Todos os capítulos de I Married the Man My Ex Could Never Compete With : Capítulo 41 - Capítulo 50

Adrian POV By morning, the internet has already turned last night into a battlefield. I’m halfway through my first coffee when Damian walks into my office without knocking, a tablet in his hand and the kind of expression that usually means trouble. “Tell me you expected this,” he says. I glance up from the financial reports on my screen. “I expect most things.” “That’s not reassuring.” He drops the tablet onto my desk and turns it toward me. A dozen headlines fill the screen. COLE DECLARES MARRIAGE REAL — MARKET SURGES Is Lydia Cole the future of the Empire? INSIDE THE SCANDAL WEDDING THAT CHANGED THE MARKET None of those interests me. But the next section does. Damian taps the screen once. Social media feeds appear. Thousands of comments. Speculation. Rumors. Most of it is predictable. Some of it is hostile. Then I see the messages he actually came to show me. Anonymous accounts. Newly created. Short posts buried inside larger conversations. She shouldn’t hav

Adrian POV War rarely announces itself. It begins quietly. Small movements. Subtle questions. Money changing hands where it shouldn’t. Most people only notice a war when the damage becomes visible. By then, it’s already too late. I’m reviewing quarterly projections when Damian walks into my office with the look of someone who has just found something unpleasant. He closes the door behind him. “That didn’t take long,” he says. I don’t look up from the report. “What didn’t?” “Marcus responding.” Now I look at him. “What did he do?” Damian sets a folder on my desk. “Private investigators.” My attention sharpens immediately. “How many?” “Three firms so far.” “Targets?” “That’s the interesting part.” He opens the folder and slides several documents toward me. Financial records. Payment authorizations. Contract agreements are routed through shell companies. Marcus always preferred distance when doing things like this. Layers. Plausible deniability. But patterns s

Lydia POV The penthouse is quiet when we return. Too quiet for a place that usually feels like the center of a controlled storm. Adrian insisted I rest the moment we walked in. Not suggested. Insisted. The doctor’s instructions apparently became law the second we stepped out of the clinic. So now I’m lying on the sofa in the living room with a blanket draped over my legs, a glass of water on the table beside me, and the uncomfortable awareness that at least three members of Adrian’s security team are stationed somewhere outside the apartment. He’s turned the entire place into a fortress. Again. I hear him moving in the kitchen. Not loudly. Just the quiet sounds of someone who doesn’t usually spend time there. A cabinet opening. A glass was set down on the counter. Water running. For a long moment, I just watch him from across the room. Adrian Cole in a kitchen still feels like a strange image. His jacket is gone now. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled slightly, a

Lydia POV The headline finds me before breakfast. It’s on my phone when I wake up, blinking across the screen like an accusation. IS ADRIAN COLE THE ILLEGITIMATE SON WHO STOLE HALE’S EMPIRE? For a moment I just stare at it. Not because I believe it. Because I know exactly what it is. War. Carefully written. Carefully timed. Designed to travel through the world like poison dressed as curiosity. I open the article. The language is clever. Not a direct accusation. Just enough “sources” and “questions” to make readers fill in the rest themselves. Old photos. Speculation about Adrian’s mother. Hints that his place in the corporate world was built on deception. It’s the kind of story people love repeating because it sounds scandalous enough to feel true. I scroll to the bottom slowly. Thousands of comments already. Debating his legitimacy. Questioning his rise. Some are defending him. Most are just watching the spectacle. My chest tightens. Not with doubt. With anger.

Lydia POV “You don’t get to disappear on me.” The words stay in the air long after Adrian says them. They aren’t loud. They aren’t dramatic. But they land somewhere deep in my chest anyway. For a moment neither of us moves. The city lights glow through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, throwing long shadows across the living room. Somewhere below, traffic hums faintly through the streets. Up here, everything feels strangely still. I study Adrian carefully. He looks exactly the way he always does. Controlled. Confident. Composed. Except now I know that control is thinner than it looks. “You think I’d disappear?” I ask quietly. He doesn’t hesitate. “It’s possible.” “That’s a very cold way to describe your wife.” “It’s an honest one.” I cross my arms. “You built this marriage on contracts and strategies,” I say. “You can’t suddenly act surprised that I might leave someday.” “I’m not surprised.” “Then why do you look like that?” “Like what?” “Like you’re pr