All Chapters of The Divorce That Made Me A Billionaire : Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

VICTORIAUnder the table, I opened the folder.There were thirty-seven documents in the folder. I couldn't get through all of them in the middle of a courtroom recess, but the preview thumbnails gave me enough. Bank statements. Contracts. What looked like correspondence. And one document that had a header I could just barely make out, something about a paternity record, but not the same one Nathaniel had shown me. This was a different one.I kept my face even and slid the phone back into my pocket.The moment the recess was called, I pulled Elio into the hallway behind the plaintiff's entrance. It was narrow and quiet, and it smelled like old carpet and cleaning supplies, which made it perfect."Open everything," I said.He had his secure tablet out before I finished the sentence. I forwarded the folder to him and stood close while he worked through it.The first section was made up of financials. All the bank statements formed a pattern that I didn't recognize at first because they w

VICTORIAI decided to watch Helena Cross instead. She calmly walked to the side of the room, took out her phone, and pressed it to her ear. She stood with her free hand against the wall as if she needed something solid to brace against. I had no idea what she was saying to the person on the phone, but her body language told me it wasn't a casual conversation.The break lasted about fifteen minutes. I got a cup of coffee I didn't drink and paced near the back of the room while Dr. Dale went through her notes at the table. Clark stood near the window and watched the courtroom quietly. He didn't miss anything. He never did, and right now that was exactly what I needed.When the session was about to restart, Diana appeared beside me. I hadn't heard her coming. She pulled out the empty chair next to mine and sat down, and for a moment she didn't say anything at all. She just sat there like she was working up to something and didn't quite know how to start.I waited."Celestine just told me

CLARKI had been in this kind of situation before. The kind where the offer on the table was genuinely smart and the person making it was genuinely dangerous. Helena Cross had figured out that Victoria would see the setup clearly enough to be tempted, but be sharp enough not to accept it without thinking. That was the trap hidden inside the gift. She wasn't giving Victoria power. She was building a way to control her.I didn't say that out loud because Victoria already knew it. What I could offer was the other angle: what Helena actually needed from this deal, and therefore what she was actually willing to let go of.We sat in the car after leaving Ashworth, and I walked her through it. Helena needed the Meridian Foundation's old documents to stay private. She didn’t want them filed in federal records, touched by Calloway's investigation, or seen by anyone with a magnifying glass. The moment those documents became public, people would start asking hard questions about the Cross fami

VICTORIAThe ten days I spent in London three years ago had been a sourcing trip for what would become Hale Couture's first international collection.I went alone. At the time, that felt like the greatest freedom I had ever had. After years of asking Trent's permission to breathe, I was newly divorced, newly funded, and trying to figure out who exactly I was supposed to be now that I wasn't anybody's wife.I remembered London clearly. The fabric mills. The showrooms. The late dinners with suppliers who talked too fast and had opinions about everything. Nothing had happened during the dinner with Oliver Crane. Nothing close to anything had happened, but the emails said otherwise.Elio confirmed what I already suspected within twenty minutes of sending him the email thread. The account had been built using the same setup as the fake photograph. Same network. Same method. Roland Hess's fingerprints were all over it. The people at work were the same. The Syndicate was just using a differ

VICTORIAThe message had come in seconds after the ruling. Whoever sent it had been watching the courtroom in real time. Either they had someone physically inside, or they had access to a live feed from somewhere close. Given what Elio had already figured out about the Syndicate's surveillance setup, neither option was impossible. Both were infuriating.I stood outside the courthouse and stared at the message on my screen for a few seconds longer than I needed to. The words were short. “Tonight you'll understand why.” There was no signature or explanation, just those words. I locked the screen and put the phone in my bag, then turned toward the press area. There was work to do and I was going to do it.The press conference lasted forty-five minutes. I stood at the microphone and said the things that needed to be said. The things my shareholders needed to hear. The things my employees had been waiting months to hear. The things the public deserved after watching this case drag through