All Chapters of The Worthless Ex-Wife's Revenge : Chapter 231 - Chapter 240

Ethan Ashford I was still in my study at half past nine when I saw Serena.She stood in the doorway in her robe, her hair down, and looked at my desk — the files, the tablet, the three empty coffee cups lined up without my having noticed I had been drinking them."When did you last eat?" she said."Earlier.""That's not an answer."I looked up at her. The bruise along my left forearm from where I had caught a door edge earlier in the week had darkened. She had noticed it three days ago and had said nothing until now, which meant she had been deciding how to say it."You're still injured," she said."It's a bruise.""You worked eighteen hours yesterday and you haven't stopped since we got home." She crossed the room and stood in front of the desk. "Ethan.""I'm fine.""I didn't ask if you were fine. I'm telling you to stop."I looked at her for a moment.She looked back with the steady, quiet firmness that meant she was not moving from this position regardless of what I said next.I c

Ethan The name of the man Ray sent for me was Peter Alls. He's in his mid-forties, junior editor at Vantage Press, three years with the company, no prior criminal record, no obvious financial motive. On paper he looked exactly like what someone wanted him to look like — an ordinary man who had made a questionable professional decision. Ray had found him in eighteen hours. We brought him in quietly. No scene, no attention. Two of my men collected him from the parking structure beneath his apartment building on a Wednesday evening and drove him to a location that didn't require explanation. He was frightened immediately, which told me he understood exactly why he was there. I sat across from him and gave him one opportunity. "Who gave you the article?" He said nothing. His jaw was tight and his hands were shaking but he said nothing, which told me someone had frightened him more than I had yet. I asked again. Still nothing. The silence of a man who has been told wha

Dave God, I can't believe most of my people failed me after spending so much money on them. Vanessa Cole failed me. I received that report on the ninth day and it sat in my chest alongside everything else I was already carrying. She had walked into that boardroom with thirty percent and the full structure we had built over six months and somehow — somehow — Serena had already known. Had already moved. Had distributed documents that dissolved Vanessa's position in front of the entire board and done it with the calm of someone who had been waiting for exactly that moment. I knew immediately that Ethan was behind it. It was Ethan's work. I knew his signature. The counter-purchase, the shell buyback, the legal precision of it. He had dismantled everything I built through Vanessa in what I estimated was a single night, which meant he had resources and speed I had not fully accounted for. Vanessa Cole had failed me. And before her — the other one. The Wellington woman. D

Ethan Serena fell asleep an hour later.Her head against my shoulder, the blanket pulled to her chin, her breathing slow and even. I stayed still and kept the armrest up so she had the full width of both seats.After a while I looked at her.She trusted me in sleep the way she didn't always trust me awake — not because she doubted me when she was conscious, but because the self-sufficient, controlled, always-processing version of Serena didn't fully switch off until she was unconscious. Asleep, she had no guard. She was just herself, unheld by any of it.I had almost lost this.The thought arrived quietly, the way the worst thoughts always did — not announced, just present. I had almost lost her. The night Dave had gotten close enough to make it real, there had been a window — not long, not wide, but real — where the outcome could have been different. Where I could have been too late or too slow or simply unlucky.I had not let myself sit with that fully until now.I looked at her f

Serena I stood up and looked at him, then at the beach around us and tried to think past the terror.He was too close to the waterline. The tide had been coming in when I found him — I could see the wet line on the sand, the way the water was reaching slightly further with each wave. Slowly. But moving.He could not stay here.I looked at him. He was not a small man. He was not a man who had ever in any context needed me to move him anywhere."Okay," I said out loud. To myself, to him, to whatever version of the universe was currently listening. "Okay."Then I got behind him, put my hands under his arms, clasped together across his chest, and I pulled.Nothing happened.I adjusted my grip, reset my feet, ignored the scream from my ankle and the answering scream from my ribs, and I pulled again.He moved. An inch. Two inches.I pulled again.The ankle went out from under me and I went down, his weight coming back with me, and I hit the sand on my side and lay there for a moment breath