All Chapters of Divorced By My Cold Husband, I Returned As A CEO: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The partners looked across the table at Elara and smiled warmly.“Thank you for sparing us a few minutes,” the older one said. “We know it’s a great deal to ask — given that you’re barely days away from your wedding.”Elara nodded graciously. “I had to come. Whatever you had to tell me was worth hearing in person.”They glanced between her and Victor with the satisfied expressions of people about to deliver good news.“You two have been exceptional,” the second one said. “Trustworthy, consistent, thorough. Honestly — we’re impressed.” He paused, then smiled. “When I heard you were getting married, I confess my first thought was that it must be Mr. Victor.”Victor produced a professionally polished chuckle. “No, Sir,” he said, his voice entirely even. “Not me.”Elara swallowed quietly and kept her expression pleasant.“Well then,” the first partner continued, setting his hands on the table. “Here is what we wanted to discuss. We’ve been reviewing the communities your project serves, an

“Julian.”Her voice came out broken and certain at the same time — the voice of someone who has made a decision in the middle of falling apart and means every word of it.“We can’t continue this wedding. We can’t.”She was on the floor. She didn’t know when she’d gotten there. Jules was beside her and the bouquet was somewhere and the dress was all around her and none of it mattered at all.Julian crouched in front of her. “Elara.” His voice was careful. Urgent. “Listen to me. We have come too far — we have planned too long — we can go to him after, we can—”“Do you hear yourself?” She looked at him through her tears and felt something sharp cut through the grief — anger, clean and cold. “Do you hear what you’re saying to me right now?” She pushed to her feet. “His father is dead, Julian. Yours. And you want me to walk down an aisle?” She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere except to him. The wedding is canceled. I’ve already decided.” She looked at him directly. “I suggest you do

Elara had gone back to work, though calling it that felt generous most days. She showed up. She sat at her desk and opened the files that needed opening and answered the emails that couldn’t wait, and somewhere in the middle of all that necessary motion she would catch herself staring at nothing, the cursor blinking patiently while her mind drifted somewhere she hadn’t given it permission to go. It wasn’t that she disliked the work. She had loved it once, had built a company out of nothing because she’d believed in what it could do for people who needed it. She simply couldn’t seem to locate herself inside it anymore — not fully, not the way she used to. Grief had a way of doing that. It didn’t take everything from you all at once. It just quietly hollowed out the rooms you used to live in, one at a time, until you were left standing in the doorway of your own life wondering where you’d gone.That particular afternoon she had stayed home. No meetings, nothing urgent, just the ordinary

Jules closed the guest room door behind them and turned to face Julian with the particular expression of someone who has run out of diplomatic options.“What is wrong with you?”Julian exhaled sharply and sat on the edge of the bed. “You dragged me up here to lecture me?”“I dragged you up here,” Jules said, her voice dropping to something quieter but no less firm, “so you wouldn’t say something in front of Elara that you can’t take back. Don’t go hard on her. Don’t make things harder than they already are for her. She’s grieving, Julian.”He scoffed. “And what about what I’m going through? My father just died too, in case everyone seems to have forgotten—”“I haven’t forgotten.” Jules looked at him steadily. “But you need to do better than what just happened downstairs.”“And you,” Julian said, his voice sharpening, “need to stop telling me what to do in my own relationship. How dare you—”“I don’t think,” Jules sa

Victor stood in his doorway and watched Elara cross the road.She hadn’t said much — handed him the bag, rattled off the morning schedule with the efficient precision of someone who had prepared it in advance, kissed Daniel on the forehead and left. No lingering. No explanation. Just the quiet click of her front door closing behind her and the distant sound of Julian’s voice somewhere inside.He stood there for a moment longer than he needed to.Then he closed his own door.He reached for his phone. Considered calling her. Set it down again. Watched, through the front window, Julian’s silhouette moving across her living room, and felt the familiar weight of a decision he’d already made settle back across his shoulders.You let her go, he reminded himself. That’s what you decided. So let her go.He turned away from the window.“Let’s go up, champ,” he said.Silence.He looked toward the stairs. Daniel was on the third step, arms folded, bottom lip deployed with surgical precision.“Dad