Todos los capítulos de Rejected, Now He Craves For Me: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

Isabella's POVFor the first time in longer than I could remember, I woke up without a crisis waiting for me.No emergency board session. No headline threatening to unravel months of careful work. No brother calling before sunrise with news that changed the shape of my entire week. Sterling had withdrawn, formally and completely. My father, for the first time in thirty-one years, slept easier knowing the truth had finally surfaced. Margaret remained in quiet exile somewhere in Europe, no longer a threat to anyone but herself.The quiet, when it finally arrived, felt strange. Almost uncomfortable, in a way I hadn't expected.I'd spent so many years moving from one battle directly into the next that I'd forgotten what stillness actually asked of a person. Without a war to manage, without some external threat demanding my full attention, I found myself with room to feel things I'd been carefully outrunning for a very long time.Grief, first. Not for the marriage itself, exactly, but for

Isabella's POVWe'd been working late for nearly two hours, reviewing the final logistics contracts before the board meeting the next morning, the building quiet around us the way it usually was once everyone else had gone home."This clause," Julien said, pointing to a section in the shipping agreement, "is worded almost identically to something my mother's team used to bury in Hamilton contracts. I used to think it was just standard legal language. It took me embarrassingly long to realize it was actually designed to make certain penalties nearly impossible to enforce.""How embarrassingly long?" I asked."Four years," he admitted. "I signed off on contracts with that exact clause for four years before someone finally pointed it out to me, and even then I only half believed them until I read it myself three more times.""That's not embarrassing," I said. "That's willful blindness.""That's fair," he said, something rueful in his expression. "In my defense, I was very good at willful

Julien's POVThe name sat with me for two days before I finally placed it, and when I did, I felt something cold settle low in my stomach.I'd been going through old Hamilton Group archives, the ones I'd kept access to even after the shares transferred, mostly out of habit rather than any specific purpose. I was searching for something unrelated, an old vendor contract Isabella needed for a due diligence request, when I found it buried in a folder of correspondence from nearly a decade ago.*Voss Industries. Termination of Partnership Agreement. Confidential.*I opened it slowly, memory sharpening the further I read.Damien Voss. My mother had crushed him nearly ten years ago, in a deal that still, apparently, sat coiled somewhere in the back of my memory without me fully recognizing its significance until this exact moment.I remembered it more clearly the longer I sat with the file. Voss had approached Hamilton Group with a genuine partnership proposal, an early-stage logistics vent

Julien's POVI found out almost by accident, the way most important things seemed to reach me these days.I still held a minority stake in what remained of Hamilton Group, a legacy position from before the shares transferred to Isabella, small enough now that I rarely bothered checking the quarterly filings closely. But something prompted me to look that particular evening, some restless instinct I couldn't fully name, and when I opened the shareholder registry, a name I recognized immediately stopped me cold.Voss Industries. Eighteen percent.I sat back in my chair, staring at the number, my mind working quickly through the implications. Damien Voss hadn't just been quietly building a partnership with Hartford Enterprises. He'd also been acquiring positions in the wreckage of Hamilton Group, the company my mother's scandal had gutted nearly to nothing over the past year.At first, I told myself it was simply opportunistic scavenging. Hamilton Group's remaining assets sold cheap now,

Julien's POVI found him at the same restaurant he'd apparently taken Isabella to for dinner the week before, a private table near the back, waiting for a colleague who, according to the staff, had already canceled twenty minutes ago."Mr. Voss," I said, approaching directly. "Do you have a few minutes?"He looked up, something calculating flickering briefly behind his easy expression before smoothing back into the same practiced charm I'd watched him wear at the gala. "Julien Hamilton," he said. "I wondered how long it would take you to introduce yourself properly.""May I sit?""Please." He gestured toward the empty chair across from him.I settled in, studying him carefully. Up close, without Isabella's presence softening the atmosphere, something colder sat underneath his practiced warmth, visible now that I was specifically looking for it."I understand you've built quite a partnership with Hartford Enterprises," I said."I have," he said. "Isabella's remarkable. I imagine you'd