Semua Bab His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns: Bab 111 - Bab 120

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghShe called Harrison at eight AM the next morning, while Lewis was doing the school run with Claire.He answered on the first ring. She'd noticed he always answered quickly now. Like he was waiting."The RIAS nomination," she said. "You listed yourself as lead draughtsman on the Canongate elevation drawings.""Yes.""Why."A pause. Not evasion. Harrison pausing was different from Harrison avoiding — she'd learned to tell the difference."I am seventy-one years old," he said. "Sterling Industries will be Lewis's in five years, formally, though it's already his in practice. My name will be on a building in the City of London that I commissioned at forty-eight and a boardroom I occupied for thirty years." Another pause. "The Canongate drawings are the first thing I've designed since I was twenty-six. I wanted it on record before I run out of time to put things on record."Yessica looked out the kitchen window.The garden. The gate with the good latch. A

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghPippa sent the article at seven forty-two AM.No message. Just the link.The Herald had run it overnight. The headline was restrained by Herald standards: Bellamy Holdings RIAS win: Lewis Sterling's ex-wife and the Edinburgh firm that rebuilt itself. The engagement was three paragraphs in — sourced to "a guest at the Assembly Rooms ceremony" and accompanied by a photograph of Yessica holding the award with Lewis visible two rows back.The photograph was fine. The article was mostly fair.The problem was the byline date: published 11:47 PM.Which meant Pippa had read it alone, at midnight, and had been sitting on it since.Yessica called her before she could talk herself out of it.Pippa picked up immediately."I'm coming over," Pippa said."I know."She was at the door twenty-two minutes later. Lewis had already taken the girls to Theron's for the morning — they'd agreed on this the previous night, reading the same situation independently. He'd left

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghReid was off the board by Friday.Five to two. Harrison's proxy made it clean.Marcus sent Lewis the confirmation at four PM. Lewis forwarded it to Yessica with no message.She replied: Good.That was the end of it.The Edinburgh City Council registrar's office called on Monday.Lewis had already spoken to them.Yessica found out when she called to book the ceremony slot herself and the registrar said, "Mr Sterling has already confirmed the date and time — the fourteenth, eleven AM. We just need your formal consent signature."She said: "I'll call back."She hung up.She stood in the Bellamy Holdings office, phone in hand, and identified precisely what she was feeling.Not the old panic. Not the London version, the one that had preceded years of slow erasure.Something smaller and more specific.He'd confirmed the date without her.She called him.He answered on the second ring. "Hey. Did the registrar—""You confirmed the date," she said.A pause."

POV: Lewis | Location: EdinburghThe Western General at nine PM was quiet in the particular way of hospitals at night — reduced to essentials, every sound carrying further than it should.Harrison was in a private room on the cardiac ward.He looked smaller in a hospital bed. That was the first thing Lewis noticed. The posture that had defined him for sixty years — the deliberate uprightness, the controlled stillness — was gone. Just a man in a hospital gown with a monitor clipped to his finger."You came quickly," Harrison said."Edinburgh, Dad. Not London."Harrison's mouth moved. Almost a smile. "I keep forgetting you live here now."Lewis sat in the chair beside the bed.The monitor beeped at its own quiet pace."The doctor said stable," Lewis said."She was being kind. It was moderate." Harrison looked at the ceiling. "The cardiologist wants to discuss a procedure. Something with a wire." He paused. "I'm told it's routine.""Is it.""Apparently. At seventy-one with a previous arr

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghLewis was at the hotel.His choice. He'd booked it three days ago without being asked — two streets from Granville Terrace, five minutes on foot, the kind of distance that meant available but not underfoot.He'd texted at nine: Settled in. Girls okay?She'd replied: Claire demanded I read the horse book twice. Rose pulled Claire's cast and we had a situation. Everyone fine.He sent back: Situation resolved?Cast still on. Tears resolved with biscuits. Your father's influence.A pause. Then: See you tomorrow.See you tomorrow, she'd typed back.Now it was eleven PM and the house was quiet.Both girls asleep.Yessica sat on the edge of her bed — the room with the good lock, the bookshelves in the right order now, the south-facing window — and looked at the dress hanging on the back of the door.Ivory. Simple. Nothing that announced itself.She'd bought it three weeks ago in twenty minutes because she'd walked past a shop on Thistle Street, seen it in t