All Chapters of The Divorce That Made Me A Billionaire : Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

VICTORIAThe courtroom was the kind of room that made you feel the weight of everything the moment you walked in.It had high ceilings, bright lights, and the kind of silence that wasn't really silence, just the sound of people holding themselves very still because the room demanded it. I had been in a lot of important rooms over the past two years but this one was different. This one had consequences that would outlast the morning.I walked in with Serena beside me. Three years of work in folders on the table in front of us. I sat down, straightened my back, and placed my hands on the surface.Serena had the case materials arranged and was already going through her notes. She was focused. Whatever she had done about Priya in the hours since our call, she had set it aside and was fully here now. That was what made her good.Trent's team was across from us. He came in without looking at me. His lead counsel, Deena Reyes, looked at me the moment she sat down and kept looking. She was tr

VICTORIAShe was in a small room off the main hallway. A court officer had taken her there during the recess, and when I pushed the door open, she was sitting alone at a table with a glass of water in front of her and her hands folded in her lap.She looked up the moment I walked in.She had the kind of stillness about her that you could only get from years of being careful. Everything about the way she held herself said she had spent a long time making herself as small as possible. But her eyes were sharp, and the way she looked at me said she had also spent a long time watching, learning faces, and reading rooms.She had been reading mine for a while before today. I could tell."You know who I am," I said."Everyone knows who you are," she replied.Her voice was even. It sounded like the voice of a woman who had stopped being surprised by things.I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. "I need to know who sent you here today," I said.Her jaw moved slightly. "I sent mys

VICTORIAThe second recess came at two in the afternoon, and I used every second of it.I found Isabella in the hallway outside the conference room on the second floor, grabbed her arm, and pulled her inside. She had a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other, but she set both down the moment she saw my face.I closed the door."Celestine Vare is making a play," I said. "And I don't have all the pieces yet. What I know is that she had Sylvie Rhodes ready for this hearing, which means she's been following this case in real time. Someone has been feeding her information.""Inside your team?" Isabella said."Or inside the court itself," I replied. "Someone who knew the hearing date and knew what we were planning to present in front of the judge today."Isabella thought about it for a second. She wasn't the kind of person who rushed to fill silence with noise. "What does she actually want out of this?""The Rhodes trust assets," I said. "Daniel moved money through systems that Celest

VICTORIAHis name was Franklin Adler. He was sixty-eight years old, semi-retired, and he had managed my mother's estate with a level of care that I had always taken, as a newly orphaned twelve-year-old then, to be purely professional.I met him that evening in his office on the Upper West Side. Isabella came with me. I hadn't told Clark. I wasn't entirely sure why, except that whatever I was about to hear, I needed to hear it without his presence in the room. This was something I needed to listen to on my own terms.Franklin Adler's office smelled like old books and printer paper. This was the kind of office that had looked the exact same for decades and had no plans to change. He stood when we walked in, and I could see right away that he was nervous. This wasn’t the polite kind of nervousness people put on when they met someone they'd read about. No, this was the nervousness of a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time and was finally being asked to say it ou

VICTORIAI didn't go after Celestine the way I had gone after Margaret.With Margaret, I had used confrontation. I had walked into a room with leverage, laid everything on the table, and watched her face change. With Harlan Voss, it had been a transaction. Clean and straightforward, with both sides knowing exactly what they were exchanging.With Celestine, I did something I almost never did. I offered her the truth.We met in a private dining room at a members-only club that had no posted address and required three personal references just to get in the door. Celestine had chosen the location. That told me it was a place where she felt she had the upper hand. So I arrived twenty minutes early and chose a seat with my back against the wall.She walked in at exactly the agreed time. She wasn’t early or late. It was a small move, but a deliberate one. She was seventy-one and moved like someone who had decided that age was someone else's problem. She was dressed sharply, her eyes looking