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All Chapters of Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

96 Chapters

Chapter 1 - The Anniversary Gift

Elara's POV Where the fuck is he? I kept muttering it under my breath as I made another lap around the Grand Hall, my diamond stilettos clicking against the marble and drawing glances I pretended not to notice. It was our third anniversary and my twenty-fifth birthday, and that very morning Ian had held my face in both hands and promised me a night I would never forget. I checked the entrance again. A couple in matching navy, a man struggling out of his coat, a waiter with a tray of champagne. No Ian. He had left hours earlier, standing by his car and brushing at his lapel even though there was nothing on it. "Go on in, babe, I'll catch up shortly," he'd said. "I have to close the butterfly deal with Mr. Yan tonight. His flight leaves later and I can't afford to lose a billion-dollar investment." Then he'd kissed my cheek, quickly, the way you kiss a relative you're late to leave, and the car was already pulling away before I'd found anything to say. I remember standing in

Chapter 2 - Shattered

Elara's POV The streetlight above the driveway kept flickering, throwing broken shadows across the gravel, and I stood under it gripping the divorce papers as if they were the only thing holding me upright. My hands shook so badly that the pages rustled in the night air. I couldn't remember driving home. I remembered headlights smeared by rain, the wipers dragging back and forth, and a woman in the rearview mirror with ruined makeup who looked like she'd lost everything in a single evening, because she had. I swallowed the lump in my throat and unlocked the front door. My heels clicked across the marble, and the sound came back at me from every corner of the house, too loud for how empty it felt. Somewhere in the kitchen a tap was running. Karen came out of the hallway with a dish towel in her hands. She had worked for us since the week I moved in, and in three years I had never once seen her stop moving to simply stand and stare at me. "Ma'am. You're home early." "Early?" My

Chapter 3 - The Night Everything Ended

Elara's POV My fingers shook so badly I had to unlock my phone three times. I stood at the end of the road with blood stiffening in my hair, and the only thing I had left that belonged to me was on that screen. On the stairs, before I understood why, my thumb had started the voice recorder, and it had run in my clutch through everything upstairs. Fourteen minutes of Ian saying he never wanted me, that I was never enough, that Camila was what he actually wanted. He had no idea. I attached the file and typed underneath it. Let's see how calm you stay when the world hears the truth, Ian. A tear slid down to my jaw and stung the cut. I pressed send, and the message whooshed away. My life was in ruins, but this was the first thing I had done on my own all night, and it felt like striking a match in a dark room. Let him find out what it was to lose control of the story. The phone buzzed before I could lower it. Greenfield Women's Clinic, a number I'd ignored for two days. Mrs. Va

Chapter 4 - The Rules of Love and War

Elara's POV "What are you thinking about, Mum?" Noah was leaning on my knee with his chin in his hands, studying me the way he studied everything, as if I were a puzzle with one piece missing. I realized I'd been staring at the three of them for a full minute without speaking. "Nothing much, dear." I smoothed his hair down, and it sprang straight back up. "I was remembering the day you three were born. The nurse kept saying 'one more' and I kept saying 'you're joking.' I love you, all of you." "You told us that story already," Emily said, with the patience of a woman who had heard it forty times. Then her eyes lit with something dangerous. "Mum, we know you're going back to California today, so we made you rules." "Rules." I raised an eyebrow. "For me?" "Golden ones," Claire said gravely. She pulled a folded sheet from under her pajama top and presented it with both hands, like a diplomat handing over a treaty. "One from each of us. You're not allowed to break any." I unf

Chapter 5 - The Game Begins

Elara's POV I followed Ian out of the hall at a distance of thirty feet and slipped behind a marble pillar in the corridor, where the noise of the show dropped to a low hum. The lace half-mask across my eyes was my own choice. Spectra Minds had been teasing "a face to be unveiled at the end of the night" for a week, and half the industry had decided I was either a publicity stunt or a very expensive joke. My pulse was steady. Five years had taught it how to hide. But my hands had gone cold, and I flattened them against the stone to keep them from showing me what they wanted to do. He had his phone against his ear, and I could hear the other end clearly, because his mother had never in her life learned to lower her voice. "You need to hurry up with Camila, Ian. You're thirty-three. Do you think you're still young? This isn't the old days, and you can't keep clinging to ideals that went out of fashion. A marriage to her would be good for the family's name. You're a businessman. You

