All Chapters of The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back): Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

326 Chapters

Panel Interview

ELIJAH’S POV:"I appreciate that," I said."Unless she asks," she added."Obviously," Andrew said."Right," I said. "Obviously."Hannah came home at eight thirty that night, which was actually closer to the time she said she would be home than usual and I considered that a small victory. She came through the door looking tired but bright in the eyes in the particular way that the warehouse produced in her, like it was charging something inside her that everything else in the day had been slowly draining.She kissed me and smelled like pencil shavings and fabric and the particular lavender spray she kept in the warehouse and I told her dinner was on the stove and she said wonderful and went to look in on the twins who were supposed to be asleep and came back two minutes later shaking her head."Andrew is reading under the covers with a torch," she said, sitting down at the kitchen island."He does that three or four times a week. I think he believes we do not know.""He has been doing

A Message to Me

ELIJAH’S POV:The envelope arrived the next morning.It was delivered to the house, which was the first thing that was wrong. Not to my office. Not to Martinez Holdings. To the house, which meant whoever sent it knew where we lived. There was no return address. No stamp. Which meant it had been hand delivered and placed directly into the mailbox at the gate, which meant someone had stood at the entrance to my home.The housekeeper brought it to me with the morning post. I noticed it immediately because it was plain and white and had only my name handwritten on the front, just Elijah, no surname, no title, and the handwriting was neat and deliberate in a way that felt considered.I took it to my office before I opened it.I sat behind my desk and looked at it for a moment before I slid it open. Through the wall I could hear the twins at the breakfast table. Amelia was singing something under her breath that I was ninety percent sure she had made up herself because the words were comple

Standing in the Dark

ELIJAH’S POV: The fear that moved through me was not the paralysing kind. It was the sharp and clarifying kind, the sort that burns off everything that is not essential and leaves you with only the things that actually matter. And the thing that mattered was this: whoever this was had now made two very clear statements. They had burned what she loved most to hurt her and they had stood outside in the dark watching her rebuild it. They were not finished. I picked up my phone and called Kojo. He answered in two rings. "Morning," he said. "I need the security detail on my wife doubled by this evening," I said. "Not visible. She will not accept visible. I need it quiet and I need it thorough and I need it in place before she leaves the house today. And I need you to start pulling everything you have on Frerus connections to the fashion industry in this city. Investors, competitors, anyone who has had dealings in Frerus in the last eight years. Anyone." "Understood," Kojo said. There

The Smell of Rebuilding

HANNAH'S POV.The warehouse had a smell now.Not bad. Not the type of smell that makes you wrinkle your nose and go looking for the source. It was the smell of work. Fabric sizing and chalk dust and the faint sweetness of the steamer Priya ran every morning on the toiles and underneath all of that, coffee. Always coffee. At any given hour of the day there was at least one person in the kitchen corner making coffee and if you asked them if they wanted some they would say yes before you even finished the question because everyone in that warehouse was running on somewhere between four and six hours of sleep and pure collective stubbornness.Including me.I want to be honest about what those first ten days looked like because I think sometimes people tell the story of a comeback and they make it sound like passion alone carries you through. Like the motivation is so strong that it overrides everything and you float through it on some kind of beautiful creative high. That is not entirely

A Wedding Without Her

HANNAH'S POV:On day eleven Paige showed up at the warehouse.I want to be clear that I was not expecting her. Nobody was expecting her. The warehouse was in full working mode that morning, which meant it looked exactly like you would imagine a fashion house operating at emergency capacity looks: fabric bolts leaning against every available wall, toiles hanging from every rack, the steamer going, two people arguing quietly but intensely about the drape on one of the skirts, Theo standing in the middle of it all looking at a pattern piece and making the face he makes when something is not matching up and he cannot figure out why yet.The security guard from the front came back to where I was standing with Sandra reviewing the timeline board and said, "There are some women at the entrance asking for you. One of them says she knows you from tennis."I blinked. "Paige?""She said her name was Paige yes ma'am."Sandra turned to look at me with an expression that said very clearly she was n

