All Chapters of Never Forgive You, My Ex-Husband: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

DAVIDI didn’t sleep. I don’t think she did either. The safehouse was too quiet, like the walls were holding their breath with us. Berlin was still in my head, and so was the look on her face when she saw him. White. Empty. Then something else—steel coming back online.Hannah holed up in the kitchen before sunrise, sitting on the counter in my hoodie, bare feet against the cabinet doors like a kid who climbed where she wasn’t supposed to. Steam curled out of a chipped mug. She stared into it like she could read a future in coffee.I leaned in the doorway and tried not to sound like a cop. “You should be asleep.”She didn’t look up. “You, too.”“I don’t get paid to sleep.”She snorted. “That explains a lot.”I crossed to the other side of the counter and set my palms on the cold stone. “We’re not doing this.”“Doing what?” she said, but the game didn’t have her heart in it. She finally met my eyes. The bruise-colored circles under hers made me want to break furniture. “Say it.”“You wan

NICOThe message came in late. Not too late for me, though—I hadn’t been sleeping much anyway.My phone buzzed once on the nightstand, screen flashing across the dark room. A new number, no name. I almost ignored it. Too many vultures tried to reach me lately—reporters, opportunists, frauds with claims that they’d spotted Hannah in airports, in cafés, in dreams they mistook for fact.But this one was different. Short. Cryptic. Five words.“The river remembers the shore.”That was all.I stared at the glow, chest tightening. Most people would dismiss it as nonsense. But I knew better. Hannah used to say things like that when she wanted to speak without speaking. Phrases that sounded like riddles but carried a pulse of meaning only I could untangle.I sat up, heartbeat climbing. God. God, it was her.Nobody else would write it that way. No tabloid, no troll, no enemy who wanted me distracted. It was her hand, her rhythm, her strange little mind.The river remembers the shore.It echoed

SYDNEYI texted Adrienne, the PR savant, from my own phone because she liked drama clean. If the ghost wife reappears, I want it first. No press. No leaks. Direct to me. She responded with a gif of a woman rolling her eyes and the words Of course, angel. Translation: only if Veronica lets me.Fine. Then I would find my own eyes.I called Gigi, who sold pictures of worse people to better magazines. “I want a quiet watch on Fifth and 58th, Bryant Park, the Plaza, and the Mandarin entrance. Daylight. Casual. If you see red hair and a woman who looks like a poem someone’s trying to forget, call me. If you see a man with a face built for funerals, call me twice.”“Who’s the man?”“You’ll know him,” I said. “He looks like money’s favorite mistake.”She laughed. “I can do two hours. After that, I’m stalking a reality divorce.” Click.I called Rafi, who called himself a private investigator and was actually a man who knew all the back doors and didn’t mind holding them open. “I need a trace on

DAVIDI kept replaying the sound of the dial tone after she hung up on him. It sat behind my ribs like a metronome—clean, final, a door shutting on a hand. She’d dialed with a blocked number, barely breathed, said nothing that could anchor him to a street or a sky, then slipped the knife of silence between his ribs and mine. Good. Terrible. Necessary. Pick your poison.By morning, the burner she’d used was face down on the table between us like a sleeping animal. Hannah sat opposite me, arms folded, hoodie sleeves pushed to her elbows. She looked like she’d wrestled a storm and come back with its salt in her hair. She hadn’t slept. Neither had I.“We need to choose a location,” I said.“We need to let him think he’s choosing it,” she said.We stared at each other over the phone like it could referee. It didn’t.“He doesn’t get the wheel,” I said. “He gets the illusion of a wheel.”“Semantics.” Her mouth ghosted a smile that never warmed her eyes. “If he feels handled, he’ll get defensi

HANNAHI thought I was ready.I’d told myself a hundred times in the mirror, practicing the smile until my cheeks ached, smoothing out the tremor in my voice like I was about to step on stage. I’d stood in front of David while he reminded me of every rule, every signal, every exit strategy. I’d even whispered my plan to myself like a prayer: If he thinks I’m weak, I win.But when the restaurant door opened and Nico walked in—my stomach still dropped like I’d been shoved off a cliff.He hadn’t changed, not really. Expensive suit, tailored within an inch of its life. Hair slicked back so sharp it looked like glass. The kind of presence that made waiters straighten their posture without realizing it. But his eyes—God, his eyes. They used to soften when he saw me, back when I believed in the lie of “us.” Now they burned. A little wild. A little desperate. He tried to hide it behind a polished smile, but I saw it.“Hannah.” His voice carried like silk stretched too thin. “You came.”I swall