Chapter 6 - The Hunt

Elara's POV I shoved my way through the crowd, past flashing cameras and guests who were still staring at the screen as if it might start again, until the exit sign finally swam into view. My chest was tight and my breath came fast, though I kept my face blank. Behind me the hall was still roaring. What had happened tonight was enough to scare the hell out of Camila, and I hadn't even had to try that hard. I thought of her gray face under the stage lights, the sweat on her lip, the microphone shaking in her hand, and a smirk tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. Stay alive, bitch. Don't die on me yet. The worst is still coming. I was ten steps from the door when I collided with something solid. It was a hard chest and a warm body, and the impact knocked me flat onto the marble with my palms stinging and my clutch skidding away across the floor. I scrambled after it on instinct and grabbed it, already half up and ready to bolt, when a hand appeared in front of my face. "H

Chapter 7 - Who Are You?

Liam's POV "Babe, you promised me the best designer gown when you get back," Avery said, and her voice came through the phone warm and unhurried, the kind of voice that could loosen a man's shoulders after fourteen hours on his feet. I smiled before I'd decided to. "You should've come with me. You're the best model this company has, and you've got better taste than half the people in that hall. My queen." "We've been over this." I could hear her grinning. "My new contract won't let me travel until the current shoot wraps. I'm chained to a studio and a very bossy photographer." "I know, I know. It doesn't mean I miss you any less." A tap landed on my shoulder before I could say anything else. Gwen stood at my elbow with her tablet pressed to her chest and the faintly apologetic look of a woman about to ruin my evening. "Sir, it's almost time. I'm so sorry, you'll have to get off the phone." "Love you, babe," I told Avery, and slid the phone into my pocket. "Gwen. Tonight I want th

Chapter 8 - Please Forgive Mommy, I'm Sorry

Elara's POV The drive to the villa took thirty minutes, and I spent every one of them in silence, with nothing but the hum of the engine and my own thoughts for company. My hands were locked around the wheel so tightly that my knuckles had gone pale. The night had started with a plan and ended with a purple wig, and my heart still hadn't understood that it was allowed to slow down. Mr. Sullivan had bought the villa a week before I arrived, and when my car finally rolled up the long drive and stopped under the porch lights, I let out a breath so shaky it embarrassed me. The air around the estate was perfectly still. Too still, as if the whole place were holding its breath to see what I would do next. I opened the car door, and something small and black slipped off the seat and landed on the gravel. I frowned and bent to pick it up. A business card, thick as cardboard, with gold lettering that caught the porch light. Liam Grant. "What the hell?" I muttered. Then I remembered th

Chapter 9 - Perfect Timing

Camila's POV The Vance mansion rose out of the dark like it had been built for me. Every surface gleamed under the chandelier, the marble, the banisters, the long polished table in the hall, and I let my heels click across it slowly, one deliberate step at a time, because I had waited five years to walk through this door without looking over my shoulder. Elara had been such a fool. She had handed me everything, her husband, her house, her seat at every table, and she had never even noticed the exact moment she stopped being needed. Everything that had once been hers belonged to me now. Including Ian. Tonight had cracked something. I could feel it in my teeth. But I put my shoulders back anyway, the way I had learned to do in rooms where people watched my face, and I reminded myself that no one in this house dared cross me unless I allowed it. I had reached the foot of the staircase when a thin voice stopped me. "Miss Camila." I turned slowly. Jane stood by the kitchen door in her

Chapter 10 - Camila Has a Way of Fixing Things

Ian's POV The curtains in my office were drawn across every window, and the room still stayed dim in a way I could feel behind my eyes, because the morning sun kept finding the gaps and sliding across the floor in thin gold lines. I stood in the middle of them with a coffee I hadn't drunk, a headache that had started at three a.m., and a taste in my mouth that was part whiskey and part something I didn't want to name. I had just come out of the board meeting. Another hour of damage control. Another lecture about Camila. I ran a hand over my jaw and heard them again. "We need to minimize the damage before it gets out of hand, Ian." "This video could sink the season's launch, and the market will remember it long after." "Ms. Vale's connection to you is now a liability. Don't you understand what this does to us? To the whole industry?" Some part of me knew they weren't wrong, and I hated that part. In one night the video had made Camila into a public monster, and not even my m

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