All Chapters of Rejected, Now He Craves For Me: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Isabella's POV By the time I got home that evening, my phone wouldn't stop buzzing. I dropped my bag down on the kitchen counter and picked it up. Message after message from my assistant, from Adrian, from numbers I didn't even know. Then I saw the headline at the top of every news app I had. Julien Hamilton Declares: "I Want My Wife Back." I stood there in my quiet kitchen, the city lights glowing through the windows, and read the article twice before I let myself feel anything. He'd called a press conference. A real press conference, in front of Hamilton Enterprises, cameras rolling, reporters pushing microphones at his face. And there were his words, printed for everyone to see. "I made the biggest mistake of my life letting Isabella Hartford walk away from me. I was blind, arrogant, and cruel to the only person who ever truly loved me. I am asking her — publicly, because I owe her that much — for another chance." My phone buzzed again. Adrian. I answered before it finished

Julien's POVThe Hamilton estate looked the same as it always had. Cold stone, tall windows, the kind of house built to impress rather than to live in. I used to think it was beautiful. Now I just saw the years I wasted trying to make it proud of me.My mother was waiting in the study when I arrived, standing by the fireplace with a glass of wine she hadn't touched. She didn't turn when I walked in."You signed the papers," she said."Yes.""Fifty-one percent, Julien. You gave away control of everything your father built. Everything I sacrificed for." She finally turned to face me, and her eyes were sharp enough to cut glass. "For her.""For Isabella," I said. "Say her name, Mother. You never do.""Why should I? She's the reason you've become this." She gestured at me like I was something unpleasant she'd found on her shoe. "Look at you. The great Julien Hamilton, groveling for a woman who humiliated you in front of the entire business world.""She didn't humiliate me. I humiliated my

Julien's POVI found her on the rooftop terrace outside the executive floor, the place she used to go when she needed air the family never gave her room to breathe. I hadn't been up there in years. I didn't expect her to still remember it existed.She stood near the railing, arms crossed against the wind, staring out at the city like it might give her an answer I hadn't finished handing her."The board voted to review the merger," she said, without turning around. "Ninety days. Margaret bought herself ninety days to try and unravel everything.""I heard," I said. "I'm sorry.""Are you?" She finally turned to face me. Her eyes were sharp, guarded, the same way they'd looked the morning I found her leaving with a suitcase in her hand. "Or are you sorry because it complicates things for you?""Both, maybe," I said. "But mostly the first one."She studied me for a long moment, then looked back out at the skyline. "Finish what you started to say. In my office. Before Naomi interrupted."I

Julien's POVI found out from my own lawyer, of all people. He called me at nine at night, his voice careful in a way that told me the news wasn't good."Three Hartford board members," he said. "Your mother met with them tonight. Offer two of them positions on a new subsidiary board if they vote to challenge Isabella's leadership. The third one turned her down and told Adrian Hartford everything."I sat there for a moment, phone pressed to my ear, feeling something cold settle in my chest. "She's trying to unravel the merger from inside Hartford's own board.""That's what it looks like."I thanked him, hung up, and drove straight to the Hamilton estate without stopping to think it through. Some part of me knew I should have called Isabella first, warned her before confronting my mother. But the anger moving through me needed somewhere to go immediately, and I wasn't in the mood to wait.My mother was in the study again, the same room, the same fireplace, like she never left it."You w

Isabella's POVPeople kept asking me why I did it. Why I demanded the shares, the merger, his obedience under my name instead of just walking away with the money and never looking at him again. My lawyer asked. My father asked, gently, over dinner one night. Even Claire asked, though she already suspected the real answer before I said it out loud.I always gave the same reply. "Because he owes it to the company." Because Hartford Enterprises deserved fair compensation for six years of being treated like an afterthought. Because it was good business.None of that was a lie, exactly. But it wasn't the whole truth either.I sat in my office late one evening, long after everyone else had gone home, staring at the quarterly reports without really reading them. The truth, the part I hadn't said out loud to anyone, not even Claire, was simpler and harder to admit.I didn't do this for revenge. I did it because for six years, I had no control over anything. Not over Julien's attention. Not ov