All Chapters of Slaving the Lady Billionaire: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Celeste left without ceremony.No announcement. No confrontation. No dramatic farewell framed by tears or raised voices. The contract allowed for physical separation under “strategic discretion,” and for once, discretion felt like mercy.Paris welcomed her the way it always had—with indifference dressed as beauty.The car passed through wrought-iron gates into the Montaire mansion just as dawn began to soften the sky. Pale stone walls rose before her, unchanged, unbothered by the years she had spent becoming someone else. The house had been preserved like a memory that refused to evolve—every shutter intact, every window spotless, every echo waiting.Celeste stepped out of the car slowly.The gravel crunched beneath her heels, sharp and final. She paused, fingers tightening briefly around the strap of her bag, and looked up at the house she had once fled from.Home, the word whispered. Not comfortingly. Accusingly.Inside, the air smelled faintly of polish and old wood. The staff had

Paris began to recognize her.Not the city itself—Paris had always been indifferent—but the rhythms of it. Celeste learned which streets stayed quiet past noon, which cafés served coffee strong enough to make thinking unavoidable, which rooftops offered the best view of the Seine without attracting lenses.She stopped wearing makeup.Not as a statement. As an experiment.The woman who looked back at her from reflective windows felt unfamiliar in a way that unsettled her. Softer around the eyes. Sharper in the mouth. Less armored.She painted every day now.Sometimes until her hands ached. Sometimes until the light failed and the city outside the studio windows dissolved into silhouettes and sound. The canvases began to change—fewer jagged strokes, more structure. Not prettier. Truer.She wasn’t painting pain.She was painting distance.In Monaco, Arrow De La Vega lost track of time.Days collapsed into nights without distinction. He forgot meals. Ignored calls from his mother. Delegat

Celeste did not expect the knock.The Montaire mansion announced visitors long before they arrived—gates opening, footsteps echoing, staff moving with deliberate caution. That afternoon, however, the house remained still. Too still.She was in the sitting room off the west wing, a forgotten space filled with pale furniture and tall windows that looked out onto the gardens. A canvas leaned unfinished against the wall, paint drying unevenly. Celeste stood before it, brush suspended midair, when the knock sounded again.Soft. Precise.She frowned.When she opened the door, the woman standing there felt impossibly familiar.Older, yes. Lines etched gently around the eyes and mouth. Hair streaked with silver instead of gold. But the posture—straight, guarded, unmistakably Montaire—had not changed.“Celeste,” the woman said quietly.The world narrowed.For a long moment, Celeste couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t reconcile the woman in front of her with the absence she had lived besi

Blood remembered what people tried to forget.Celeste felt it the moment her mother began speaking again—not in words, but in the spaces between them. In the pauses that carried weight. In the way her mother chose precision over comfort.They sat in the studio long after midnight, the city outside reduced to distant sound and shadow. The canvas stood half-finished, its lines deliberate, restrained, honest.“You were never meant to marry for love,” her mother said quietly.Celeste did not look up. “I know.”“You were meant to stabilize power,” her mother continued. “The marriage wasn’t an alliance—it was insurance.”Celeste’s grip tightened around her brush. “Against what?”Her mother’s gaze drifted to the window. “Against you.”The words struck cleanly.“They feared independence more than scandal,” her mother said. “A woman who couldn’t be predicted. Couldn’t be contained.”Celeste exhaled slowly. “So they built a cage and called it protection.”Her mother nodded. “And when that wasn’

Distance had changed its nature.What once felt like absence now behaved like pressure—quiet, invisible, building. Celeste felt it everywhere in Paris, not as longing but as awareness, a constant hum beneath her days. She no longer woke expecting messages or slept imagining explanations. Instead, she moved with the strange steadiness of someone who had accepted that something important was unfolding beyond her control—and yet, for the first time, not against her will.The paparazzi still followed her, but they had lost their certainty.Their questions were sharper now, less confident. They shouted possibilities instead of accusations. Divorce? Reconciliation? Strategic exile? They no longer knew which narrative would sell, and the hesitation showed.Celeste did not correct them.She walked past with her chin lifted, coat buttoned neatly, expression unreadable. Not guarded—resolved.Paris had given her that.The city had taught her how to exist without asking permission.The studio had