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Home / Romance / Ashes Of His Regret / Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

All Chapters of Ashes Of His Regret : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

125 Chapters

Chapter 111

The article goes live at six forty-seven PM.By seven, it has twelve thousand shares. By eight, it's the second most-read piece on the outlet's homepage. By nine, three television segments have cited it, and my name is being said by people who don't know the first thing about me in tones that range from scandalized to gleeful to falsely sympathetic.I read it once. That's all I allow myself.The piece is surgical. Julian's team fed the reporter just enough truth to make the lies plausible details about the acquisition, about my meetings with the prosecution, about Damien's financial involvement and his presence at my office. Everything technically accurate, assembled into a shape that tells a different story than the one that actually happened.The headline is the worst of it: "Billionaire's Ex-Wife and His Rival: Inside the Revenge Plot That Could Derail the Most Anticipated Trial of the Year."But the subheading is what I keep returning to: Sources close to the defense say Voss, wor

Chapter 112

"Don't answer it," I say.Celeste's hand hesitates over the phone, screen still lit with the lawyer's name."Celeste." My voice is level. "Put it face-down."She does.The ringing stops. The room is very quiet for a moment the kind of quiet that comes after a decision has been made. Then Celeste exhales, long and slow, like she's been holding her breath for weeks."He knew I was here," she says. "His team's been watching my building since the article dropped." I move toward the window and check the street below without making it obvious. A car I don't recognize is parked across the road. It's been there since at least seven. "They saw you come in. The call was a test.""To see if I'd answer.""To see if you were still useful to him." I turn back. "You passed."Something shifts in her expression at that. A mother learning that her son has always seen her as a tool is a different kind of grief from anything else. It sits in her face quietly, the way old pain does.She looks down at the

Chapter 113

Esmeralda's POVThe article is still open on my phone when I wake up.I fell asleep reading it not because it put me to sleep, but because at some point my body simply refused to keep going and made the decision for me. Now it's five forty-seven in the morning, the room is grey with early light, and the headline is the first thing I see.'Billionaire's Ex-Wife and His Rival: Inside the Revenge Plot That Could Derail the Most Anticipated Sentencing of the Year.'Damien is already awake beside me. He doesn't sleep much when something is in motion, I've learned this about him. He lies still and looks like he's resting but his mind never stops. Right now he's watching me read, waiting."How bad is it?" he asks."It's precise," I say. "That's what makes it bad. They didn't fabricate anything. They just assembled the truth into a shape that looks like something else."He reaches over and takes the phone from my hand. Reads. His jaw tightens once just once and then he sets it face down on

Chapter 114

Damien's POV"Statement is live," Marcus said as soon as I picked up his call. "Clean. Surgical. Her attorney's office only, no Hale Industries fingerprints anywhere on it. You're going to like it.""I already read it."A pause. "She showed you before releasing?""She wrote it at the kitchen table at six in the morning while I made coffee. Yes, Marcus, I read it."He's quiet for a second,the particular quiet of a man recalibrating. Marcus has known me for eleven years and he still occasionally forgets that my marriage is not a business arrangement to be managed from a distance. It is a life. It happens in kitchens at six in the morning."Right," he says. "Okay. Early response is good. The pivot to her father is smart it reframes the whole thing before Julian's team can counter.""That was her instinct. Not mine.""I know." Another pause. "Damien. The motion they file…. to exclude her testimony—""I heard.""It names you specifically. Your financial involvement in Morrison, the acqui

Chapter 115

Esmeralda's POVThe photo surfaces on a Wednesday, I'm at my desk at Morrison when Theo sets a printed page in front of me without a word just places it there with the expression of someone delivering news they did not ask to be the bearer of. I look down.It's a photograph. A charity gala, from the look of it chandeliers, black tie, the particular brightness of rooms where money gathers to perform generosity. Damien and I are in the frame. He's standing slightly behind me, his hand at the small of my back, leaning in to say something I'm laughing at.We look easy together. Unguarded. Like two people who have known each other long enough to stop being careful.The timestamp in the article's caption reads three years ago.Before my divorce from Julian was finalized.I sit very still."Where is this running?" I ask."Everywhere," Theo says. "It started on the financial blogs this morning. It's on the main outlets now."I pick up the printout. Look at the photograph more closely. My dr

