All Chapters of Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Elara's POV"I want the same thing you want," Morticia said. "I just want different parts of it."I didn't respond immediately. The voice on the other end was low and unhurried and carried beneath it something that wasn't quite amusement."Go ahead," I said."My father died three years ago. Marcus Vale. He left a significant estate — properties, investments, the original Vale Group shares before Camila rebranded it. The will divided it between both of us." A pause. "Camila contested it. Produced documentation I'd never seen before that amended the original will six weeks before he died. A man who hadn't spoken to his legal team in eight months apparently revised his entire estate in Camila's favour while being treated for stage three cardiac failure.""And you couldn't prove it was forged.""I couldn't access the right documentation. It's buried inside Vale Group's legal structure in a way that requires internal access to the surface. I've been building around the outside of it for th

Ian's POVMarcus from the board caught me in the hallway outside the executive floor with his hand already extended, that particular smile men wore when they were genuinely pleased about something that had nothing to do with them."Finally," he said. "About time you made it official. Camila's a remarkable woman.""Thank you, Marcus.""My wife wants to know if you've settled on a venue. She has opinions.""I'm sure she does."He laughed and moved on and I kept walking.By nine I'd had eleven versions of the same conversation. The handshakes, the smiles, the particular warmth of people who felt entitled to a piece of something because their name was adjacent to yours. I said the right things each time. I'd been saying the right things for long enough that it didn't require much of me anymore — just a portion of my face and a fraction of my attention while the rest of me was somewhere else entirely.Petra had left three notes on my desk. Press requests — two lifestyle publications, one

Elara’s POV"You didn't open it."Liam still had his jacket on, like he hadn't decided whether he was staying. "Wasn't mine to open."I set my bag down and picked up the envelope. The tape had been pressed flat by someone who wanted it to look untouched — Morticia's people, or Morticia herself. I slit it with the letter opener from Sullivan's desk, the one he'd given me the day I signed the SM Group papers, and let the contents slide out across the wood.Photographs first. A woman I didn't recognize in a clinic waiting room, date-stamped, Camila's profile just visible at the edge of the frame — turned half away from the camera. Then a folder of lab results from a fertility clinic on the Upper East Side, the kind that kept its patients' business quiet for a price steep enough to guarantee it. Negative. Circled twice in someone else's handwriting, hard enough to have torn the paper slightly at the edge of the circle."That's the pregnancy," Liam said, reading over my shoulder without as

Camila's POV"Say that again."Petra didn't flinch, which after four years working for me she'd learned never to do regardless of what was coming. "The Haverton called. They want the deposit balance by Friday or they're releasing the date.""We are the deposit." I set my coffee down harder than I meant to and watched it slop over the rim onto invoices I hadn't asked to see yet. "Tell them who's getting married in that ballroom.""I told them. They said congratulations, and then they said Friday."I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose and made myself breathe the way the therapist Victoria kept recommending would have wanted. In. Out. The whole wedding had moved up three weeks because I'd panicked into an announcement I hadn't cleared with Ian first, and now every vendor in the city could smell that the timeline didn't have the shape a real wedding was supposed to have. A rushed date meant a rushed bride. Nobody said it out loud. But everybody billed accordingly."Wire it," I s

Elara's POV"You ride?"Morticia asked it the way other people asked about the weather, standing in the middle of my villa's sitting room in a black coat she hadn't taken off, looking at the photograph on the side table — the triplets on the beach at Manly, backs to the camera, faces hidden. I'd decided not to move it before she arrived. If we were doing this, we were doing it as people who knew what the other stood to lose."Since I was nine," I said. "Why.""Because my insider sent me the final venue layout this morning, and there's exactly one approach the security plan doesn't cover, and it's the bridle path along the east fence." She pulled a folded page from her coat and laid it flat on the table over the wedding plan I'd already built. Her version had lines mine didn't. "The Haverton used to be a hunt estate. The path is on the property deed but not on the event map, because nobody's used it in thirty years. Camila's security firm is working off the event map."I looked at t