All Chapters of STEP ASIDE EX-HUSBAND: THE RISE OF LIANA: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Liana’s PovThe notification arrived before dawn, a quiet chime breaking the stillness of her office. Liana glanced at her screen, expecting another routine report, another board update. Instead, her breath hitched.Anonymous transfer received: $2,000,000 USD.The finance team had flagged it immediately, as per protocol. There was no sender listed and no message attached. Just a string of encrypted numbers that led, after an hour of digital digging, straight back to him. Dominic.She leaned back in her chair, staring at the glow of the monitor as if it might explain itself. The sun hadn’t yet risen; the city outside her window was washed in pre-dawn gray. Her reflection stared back at her, she was calm on the surface, while her heart was breaking somewhere underneath.There was no one else who would think of doing this. Not the board, not investors, not even allies trying to curry favor. Only Dominic would send two million dollars without a word. Only Dominic would think that silence

Liana’s POVThe first sign of trouble came as a whisper in a boardroom. Within seventy-two hours, it became clear that Z-Core was the target of a hostile takeover. The numbers didn’t lie, a foreign conglomerate, Kovalenko Group, had begun quietly buying up shares, using proxies and subsidiaries to disguise the pattern. By the time the legal team pieced it together, twenty-one percent of Z-Core was already under threat.The board panicked. Investors called hourly. News outlets caught the scent before she could even prepare a statement.And through it all, Liana kept her face calm and her voice level.“Contain the leak,” she ordered. “Freeze all executive trading. I want every acquisition trail mapped in the next six hours.” She didn’t flinch until she was alone.Z-Core wasn’t just a company, it was her fight, her redemption, her proof that she could build something clean from the ashes Dominic left behind. Losing it now, to men who didn’t care about what it stood for, felt like betra

Dominic’s POVThe ballroom glittered with triumph. Strings hummed beneath chandeliers, crystal glasses clinked, and the scent of money and victory filled the air. Z-Core had done the impossible, it repelled an international takeover, restored investor confidence, and emerged not only intact but stronger. Liana had done it.Dominic stood near the edge of the crowd, deliberately out of the spotlight. He wasn’t supposed to be here. His name wasn’t on the guest list, his presence not requested. But Liana had known he’d come. She didn’t forbid it, and that was enough.From where he stood, he could see her across the room. She wore midnight blue, understated but devastating. The kind of dress that made silence stretch around her. Her hair fell loose for once, soft waves framing a face that carried both exhaustion and power. She wasn’t the woman he’d once tried to control or the rival who’d fought him to the ground. She was something else entirely now. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.He

Dominic’s POVThe first thing Dominic learned about teaching was silence. Not the sharp, calculated kind he used to wield in meetings. Not the manipulative pauses that made people squirm. This was a gentler kind, the silence of listening, of letting others fill the space.It was autumn in Geneva, the air crisp and clean, the mornings threaded with gold. He walked to the university each day through narrow streets lined with bookstores and bakeries. His life now was unrecognizably simple, a small apartment above a café, a schedule of lectures, a handful of students who didn’t care who he had been.They called him Professor with the reverence reserved for outsiders. He never corrected them.His course, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility was popular, mostly because of his name. They expected scandal stories, boardroom drama, confessions. Instead, they got case studies, open-ended discussions, and a man who rarely raised his voice.He taught them that power without conscience was corros

Liana’s POVThe first few days on the island were about learning how to breathe again. Not together. Just at all. There was no schedule, no company updates, no press waiting for a photo. The world outside their tiny patch of Greece could have burned, and neither of them would’ve noticed. Life here moved at the pace of the sea, it was slow and deliberate, indifferent to ambition.Every morning, Liana woke to the smell of salt and citrus. The shutters rattled softly in the breeze, and the air was always a few degrees warmer than she expected. Dominic rose early too, though neither tried to disturb the other. Their mornings began with silence, the kind that didn’t demand explanation.They’d walk along the beach after breakfast. No phones, no talk of work. Sometimes she’d point out the shells scattered along the shoreline, small spirals of color half-buried in the sand. Dominic would pocket one every day and wordlessly leave it on the table back at the cottage, a growing collection tha