All Chapters of She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

129 Chapters

Chapter 51 The Skylight Room

(Natasha)It's past midnight when my parents and brother have settled in for the night.I find Chase in the hallway, moving on reflex, the steady sway-and-step pattern etched so deep it no longer seems deliberate.Lily is deeply asleep against his shoulder and he’s staring at nothing in particular.He looks up when he hears me.Neither of us says anything for a moment.The house is quiet around us, the Christmas Eve chaos settled into warm stillness.I look at him and I look at our sleeping daughter and I read the situation with very little difficulty.He doesn't want to go back to the estate.I can't blame him.From the little he said about the dinner party, it seems to have been a Morton family production of considerable intensity.Whatever drove him to show up on my doorstep unannounced on Christmas Eve, it wasn't an abundance of festive spirit.I should send him home, but it’s late. And it’s Christmas."Come with me," I say quietly.I take him down the hall to the room at the end.

Chapter 52 The Performance

(Sonia)Timing is everything.I learned that watching my mother.She always knew exactly when to cry, exactly when to go quiet, exactly when to let a single tear fall rather than a flood.Restraint at the right moment is more powerful than any amount of noise.I very nearly decided to put everything off when hateful old Elias told me Chase left.He said Chase had a work emergency, but his nasty grin said something else entirely.Eleanor gave him a terrible glare, but she may as well have aimed it at the wall for all he cared.It would have been far better to do this in front of Chase, but everything’s been arranged, and the danger of discovery becomes greater with every passing minute.I wait until after dessert.The sitting room has almost the right number of people.Eleanor, my stepfather, Julian, Nathanial, Elias. And a handful of staff who will talk.Witnesses matter. Especially since Chase isn’t here to experience my suffering firsthand.And a performance with no audience is just

Chapter 53 The Morning Call

(Chase)The first thing I see when I open my eyes is the blue sky.A wide rectangle of pale Christmas morning light. Deep blue fading to grey at the edges, one star still visible near the upper corner of the skylight.I lie still for a moment and let the quiet settle around me.No estate. No staff moving through corridors. No uncomfortable dinner companions, or Sonia demanding I pay attention to her.Just the skylight, and the pale morning, and Lily making the small, searching sounds that mean she's waking up and hungry.I turn onto my side to look at her.She's on her back in the travel cot, hands raised on either side of her head in the involuntary surrender of deep sleep unwinding.Her eyes open, find my face, and she stares at me with the serious, assessing look she arrived in the world with and has never quite put down."Morning," I tell her.She considers this information gravely, before starting to grouse at the lack of milk.I sit up and reach for my phone.Thirteen missed cal

Chapter 54 Twenty Boxes

(Chase)Breakfast has the strained atmosphere of a funeral with better china.My mother is all sympathy and soft voices.Sonia is pale and delicate and arranged at the table like grief itself.Mother dabs at her mouth with a linen napkin and announces that the photographer has been cancelled.“Under the circumstances, it would be in extremely poor taste to proceed with the family Christmas portraits.”Sonia lowers her eyes as if she’s too fragile for language.My mother squeezes her hand. I drink my coffee and say nothing.I don’t particularly enjoy posing for photos, but this is Lily’s first Christmas.Nevermind. My phone has a great camera and it will be more relaxed than being told by a stranger how to arrange ourselves.By the time we finish eating, Sonia claims a headache and goes upstairs to lie down.That gives me the perfect opportunity to get the gifts from my car.The boot is full.I stand there for a moment, staring at the boxes piled inside it.Red ribbons. Gold ribbons.

Chapter 55 The Grieving Guest

(Natasha)Two days.Sonia has been at the Warren estate for two days, and if Eleanor's mournful hovering is anything to go by, she intends to stay forever.I come downstairs on the morning of day three to find them in the sitting room together.Sonia is curled in the corner of the sofa with a blanket and a cup of chamomile tea, looking fragile and devastated.Eleanor sits beside her, rubbing slow circles on her back."She barely slept," Eleanor tells me quietly, as though I'm a nurse being briefed on a patient."I'm so sorry, Sonia," I say.And I mean it, because whatever my feelings are about this woman, losing a pregnancy is one of the most terrible things I can imagine.I spent enough time terrified of losing my own to know that.Sonia looks up at me with wet eyes and a trembling lip."Thank you, Natasha," she whispers.Eleanor looks at me with an expression that says, you see? She's being so brave.I go and get my own coffee, fiercely pressing down the irritation that’s trying to

