All Chapters of STEP ASIDE EX-HUSBAND: THE RISE OF LIANA: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

DOMINIC’S POVThere’s a moment that happens right before your entire world shifts beneath your feet. It's like the air changes, thickens, and your lungs forget how to work properly. That was what it felt like as I held that envelope in my hands, reading line after line of dirty linen inked in the black and white language of corporate sabotage.The room was absolutely quiet, every breath, every glance sharpened into something unbearable. Everyone had copies, I couldn't deny something so obvious. It was a contract I had signed months ago, when I decided to do it, I thought it would be buried in the background noise of power plays and business risks like it always was. But this… this time ot backfired. They wound me out. This was about exposure. Who exposed me?My fingers tightened on the edge of the document. I looked at the faces of everyone at the table, wondering who had sold me out. But i hadn't exactly told anyone at the table about it so how do I know who to suspect? Whoever could

DOMINIC'S POVThe room emptied like a theater at the end of a movie but I sat frozen, the cold envelope in my hand, though I hadn't looked at it in a few minutes. My gaze was in a space somewhere between the very waxed mahogany table and the vacant area that now held the boardroom space. It was done. I knew it. The silence that followed the vote was more deafening than any scandal, more deafening than any PR noise.I didn't move. Couldn't. I heard the soft cadence of footsteps. Mr. Raymond passed beside me, catching a passing second's look, his mouth working, "I'm sorry," as if a benediction I had not desired. I did not answer. He did try to wait. That seat on the other side of the room was empty now, Liana had stormed out without so much as a backward glance. That hurt worse than the words. Worse than the vote. Worse than the title having been ripped from me like I hadn't bled sweat into this business.I rubbed my face, slow and careful. My hands trembled when I brushed against my c

LIANA'S POVThe knock was gentler than I had expected, but it thumped in my chest. I opened the door gradually, having no notion of what I would find on the other side, and there he stood. Stanley. His hands jammed into his coat pockets, his eyes shadowed by something deeper than mere night."Hey," he whispered."Come in," I whispered back, stepping aside.He came in, not as a friend caller, but as a man coming into a confession booth, prepared to abandon a sin. I shut the door behind us, the snap of the lock final."Want wine?""No. It won't take long."I blinked. "Okay. So what's going on here, Stanley? You said you couldn't tell me that on the phone and you sounded tense."He nodded slowly and assessed my living room, a vacant stare slipping over the unfilled wine glass and silky throw blanket I'd discarded on the couch.He didn't sit. "You're going to hate me for this," he said at last, his gaze cast downward. "But you deserve the truth."I stared at him, my heart pounding."Stanl

DOMINIC'S POVThe bar was nothing special. Dirty, dingy, and pretty much dripping with spilled sorrows and phantom cigarette smoke. Situated in a decaying strip mall of the kind where businesses came to die. Perfect, the kind where no one cared. The kind where you exchanged secrets for which you never got paid. Life was normal here, not like the sophisticated bars where everyone is trying to make an impression. I walked in like I had nothing to lose because, literally, I didn't anymore. When I stepped in, I dialled the number trying to find the person i was here for and he turned around. He was already sitting there in a biith by the corner. He wore a leather jacket and his face was a little too shaved, posture a little too stiff to belong in a place like this. He looked like someone who had once mattered and was trying not to look like he cared that he didn't anymore."Dominic Smith," he greeted, raising a glass of brown liquor as she stood to say hello. "Glad you made it."I didn't

Liana's PovThe tapping of feet and clacking of keys against the marble floor of the building were normally comforting, a rhythm I'd become accustomed to. But today, they were a nuisance. A painful one.Stanley's visit hung in my mind like a stone in a glass of water. I had tried to push it under the carpet, tuck it behind deadlines and law strategy meetings, but it would not stay quiet. His eyes… his voice. The way he said my name as though it were still his.I sat staring blankly at my screen. The same sentence glared back at me for the past fifteen minutes, unpenned.He said he loved me. A part of me still longed to believe him but he had shattered my trust. A soft knock interrupted my train of thought. Clara entered my office with a considerate sort of reverence, as if she didn't realize I was at my breaking point."Your legal team has arrived. PR is joining remotely," she announced.I nodded. "Send them in."Two of my legal team members entered first and then our corporate publi