All Chapters of The Billionaire's Regret: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

I got out of the car with my eyes checking the garden corners first, the shadows behind the pillars, the glass of the side windows, the small road beyond the gate.Salma opened the door before I could press the bell. Her face immediately assessed my entire body from hair to shoes. The woman had a gift like an X-ray, only with additional Russian judgment.“You’re home early,” she said.“I missed the propaganda soup.”One of her eyebrows rose slightly. “Poppy has developed a new opinion. Chicken soup is now a government tool designed to weaken small children.”“Visionary.”I took off my sunglasses and slipped them into my bag. “Where is she?”Salma nodded toward the family room. “With Sebastian. He said earlier that he wanted to check the outside security. Poppy saw him from the sofa and screamed as if she had seen the mafia version of Santa Claus.”I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth.One day. I was only asking for one day where my life didn’t add a handsome, problematic m

I stepped into the room. The small room I supposedly used for reading, though in reality, it was more often where I hid interior magazines from Poppy after she decided glossy pages were perfect for “royal treaty paper.” There was a dark green sofa, a round marble table, a brass floor lamp, and a side window overlooking the garden.I half-closed the glass door so I could still see Poppy through the gap in the reflection.Sebastian stood on the other side of the table. His shoulders filled the room in a way that was frankly rude. His dark shirt was still rolled to his forearms, his watch still on his wrist. Outside, he had looked like part of an expensive afternoon. In here, closer to the low light and the silence starting to thicken, he looked like trouble wearing cologne that was far too good.I opened my bag.The black envelope was inside, wedged between the Montreux folder, my lipstick, a charger, and one packet of Poppy’s snacks that somehow always appeared in my bag like evidence

Morning came and my house was breathing too slowly.That was the first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes.I lay in my bed a few seconds longer, staring at the bedroom ceiling, the exact shade I had chosen myself three years ago after arguing with Hazel about whether ivory still counted as a color or was just expensive despair.My phone sat on the nightstand.Three unread messages.One from Daniella, most likely a schedule from hell.One from Rhea, naturally in all caps even before I opened it.One from Adrian’s number.My thumb stopped over the screen. It stared back at me with a kind of calm that was far too composed for a morning that had clearly already been infiltrated by something. I hadn’t opened it yet because if I read Adrian’s message now, with the house feeling like a stranger’s lungs, I might have to add one more disaster room inside my head. And my head was already a museum of expensive mistakes.I set the phone back down.I sat up, pulled the silk robe from the chair

Poppy narrowed her eyes at him, her spoon still hovering over the yogurt. “Captain Poppy can also sail.”Sebastian chuckled. The sound dropped into my kitchen like a coin into a crystal glass. “Yes, you do.”I turned so fast the bangs I had worked so hard to fix swung back into my line of sight. “No.”Poppy immediately pointed at me with her spoon. “That is a very anti-maritime way to talk, Mommy.”“Good. I am not campaigning for the ocean this morning.”“But the ocean is big.” She stretched both small hands as far apart as possible, nearly knocking Bunny off the chair. “And bad guys become small compared to the ocean. That’s science.”“Not a single scientist has ever said that.”“I’m a boat scientist.”I set the coffee pot on the table harder than necessary. “You’re a yogurt scientist. Eat.”Poppy let out a heavy sigh, then turned to Sebastian like a key witness exhausted by the legal system of this country. “Daddy, Mommy is not visionary.”Sebastian stood beside her high chair, one

The second car really did follow us at a safe distance.I knew because I was sitting in the back seat of the black SUV, one side of my body pressed against Poppy’s now-empty car seat because Her Majesty refused to sit anywhere far from the window, and my eyes would not stop checking the mirror.Behind us, a dark sedan moved with a distance too precise to be called coincidence. Ahead of us, another car had already taken the route toward the marina. Sebastian sat in the front passenger seat, speaking quietly to Luca over the phone, his Italian fast and clean, like a knife being sharpened beneath velvet.I stared at the side of his head.It was deeply irritating to see a handsome man from behind. As if God had not been satisfied making his face dangerous from the front, so He had also tended to the line of his neck and shoulders.Beside me, Poppy was pressed to the window, her nose nearly flattened against the glass. The captain’s hat was too big on her head, its brim dropping low enough