Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Perfect Wife Walked Away: Kabanata 211 - Kabanata 220

[Alice's POV]"No, seriously. You look like you haven't slept in three days and your face is doing that thing where you're pretending to be fine but you're actually not at all. Sit down."She grabbed my arm and guided me to a chair. "I have snacks. Do you want snacks? I have those spicy seaweed chips you like. And maybe a chocolate bar, somewhere in my drawer. Hold on —""Noelle."She paused and looked at me."I didn't come here for snacks. I came here because I need your help. Professionally."Noelle's expression shifted. The bouncy, caffeinated energy drained away, replaced by something calmer and more focused. She pulled her chair over, and sat down beside me."Tell me.”I told her everything. Starting from the initial anonymous tabloid article, to the overnight escalation on the forensic forum, to the specific legal clauses being weaponized, to the board meeting and David's veto. I didn't leave anything out. I told her about the proxy server IP, about Adam's suspicion regarding th

[Lily's POV]"Get in the car, Zorro,” I snapped. “Or I drive away right now, and the next time you hear from me, it'll be through a lawyer."He hesitated, then opened the passenger door and slid in. The interior light flicked on for a second, and I got a clear look at his face — pale, puzzled, suspicious. None of the usual bluster.I didn't turn on the interior light again. We sat in darkness, lit only by the faint glow of the dashboard indicator lights."Let me guess," he said, forcing a casual tone. "You're unhappy with how the article turned out.""You didn't use her name.""I explained my reasoning—""Your reasoning is garbage." My voice was quiet, but each word landed like a hammer. "I gave you a loaded gun and you refused to pull the trigger. I handed you everything on a silver platter — her name, her position, the specific regulations she allegedly violated. All you had to do was press 'publish' with the text exactly as I wrote it. Instead, you sanitized it. You turned a bullet

[Alice's POV]Noelle worked fast. Even faster than she had promised. She was a legend!Forty-one hours after I'd sat in that server room surrounded by monitors and anime figurines, my phone buzzed at 2:14 a.m. with a detailed message from Noelle."Got him. Digital handle, Zorro. Real name: Marcus Webb. Age 29. Currently employed as a medical research assistant. Last known address: The Carrington, an upmarket downtown hotel. He's been using at least three proxy layers, but he slipped on the fourth — one of his VPNs had a logging vulnerability that was patched last month but he hadn't updated. I pulled his real IP from the backup logs.”She continued. “Cross-referenced with his registered accounts on two dark web forums. Writing style analysis confirms a 94.7% match with the 'Zorro' posts. Alice, there's more. I found payment records. Cryptocurrency transfers, routed through two mixing services, but the original wallet was funded by a bank account in East City. Account holder name: Zoro

[Alice's POV]I looked at him, really looked at him, past the anger and the bluster and the trembling finger, and I saw something I hadn't expected. Not a schemer, not a manipulator, not a professional operative. I saw a fool. A desperate, lovesick, useful fool who had been handed a weapon by someone far more dangerous than him, and told exactly where to aim it."Marcus," I said slowly, "what is Lily to you?"He hesitated. For the first time since he started his tirade, the anger flickered, replaced by something vulnerable and uncertain."She's..." He swallowed. "She’s my girlfriend."Girlfriend.The word landed in my head like a stone dropped into still water. Girlfriend. Not ‘associate,’ not ‘client,’ not ‘employer.’ Girlfriend. The man who had written the article was Lily's boyfriend. The man who had tried to destroy my career was Lily's lover. And Lily — pregnant, weeping, playing the victim for David's attention — had a boyfriend.The pieces snapped together with a clang I could

[Lily's POV] The car door closed, and it was the most satisfying sound I had heard in months.A soft, expensive click — the kind of precision engineering that David always insisted on, even for something as mundane as a car door. Everything in his world was like that. Measured. Controlled. Perfect.Just like what had happened in that hotel room.I kept my face buried in my hands as David pulled out of the parking garage. My shoulders shook — not from grief, not from fear, but from the sheer physical effort of suppressing something that wanted very badly to come out.A smile.Not a small one. A big, wide, ugly, sprawling smile that would have split my face in two if I'd let it. The kind of smile that belongs on the face of the villain in a children's cartoon, not on the face of a fragile, pregnant woman who has just been victimized by her cruel, unstable sister.So, I buried it. I buried it deep, and I let the sobs come instead — quiet, controlled, rhythmic sobs that hit exactly the r