All Chapters of Billionaire’s Pretend Wife To Be: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Mia drove fast, the old compact car rattling over the late-night streets. I sat huddled in the passenger seat, the borrowed sweater too thin for the cold that was sinking into my bones. The silence was broken only by the engine and my shaky breaths. We weren’t going to Mia’s apartment; there was only one place I needed to be, one life that mattered more than my shame or my shattered marriage.“Take me to the hospital, Mia. Now.”Mia glanced at my face, pale and streaked with dried tears, and nodded, turning the wheel without a word. She understood. Everything—Alessandro, the contract, the debt—all of it was irrelevant until I knew Leo was okay.“The hospital where I was working, or the one… the one Alessandro moved him to?” I finally managed to ask, my voice sounding rusty and unfamiliar.“The new one. The private wing,” Mia confirmed, her grip tight on the steering wheel. “I tried calling them right after you called me back. They told me he was stable, but… Elara, they said he was ve

The journey from the hospital to Mia’s apartment was a blur of silence and pain. The world outside the car window was moving, people rushing to work, streetlights changing—but I felt suspended, floating in a quiet, dead space where time held no meaning. Leo was gone. The reason I had fought Alessandro, the reason I had married him, the reason I had endured the elaborate, suffocating lie, all of it had vanished.Mia handled the logistics with quiet, ruthless efficiency. She spoke to the hospital staff, settled the necessary paperwork, and shielded me from the flood of practical details. She didn’t press me to talk; she just existed as a solid, warm presence beside me.When we arrived at her apartment, it was like stepping back in time. The small space, filled with mismatched furniture, piles of books, and the comforting scent of lavender and old coffee, was the antithesis of the sterile, sprawling grandeur of the Conti Manor. This was home, the only true home I had ever known.Mia help

The initial, dizzying shock of the clinic visit had worn off, replaced by a quiet, fierce certainty that settled deep in my bones. I was back on Mia’s couch, but I wasn't the same broken woman who had wept for weeks over Leo and Alessandro. I was now a vessel, a keeper of a secret, a guardian of a life.Mia, still buzzing with protective energy, was pacing the small living room. “This changes everything, Elara. Absolutely everything. We need a strategy. We need to tell a lawyer about the pregnancy, immediately, to secure your rights. He has to know, for the child’s sake.”I looked down at my hands, which were now resting protectively over my flat abdomen. I could feel the microscopic truth of the life growing inside me—a child of the man who had called me debt-ridden and manipulative, who had thrown me out with only the clothes on my back.“No, Mia,” I said, the word calm and final, shocking even myself.Mia stopped pacing, staring at me as if I had lost my mind. “No? Elara, this is A

The storm outside the Manor had settled into a slow, merciless drizzle, but inside my office, the air was still thick with the residue of my own internal catastrophe. I hadn't moved from my seat in hours. The laptop, powered by a charging cable draped across the dark Persian rug, was the only thing I could look at. It displayed the paused image of Elara and Lucas, the photograph that had served as the final, brutal proof for my quick, devastating judgment.I was no longer seeing the image of my wife betraying me. I was seeing the potential for a lie—a lie that cost me Elara, cost me my chance to be with Leo in his last moments, and cost me the quiet happiness I hadn't even realized I’d found.(It’s the shadows that are wrong. They’re too sharp, too isolated. The setting sun on the west side of the fountain should have softened everything, wrapped them in a warm, forgiving light. But here, the light is cold, like a spotlight used in a play. It was staged. I saw the set, but I ignored t

The confrontation took place in a windowless, sterile conference room deep within the Conti Tower, far away from the grandeur of my personal office. The air conditioning hummed, the only sound besides the labored breathing of Lucas Davies. He sat across the long, polished table, looking like a man who hadn't slept in a week—pale, unshaven, and fragile. I stood at the end of the table, flanked by Marcus, who remained a silent, granite sentinel.I didn't offer Lucas a handshake or even a greeting. I skipped straight to the execution.“I secured the inheritance, Lucas,” I began, my voice flat, devoid of the familiar warmth we had shared for two decades. “You helped ensure the outcome. So, why did Victoria Stanton pay you five million dollars the day after the contract was voided?”Lucas’s eyes, normally sharp and clear, darted wildly around the room, landing anywhere but on my face. “Alessandro, what are you talking about? Five million? I don’t… that’s ridiculous. It was a standard corpo