Chapter 116

Julian's POVThe photograph was supposed to work differently.I lie on the cot in this room that is not a room four walls, a narrow window, light that doesn't know the difference between three in the afternoon and three in the morning and I think about the photograph and what Richard told me this morning."It's not landing the way we hoped," he said. The careful language of a lawyer who has learned not to deliver bad news directly. "The public response has been complicated."Complicated.What that means is: they looked at the photograph and didn't see what we needed them to see.I needed them to see an affair. A betrayal. A woman who was already choosing someone else before the ink was dry on our divorce papers, which would make everything she says about me suspect compromised by her own choices, her own disloyalties.Instead they apparently saw a man and a woman at a party.Looking easy together.Looking like something real.*****Richard visits twice a week now.He comes in with h

Chapter 117

Esmeralda's POVThe Morrison deal closes on a Thursday.Not the acquisition that happened weeks ago. This is the first major contract under my leadership. A distribution partnership that Hargrove brought to me half-finished, legacy of the previous management, sitting in a drawer like something nobody had wanted to be responsible for deciding. I looked at it. Restructured the terms. Sent it back out.Today it comes back signed.Theo places it on my desk at eleven fifteen AM and I look at it for a long moment.My name on a contract. Morrison Manufacturing at the top.My father's name in the company letterhead.I think about calling Damien. Then I don't. I want to sit with this for a moment before it becomes anything else before it becomes good news to be shared, before it becomes a data point in the larger story. For just sixty seconds I want it to be mine.Sixty seconds.Then Theo's face appears in the doorway again."Hargrove is asking if you want to announce internally.""Tomorrow,

Chapter 118

Lila's POVI have a Google alert set for Esmeralda's name.I'm not proud of this. It feels vaguely like something a person does when they don't trust themselves to stay informed through normal channels — like setting an alarm for something you're already going to be awake for. But after the second time I found out about something significant in her life through a news outlet rather than a phone call, I decided that dignity was less important than information.So. Google alert.It goes off four times before eight in the morning.I sit in my kitchen with my coffee and I read every article and I feel the specific helplessness of watching someone you love navigate something enormous from a distance that is not quite close enough.Not that Esmeralda would call it enormous.That's the thing about her. She would call it manageable. She would look at the photograph and the motion and the article and the counter-article and she would say I'm “managing” in that voice she gets even, controlled

Chapter 119

Esmeralda's POVVivienne calls on a Monday morning while I was between meetings, standing at my office window with coffee I haven't touched, when the phone rings and her name appears and something in my chest tightens before I even answer. Vivienne doesn't call on Monday mornings. Vivienne calls on weekend afternoons when the quiet gets too loud, or late evenings when she's been thinking about something for too long. Monday morning means something happened."Vivienne.""She came to my apartment." Her voice is controlled in the way of someone who has been rehearsing controlled for the last hour. "Last night. She just....she was there. At my door.""Who?""Celeste."I set down the coffee."Tell me exactly what happened.""She said she wanted to talk. I let her in because I didn't know what else to do, she's still she was my mother-in-law for four years, Esmeralda, I couldn't just—" She stops. Resets. "She came in. Sat down. And she said that she hoped I had thought very carefully abo

Chapter 120

Damien's POVThe morning of the motion hearing, she's up before five.I hear her before I see her, the quiet movement through the room, the bathroom light, the particular sound of her getting ready when getting ready means something. There's a difference between the mornings she's preparing for Morrison and the mornings she's preparing for something else. The rhythm is different. More deliberate.I lie still and listen.She comes out of the bathroom at five forty-seven, already dressed. Navy, she gravitates to navy when she wants to project something precise. Not the softness of blue. The authority of it.She sees me watching."Go back to sleep," she says."I was never asleep."She moves to the mirror. Checks something.. a small, final check, the kind that isn't really about appearance. It's the gesture of a person confirming that what they see matches what they feel."You don't have to come," she says."I know.""The hearing is routine. My attorney will be there. Adriana's team is p

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