Chapter 56 Night Shift

(Natasha)By evening, I’m so tired my bones feel hollow.Even blinking feels like more effort than I can really afford.Sonia grieving on command. Eleanor hovering.Chase coming home with that strange look on his face whenever Sonia reaches for him, as if he’s forcing himself through a role he no longer enjoys.I feed Lily, bathe Lily, change Lily, and walk the nursery floor with her pressed against my shoulder while she fights sleep like it’s a matter of principle.By the time she finally gives in, I’m missing a shoe, and too exhausted to care where it went.But when I attempt to lay her down, she immediately starts grizzling again.With a sigh I start pacing again for a bit, before sinking into the nursing chair with her warm weight against my chest.Only meaning to rest my eyes for a minute.When I jerk awake, the room is dark except for the cloud-shaped night-light.Lily makes a fussy sound from the vicinity of my shoulder, and a man’s voice answers her in a low murmur.“Come on,

Chapter 57 The Offer

(Natasha)It starts innocently enough.Coffee in the kitchen, early enough that the house is still quiet.Lily is still sleeping soundly in her cot, and Eleanor won’t be down for another hour.Sonia waits to be served coffee in bed. There’s no chance she’ll fetch her own.Chase pours two cups without asking.It’s something he’s started doing without either of us remarking on it, and sits across from me at the island."I want to talk to you about something," he says."Alright.""Warren Global needs a CFO."I look at him over the rim of my cup."I'm aware," I say carefully. "You've been operating without one for a year."We both know why."I want it to be you. Your old position, fully reinstated. Your terms, Natasha. Salary, title, whatever you need. You name it and I'll put it in writing today."He says it the way he says everything in a boardroom.Direct, confident, no wasted words.He’s always been very good at making an offer sound like the obvious conclusion to a problem rather tha

Chapter 58 Back to Work

(Natasha)The assistant Mason hired for me is called Priya.She's twenty-six, gorgeous, and she’s placing a perfect flat white on my desk just as I arrive.Which tells me Mason briefed her thoroughly and probably more than once.It's not a huge office.Nothing like the corner suite I had at Warren Global with its floor-to-ceiling windows and the view of half the city.This one looks out over a courtyard, there's a small water stain on the ceiling that someone has painted over, and the desk chair squeaks when I lean back.I love it unreasonably.Mason appears in the doorway at five past nine with the expression of a man trying to look casual about something he cares about very much."You're here," he says."You say that like you thought I might not show up."He shrugs in a way that tells me that’s exactly what he thought.He comes in, drops a folder on the desk, and pulls up a chair like it's his office too, which in fairness it is.He owns the building."Priya will get you set up on t

Chapter 59 Old Friends

(Gloria)The coffee shop on Melrose is the kind of place I choose specifically because nobody I know would go there.Which is why, naturally, Piper Morton is sitting at the window table when I walk in.Is it actually possible that this is a coincidence, or is she here to run into me spontaneously?I’m not being melodramatic. With Piper this is a distinct possibility.Her eyes meet mine and that half-second where I have the option to pretend I didn’t see her passes me by.I’m too old for that particular cowardice anyway.I order my coffee and walk over."Piper.""Gloria."She gestures at the seat across from her with the precise economy of a woman who has decided to be civil and intends to see it through."Sit down, if you like."It’s a good thing I’m used to her ways, or I’d feel unwelcome.She looks good.Piper has the kind of bone structure that makes effort look optional, and she's always known it.Today she's in a dark coat, no jewelry, her black hair pulled back from her face.Sh

Chapter 60 Safe Harbour

(Natasha)Mason shows up at my office door at eleven with two coffees and absolutely no intention of leaving quickly.I can tell by the way he kicks the door shut behind him and drops into the chair across from my desk like a man settling in for the afternoon."Don't you have a company to run?" I ask."I'm running it from here." He slides one of the cups across to me."My assistant knows where I am."I take the coffee.It's perfect, obviously. Mason has never in his life handed anyone a bad cup of coffee unless it was intentional.We start with work because that's the safe harbor, the place we both know how to navigate without bumping into anything.He updates me on a separate acquisition his team is closing in Seattle.I tell him about a meeting I have with Jeffrey Bauer's tech lead next week regarding the server migration.We go back and forth with the easy shorthand of two people who think similarly and have long since stopped wasting words explaining themselves to each other.Some

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