All Chapters of My Billionaire Ex-husband Won't Call It Quit: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Coleman Manor Ruins – Midnight The hidden elevator descended into the earth with the grinding persistence of geological time, its reinforced steel cables singing hymns of tension as they carried Griffin and Eli deeper into the bowels of what had once been their childhood home. The shaft hadn't appeared on any of the architectural surveys conducted after the fire—it existed in the liminal space between official blueprints and nightmare reality, accessible only through a concealed entrance hidden beneath the ruins of Michael's wine cellar. Griffin and Eli stood back-to-back in the cramped elevator car, weapons drawn, their enhanced senses straining against the oppressive darkness that seemed to press in from all sides. The air tasted of recycled atmosphere and electrical ozone, processed through filtration systems that had been running autonomously for months despite the destruction above. That alone should have been impossible—the manor's power grid had been severed when the buildin

Island Stronghold – 72 Hours Later Griffin's nightmares had started the moment he'd closed his eyes in the medical bay, sixty-seven hours after Coleman Manor had become a smoking crater. What began as standard post-traumatic stress—images of fire and collapsing concrete—had evolved into something far more disturbing. Not nightmares of Michael—but dreams as Michael. He'd wake up with his hands around imaginary throats, his voice rasping orders in a cadence that wasn't his own. Commands issued with the casual cruelty of a man who had never seen other human beings as anything more than variables in an equation. "Liquidate the pension fund. Those teachers won't need retirement if they're not breathing." The words would spill from his lips before he fully understood what he was saying. The island stronghold—a repurposed oil platform in international waters that Maria had converted into their base of operations—offered the isolation Griffin needed to wrestle with what was happening to

Coleman Manor Ruins – Midnight The flames devoured Michael's childhood home with the same hunger he'd once reserved for me—insatiable, indiscriminate, consuming everything in their path with a primal roar that drowned out the distant wail of too-late sirens. The fire painted the midnight sky in furious oranges and vengeful reds, visible for miles across the manicured landscape of Connecticut old money where the Coleman family had planted their flag generations before Michael was born. Firefighters stood idle at the perimeter of the estate, their trucks parked at strategic intervals that created the illusion of response without action. The chief—a square-jawed man with thirty years of service patches on his jacket—had given the order to "secure the area and prevent spread" rather than "extinguish," a technical distinction that would provide plausible deniability in the morning's inevitable investigation. His daughter went to school with Griffin. Her college tuition had been anon

Sunrise Over the Safehouse – 6:02 AM Twin B—Eli, Griffin had learned to call him, a name their brother had chosen for himself in the rare moments when he was allowed to be more than just a weapon—sat slumped against the massive oak tree that marked the safehouse's perimeter. The neural stabilizer hummed softly on his temples, its gentle electromagnetic field helping to maintain the fragile equilibrium between his natural neural patterns and the artificial conditioning that had shaped him into a killer. Three hours had passed since the confrontation, three hours of careful conversation and shared memories that had begun the delicate process of untangling a lifetime of manufactured hatred. Griffin sat cross-legged beside him, monitoring the stabilizer's readouts while simultaneously running psychological analysis protocols through his enhanced consciousness. The data was encouraging—Eli's stress indicators were declining steadily, his neural patterns showing increased coherence as th

Coleman Manor Ruins – Midnight The flames devoured Michael's childhood home with the same hunger he'd once reserved for me—insatiable, indiscriminate, consuming everything in their path with a primal roar that drowned out the distant wail of too-late sirens. The fire painted the midnight sky in furious oranges and vengeful reds, visible for miles across the manicured landscape of Connecticut old money where the Coleman family had planted their flag generations before Michael was born. Firefighters stood idle at the perimeter of the estate, their trucks parked at strategic intervals that created the illusion of response without action. The chief—a square-jawed man with thirty years of service patches on his jacket—had given the order to "secure the area and prevent spread" rather than "extinguish," a technical distinction that would provide plausible deniability in the morning's inevitable investigation. His daughter went to school with Griffin. Her college tuition had been anon