All Chapters of His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: Lewis | Location: New YorkThe closet smelled like her perfume.Lewis stood in the doorway of the guest room — her room — and counted what was missing.Blue dress. Gone. The simple one she'd bought herself before they met, before Sterling money had opinions about her wardrobe.Wool coat. Gone.The cookbook her mother had left her. Gone.The prenatal vitamins from the bathroom cabinet. Gone.All of it — the things that were Yessica, not Mrs. Sterling — gone. What remained were designer dresses he recognized from gala events and charity dinners. Catherine's choices. Clothes for a role.She'd left those.Taken herself.Left the costume.Then his hand touched something in the back corner. Silk, cold and cut. He pulled it out.Ribbon. A dozen pieces of it — silk ribbon sliced into useless strips.She'd cut them.He dropped them. Walked to the bathroom. Opened the cabinet.Toothbrush. Gone.He sank to the bathroom floor, back against the tub, and sat there until the light changed.He c

POV: Lewis | Location: New York"Tell me about your marriage."Lewis stared at the therapist across the desk.Dr. Walsh was in her fifties. Steady eyes. No judgment in her expression — just patience, the particular kind that made men confess things they hadn't planned to say."My wife left," Lewis said. "Three weeks ago.""I know. You told me on the phone." She folded her hands. "I asked about your marriage. Not about her leaving."He looked out the window.New York moved below them — indifferent, mechanical, unchanged."My marriage," he repeated. "Was efficient.""Efficient.""We functioned. I worked. She managed the household. We attended events." He paused. "We had separate rooms.""Whose idea?""Hers. After our anniversary.""Which one?""The third. I forgot it."Dr. Walsh didn't flinch. "What happened?""She'd planned dinner. I came home at ten. She'd been sitting in the dark for three hours." Lewis felt the memory land like something physical. "She went to the guest room. We nev

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghThe train north took forty minutes.Yessica spent most of it with her face against the window, watching Edinburgh give way to countryside — brown fields, low sky, the particular gray of a Scottish Sunday.Her father's address was in her pocket.She'd grown up in this suburb. Left at eighteen for university. Left again at twenty-four for New York, for Lewis, for a life she'd spent three years trying to fit herself into like a body into the wrong-sized coat.Coming back felt like a word she didn't have yet.Theron Lockwood answered the door before she knocked.He must have been watching from the window.He looked older. Sixty-two, but with the eyes of someone who'd spent the last decade carrying quiet grief. Her mother's death. Her absence. Three years of phone calls that had gotten shorter and shorter as she'd had less and less to say that was true."Jessie." His voice broke on her name.That was all it took.She walked into his arms and he held her t

POV: Lewis | Location: New YorkPippa arrived seven minutes late.Lewis had been in the coffee shop for twenty-three, nursing an espresso he didn't taste, rehearsing everything he needed to say and knowing none of it would come out right.She walked in, saw him, and her expression said clearly: I'm only here because I have no choice.She sat. Didn't take off her coat. Ordered nothing."Thirty minutes," she said. "Start talking."Lewis set his cup down."I need to know she's safe.""She's fine.""She's pregnant and alone in—""She's not alone." Pippa's voice was quiet. Hard. "She has people. She built herself a life. That's what happens when you stop making yourself small for someone who doesn't see you."The words landed like a fist."I know I failed her.""Do you? Because failing suggests an accident. What you did wasn't an accident, Lewis. It was a pattern. Repeated. Daily. For three years.""I know.""You called your pregnant wife's miscarriage complicated.""I know.""You took Reg

POV: Lewis | Location: New YorkThe call came at 11 PM.Lewis was still at his desk — he was always still at his desk — staring at the homework Dr. Walsh had given him. The notebook open to a list that had grown from four items to nineteen. Small facts. Fragments of a woman he'd been married to for three years and had never actually known.Cross.He answered before the second ring."Talk to me.""She's in Edinburgh." Cross's voice was level. Professional. "Old Town adjacent. Flat above a bakery on Rose Street."Lewis stood up so fast his chair rolled back and hit the wall."I need an address.""Sit down, Mr. Sterling.""Cross—""Sit down." The pause was firm enough to land. "You hired me for my judgment. Use it. Sit."Lewis sat."She's safe," Cross said. "That's the first thing. Physically healthy. Well-settled. She's been there about three weeks. Has a job — I'm still confirming details, but she's working regular hours. She used her maiden name on the lease. Lockwood."Lockwood.Not