Lahat ng Kabanata ng DIVORCED Back To Claim What’s Mine : Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

After the heavy oak door clicked shut behind Lydia, the silence in the guest suite became a crushing, physical weight. Silas and Beatrice stood frozen in the center of the gold-trimmed room, staring at the space where their daughter had just stood delivering her cold, clinical ultimatum. The opulence of the room the silk wallpaper, the mahogany furniture, the crystal lamps felt like a mockery. They were in a gilded cage, and the person holding the key was the child they had spent decades indulging.Silas sank onto the edge of the velvet-covered bed, his head dropping into his hands with a low, broken groan. "A little fall," he whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, jagged edge. "Just one financial blow, one stumble in the market, and our own daughter is behaving this way. She’s treating us like we’re the help we used to hire."Beatrice clutched her jewelry box to her chest, her eyes wide and wet with unshed tears of pure humiliation. For the first time in years, an unwanted, haunti

The morning air at the reclaimed Vance estate now Elara’s sanctuary was crisp and carried the faint, sweet scent of the white roses she had vowed to protect. Breakfast had been a quiet, almost sacred affair. For the first time in years, Elara sat at a table where the laughter was genuine and the silence was not a weapon. Tyler sat across from her, his presence a steady, grounding anchor, while little Leo sat between them, his eyes bright as he chattered about the ladybugs he had discovered in the garden. There were no hidden agendas, no sharp barbs disguised as pleasantries, and no hovering fear of a patriarch’s disapproval.After the meal, Elara kissed Leo’s forehead and shared a knowing, quiet nod with Tyler before retreating to her private study. The room was bathed in the soft, golden light of the early sun, but the atmosphere shifted the moment she stepped inside and closed the door. This was no longer a place of domestic peace; it was the war room of a strategist who had just wo

The east wing of the Vane estate felt like a mausoleum for the living. Beatrice Vance moved through the suite with the frantic, jerky motions of a woman possessed. Silas was in the bathroom, the sound of the shower masking her movements, but even if he were standing right there, she wasn't sure she would have stopped. The hunger for her former life was gnawing at her. Lydia had promised a stipend, but "basic needs" did not include the South Sea pearls or the Cartier bracelets that Beatrice felt were essential to her very breathing.She was searching for property documents anything Silas might have managed to squirrel away from the creditors. She had a plan, if she could find a deed to one of the smaller auxiliary properties, perhaps a forgotten hunting lodge or a dormant holding in the valley, she could sell it quietly on the black market and replenish her jewelry box. A woman without her gems was a woman without armor, and Beatrice felt naked in this house of cold glares and dry toas

The dynamic in the east wing had shifted from a funeral to a desperate, twisted farce. Lydia didn't bother with the formalities of her previous life; she didn't wait for a maid to announce her or for a polite invitation to enter. She threw the heavy oak door open with a violence that echoed against the vaulted ceilings like a gunshot.She froze at the threshold. Silas and Beatrice were on the edge of the sprawling guest bed, tangled in a messy, desperate embrace. They were kissing with a frantic, uncoordinated energy that looked less like romance and more like two drowning people trying to have sex. Silas’s robe was hanging off one shoulder, exposing his sagging chest, and Beatrice’s silk nightgown was bunched up around her hips. It was a grotesque sight two fallen titans trying to find solace in the flesh because they had nothing left in the bank.Lydia’s stomach turned, a wave of pure revulsion washing over her, but she didn't look away. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and force

The walls of the Vane mansion seemed to be bleeding secrets, and Lydia felt as though she were being swallowed whole by the architecture of her own ambition. She slammed the door to the guest room the neutral territory where she had retreated to escape the suffocating stench of her parents' lies and collapsed against the wood. The jagged, ugly sobs she had held back in the hallway finally ripped through her throat.She wept with a violence that shook her entire frame, her hands clutching her stomach, though whether out of maternal instinct or pure terror, she didn't know. But after a few minutes, the tears dried into salty tracks of resentment on her cheeks. She stood up, catching her reflection in the gilded mirror above the fireplace. Her mascara was smeared, her eyes bloodshot, but the fire returning to her gaze was lethal."Tears can't help right now," she whispered to her reflection, her voice raspy and cold. "Demn it, Lydia, pull yourself together. You need to secure the inherit