All Chapters of Rejected, Now He Craves For Me: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Isabella's POVThe party ended sometime after eleven, but I didn't go home right away. I told my driver I needed another hour, and he didn't question it, just parked outside while I rode the elevator back up to my office, alone, the building quiet in a way it never was during the day.I sat at my desk without turning on the main lights, just the small lamp near the window, and replayed the conversation at the bar for what felt like the twentieth time that night.*It was always rightfully hers to lead, not mine.*She reminded me of the man I used to be, before I convinced myself that control and love were the same thing.I told myself it meant nothing. A public statement to a reporter costs a man nothing, especially a man who spent his entire adult life understanding exactly how words land in front of an audience. Julien had built an empire, briefly, on knowing precisely what to say and when to say it. Words had never been the thing I doubted about him. His actions during our marriage

Isabella's POVI didn't know about the interview until Naomi sent me the link, her message short and urgent. *You need to see this. It just aired.*I clicked it standing in my kitchen, expecting some new headline about Victoria, another thread in the scandal threatening to unravel further before we'd even fully understood what we were dealing with. Instead, I found my youngest brother's face filling the screen, seated across from one of the country's most-watched interviewers, calm and composed in the way only someone raised in front of cameras could manage.David.I'd forgotten, in the middle of everything else, that my brother's name alone carried weight far beyond boardrooms and legal filings. He'd built his own career years before any of us knew we were Hartfords, a musician turned actor turned something closer to a cultural fixture, the kind of person tabloids followed regardless of what story he was actually part of."There's been a lot said about my sister recently," he was say

Isabella's POVCreed came to my office late on a Tuesday, his expression carrying a weight I'd learned to recognize over these past several months, the particular stillness he wore whenever he'd found something significant enough to change everything."We found a recording," he said, setting a laptop on my desk without a preamble. "My investigator located it through an old storage server Victoria used years ago, one she apparently forgot still existed. It's a conversation between her and Margaret. From eight years ago.""About the pregnancy scheme.""About the pregnancy scheme," he confirmed. "Explicitly. There's no ambiguity in what you're about to hear."He pressed play before I could brace myself fully.Margaret's voice filled the room, colder than I remembered it even from our worst confrontations, precise in a way that made my skin crawl. *You'll need to fake the fatigue convincingly. Nausea, especially in the mornings, where people will notice. I've already arranged the doctor.

Isabella's POVMargaret left the country on a Thursday, according to the news, a private flight out before dawn, no comment given to the reporters who'd been camped outside the estate for nearly a week. By Friday morning, the story had shifted entirely. It wasn't about Margaret anymore. It was about Julien, the last Hamilton standing, the only name left for reporters to attach to whatever came next.I watched it happen from a careful distance, the way I watched most things involving him now, telling myself it wasn't my responsibility to manage his exposure, that whatever scrutiny landed on him now was simply the consequence of the name he still carried. But some part of me couldn't quite look away either.He didn't hide. That surprised me more than anything else. Reporters ambushed him outside Hartford Tower twice that week, shouting questions about his mother's whereabouts, about whether he'd known the full scope of her schemes, about whether the Hamilton name could survive this at a

Julien's POVI overheard it by accident, the way most important things seem to reach me lately, standing near the coffee station outside a conference room while two board members waited for a meeting to start."—quietly picking up shares in Meridian Logistics," one of them was saying, a man named Foster who'd joined the board after the restructuring. "Small increments, nothing that trips regulatory thresholds, but consistent. Someone's been at it for months.""Meridian's one of Hartford's key subsidiaries," the other replied. "Who's behind it?""Shell entity. It calls itself Ashcombe Partners. No public leadership listed, just a registered agent and a Delaware address." Foster shrugged. "Probably nothing. Funds do this kind of quiet accumulation all the time."I didn't think much of it at the moment, not until later that evening, sitting alone at my desk, the conversation replaying itself with a persistence that eventually made me open my laptop instead of ignoring it.Meridian Logist