All Chapters of Mistaken Night With my Ex-Husband: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

After the drone scare, Dominic didn’t just double the guards; he effectively erased us. He called it "Blackout Protocol," which sounded more like a Cold War thriller than something you’d do to a home in Tuscany. Within forty-eight hours, the villa stopped feeling like a house and started feeling like a bunker. Men in dark uniforms moved through the halls like shadows, installing signal jammers that turned our phones into expensive glass paperweights. If I wanted to talk to the outside world, I had to use a hardwired, encrypted landline in his study that looked like it belonged on a nuclear submarine.The weirdest part, though, was the light. Or the lack of it. Dominic had these high-tech security shutters installed over our beautiful arched windows. They were reinforced alloy painted to look like wood, but when they slid shut with that heavy, mechanical hum, you knew they were built to stop a lot more than just a camera lens. By three in the afternoon, the house was in a state of arti

Beating Julian Sterling should have felt like a massive win, but instead, it felt like the air in the villa was just getting thinner. I’d been running on pure nerves for days, watching Dominic dismantle an empire from his desk while I tried to act like the "Blackout" wasn't suffocating me. I was fine, right up until the second I wasn't.It happened on a Tuesday morning. The fake, amber glow in the foyer was starting to feel especially heavy. I stood up from the breakfast table to get some water, and the whole world just... tilted. My vision went grainy, like a TV losing its signal, and the floor suddenly felt like water. I reached for the table, missed, and felt myself going down."Seraphina!"Dominic’s voice sounded like it was coming from miles away. I felt his arms catch me before I hit the marble—his grip was desperate, almost bruising. He was saying my name over and over, all that corporate composure completely gone. When I finally blinked my eyes open, I was on the sofa and he w

The morning of the interview didn't feel like a corporate event. There were no PR flacks running around with clipboards and no makeup artists trying to mask the dark circles under my eyes. It was just the villa, the smell of the lavender we’d planted yesterday, and a heavy sense of anticipation that made my breakfast taste like cardboard.Dominic was calm, but it was that focused, quiet calm he gets before a hostile takeover. He’d traded his gardening shirt for a crisp navy button-down, sleeves rolled up just enough to look relaxed but still in charge. He spent an hour walking the perimeter with the new security lead, making sure the "Town Hall" wasn't going to be interrupted by a stray Sterling drone."You don't have to do this if you're not ready," he told me, finding me in the solarium. He put his hand on my shoulder, his thumb rubbing a slow circle against my skin. "We can tell Sarah to turn the car around. We can find another way."I looked at my reflection in the glass door. I l

The peace we’d carved out in Tuscany felt like a glass ornament—beautiful, translucent, and incredibly easy to shatter. We’d spent a week pretending that planting lavender and picking out baby names was our new full-time job, but the message from Julian Sterling was the rock thrown straight at the center of it all. Switzerland. A private airstrip. No lawyers.Dominic didn’t want to go. I could see it in the way he moved that morning, his usual efficient stride replaced by a heavy, lingering pace. He spent an hour in the nursery, just standing by the window, looking at the two empty cribs like he was trying to memorize the silence before the world got loud again. When he finally came to find me, he didn't have his "Ice King" mask on. He just looked like a man who was tired of fighting ghosts."I’ll be back before dinner," he said, pulling me into a hug that lasted a heartbeat too long. He pressed his hand against my stomach, feeling a sharp, rhythmic kick from Sienna. "Stay in the gard

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the light. It wasn’t that sterile, filtered glow from behind the security shutters. It was raw, aggressive Tuscan sunshine hitting the ceiling in wide, golden planks. For the first time in months, the "Blackout" hadn't just been lifted—it had been dismantled. I stayed still for a second, listening. No humming of high-tech jammers. No rhythmic thud of a guard’s boots on the terrace. Just the morning air and the heavy, slow breathing of the man next to me.Dominic wasn't awake, which was a miracle in itself. Usually, his brain starts at 5:00 AM, already calculating margins and predicting market shifts before he’s even opened his eyes. But today, he was dead to the world. His face was buried in the pillow, his dark hair a mess, looking less like a titan of industry and more like a guy who had finally finished a shift that lasted fifteen years.I reached for my phone on the nightstand, then stopped. I didn't want to see it. I knew what was wait