All Chapters of After The Divorce: Ex-Husband Regrets And Begs Me: Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

VLADIMIR'S POV:I have been waiting for this moment for twelve years.Twelve years of patience. Twelve years of planning. Twelve years of watching this family from the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike. The Ashcrofts and the Valancourts destroyed my empire. They destroyed my son life. They took everything from me. And now, finally, I am going to make them pay.I sit in my safe house, the same concrete room where I have been hiding for months. The walls are bare and the windows are boarded. The only light comes from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. But I do not care about the surroundings. I care about the plan. The plan that I have been building for over a decade.The plan that is finally coming together. I have been patient. I have been waiting. And now, finally, I have my weapon.She has done exactly what I asked. She has planted the seeds of doubt. She has torn them apart from the inside. She has made them turn on each other. And now, it is time for the final p

ALISTAIR'S POV:I raise the gun. My arms are steady, which surprises me."Who is there?"The figure steps into the light from the burning room behind me. He is large, broad across the chest, with a balaclava pulled over his face and a knife held low in his right hand, the way people hold knives when they have held them before. He looks at me and at the gun and something in his posture shifts, recalibrating."Step aside, boy," he says. "I have no interest in hurting you."I look at him for a moment and then I lower the gun and set it on the floor beside me.He pauses. He had not expected that."You are making a mistake,” I say.He laughs. "A mistake? You are a child. What are you going to do?"I step forward. My hands are empty. My eyes are steady."I am going to stop you," I say.He laughs. It is a short, dismissive sound, the laugh of a man who has never been seriously challenged by someone my size and does not expect tonight to be different.He lunges.I have about half a second and

ELARA'S POV:The gun is so heavy in my hands.I stand in the courtyard, surrounded by flames and smoke and the sounds of screaming and destruction. The heat is unbearable, licking at my skin, making my eyes sting. The air is thick with ash and the smell of burning wood and something that might be fear or might be regret or might be the slow, creeping realization that I have made a terrible mistake.Lysander is in front of me. His hands are raised. His face is calm. His gray eyes are steady, the same eyes that have looked at me with love for twelve years, the same eyes that watched me take my first steps in this house, the same eyes that saw me through every scraped knee and broken heart and sleepless night.He is not afraid. He is not angry. He is just looking at me, waiting for me to make a choice.I think about Vladimir Drakon. The man who called me, who filled my head with lies, who promised me revenge for my real family. He told me that Celestine killed my mother. He told me that

CELESTINE'S POV:The safe room is small and cold and it smells like the faint metallic tang of fear. But it is safe. The walls are thick stone, built by Lysander grandfather to withstand bombs and fires and anything else the world might throw at us. The flames outside cannot reach us here. The smoke cannot find us. We are hidden, protected, alive.But I am dying.That is what it feels like anyway. The contractions are coming fast and hard, too fast, too early. The baby is not supposed to be here for another month. The baby is not supposed to be born in the middle of a war zone. The baby is not supposed to be born at all, not like this, not with me screaming and crying and clutching the edge of the cot like it is the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth.Another contraction hits. I cry out. My back arches off the cot. My fingers dig into the thin mattress."I am dying," I gasp. "I am actually dying."The door to the safe room creaks open. I look up, expecting Lysander, expecting

LYSANDER'S POV:The sun rises over the valley and I stand in the middle of what used to be my home and I feel nothing.The house is still standing, but barely. The east wing is gone, collapsed in on itself, a pile of smoldering rubble that used to be the library where I read to my children. The garden is charred, the roses blackened and dead, the bench where Celestine and I used to sit reduced to ash. The smoke is still rising, thin and gray, curling up toward the sky like the ghost of everything we have lost.The firefighters are packing up their equipment. The police are loading the last of the intruders into vans. The paramedics are tending to the injured. The mayhem is over. The nightmare has ended.But the damage is done.I was told my three warehouses are destroyed. Two of them were full of inventory, shipments that were supposed to go out this week. The third was a storage facility, holding decades of records, documents that cannot be replaced. The financial loss is staggering.