For the Mothers We Lost

HANNAH’S POV:"It does not sound strange at all," I said.She looked at me then and her eyes were bright and she laughed a little to break the heaviness of it. "I cried in the car on the way here. My friend had to talk me out of turning back. I felt ridiculous.""You are not ridiculous," I said."The collection is named after your mother," she said. "Who you never really got to know. And I never really got to have mine for long enough. And I think that is why it meant so much to me when I heard about what you were doing." She looked back at the sketch. "I think our mothers would have liked each other."I had not expected that. It sat in my chest in a warm and a little bit painful way all at once."You will have your dress," I said. And I meant it with everything I had. "I promise you, Paige. You will have it for your wedding day."She pressed her lips together and nodded and her friend, the one who had offered the helpful clarification about the almond things, quietly produced a small

Support Written in Marker

HANNAH’S POV:It was Lila. It had to be Lila. She had her phone out when she was in the cafe and I had noticed it and not thought anything of it because people are always on their phones and it had not occurred to me for a single second that she would film me. She seemed so nice. She had good energy and a very genuine laugh.She was also, as I now remembered from the tennis court, an influencer with a very large following and apparently a very good eye for what people wanted to see and the forty second video had at this point been viewed somewhere in the region of four point seven million times.I stared at the screen."Four point seven million views," I said out loud."It keeps going up," Kate said, almost apologetically. "And also." She took the phone back and pulled up a different screen and turned it toward me again. It showed a search result. At the top, trending, the hashtag read: MiradaRises.Under it were thousands of posts. People sharing the video. People sharing pictures of

Fear with Edges

HANNAH’S POV:Elijah came to the warehouse that Thursday evening.He came most evenings actually, sometimes to bring food, sometimes to sit in the office corner and work while I worked so that we were at least in the same building even when neither of us had much to say. I liked that about him. He did not need conversation to make his presence mean something. He could just be there and that was enough.That Thursday evening though he was different from the moment he walked in. I noticed it the way you notice things about someone you share a life with, the small shift in how he was holding himself, the way he looked at me a second longer than usual before he spoke. He had something on his mind that he had been carrying for a while and had decided tonight was the night he was going to put it down.I sent the last two people home at eight and we were alone in the warehouse.He was sitting at the office desk and I came over and leaned against the edge of it and looked at him and said, "Wh

Confident and Reckless

HANNAH'S POV:"How long have you had this?" I asked.He paused. Just slightly. "A few days."I looked at him."I know," he said, before I could form the sentence. "I know. I should have told you immediately. I was trying to protect your momentum with the collection and I should not have made that decision for you and I am sorry."I held his gaze for a moment. Then I said, "We will talk about the not telling me part later. Right now tell me what else you know."He told me everything. The rental car, the fake name, Kojo's work through the internal records, the flight from Frerus. He told me all of it and I sat and listened without interrupting until he was done."Frerus," I said when he finished."Yes."I was quiet for a moment. Outside, through those high windows that I was now looking at very differently, the city made its normal sounds. Traffic. Somewhere distant a siren. The ordinary noise of a night that had no idea anything unusual was happening."I am not leaving the warehouse,"

The Call at Midnight

HANNAH'S POV:On the way home I watched the city through the car window and thought about Frerus. About the seven years I had spent there. About the apartment I had brought the twins home to, the one with the bathroom door that stuck in wet weather and the kitchen window that had a view of someone else's garden that I had never been able to find out who owned. About the first time I walked into a fabric store there with maybe forty dollars in my pocket and left with two meters of beautiful dark blue cotton that I could not actually afford and carried home like it was treasure because in my mind it was. About the women I had known there. The people who had been kind. The few who had not been.Somebody from that life had followed me here.That thought sat in the car with us all the way home and I held it carefully the way you hold something heavy when you are not sure what to do with it yet.Not tonight though. Tonight I was going to go home and check on my children and sleep next to my

...

20 21 22 23 24

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP