti Gianna showed up on a Tuesday. No call. No warning. She just appeared in the lobby of The Obsidian with a gift bag and a smile that didn't reach her eyes, telling the front desk she was here to see her sister. Naomi called up to check with me. I could have said no. Part of me wan
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 5: The Rules
POV: Lena MorettiEzra was gone when I woke up. No note. No message. Just an empty penthouse and the faint smell of coffee from a machine I hadn't heard him use. The mug was in the sink, rinsed clean. Even his morning routine left no trace.I spent the first hour just walking through the place. Not
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 4: The Fallout
POV: Lena MorettiBy the time we reached the car, my phone had forty-seven notifications. By the time Naomi pulled onto the highway, it was past a hundred. Someone at the cathedral had filmed the whole thing. Ezra stepping out. The certificate. Julian's face going bloodless. My two words aimed at t
The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride Chapter 3: The Stolen Bride
POV: Lena MorettiI didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room Ezra had locked from my side and I stared at the wall until the sun came up. My dress for the wedding hung on the back of the door. White silk. Custom fitted. A costume for a performance I was no longer giving.Ezra se
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