Lahat ng Kabanata ng His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghShe stared at the photograph for a long time.Not yet. Wait.Lewis's handwriting. She'd know it anywhere — the slightly compressed letters, the way he wrote his t without lifting the pen, the note she'd found on the kitchen counter a hundred mornings that said back late or left you coffee or, once, in the early months, you were right about the Harrington proposal. Don't tell anyone.Same hand. Same ink pressure.Not yet. Wait.She screenshotted it. Sent it to Diana without comment. Sent it to Rafferty. Then she opened Lewis's thread and sent it there too.His response came in under a minute.I know she sent it. Marcus just called. A pause. I'm outside. Can I come up?Yessica looked at the message.Outside. Which meant he'd been nearby this whole time. Hotel, maybe, or the café, or just — the street. Edinburgh in November with the haar down.She typed: Front door is open.She heard him on the stairs two minutes later. Steady steps, no hesitation. She'

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghYessica didn't speak first.She waited. Held the phone. Let the silence do what silence did — reveal who was more uncomfortable with it.Catherine Sterling was not uncomfortable with silence.Ten seconds. Fifteen.Then: "I expected you to hang up.""I considered it," Yessica said."But you're curious.""I'm careful." Yessica stood up. Moved to the window. "There's a difference."A pause. Something shifted in the quality of the silence — not warmer, but different. Like a recalibration."I'm in London," Catherine said. "I flew in this morning.""Why.""Because conducting a legal campaign against someone from four thousand miles away is ineffective. I've apparently demonstrated that." The dryness in her voice was unexpected. Not self-deprecating — Catherine Sterling didn't do self-deprecation — but something adjacent. A woman acknowledging a tactical failure without flinching. "I wanted to speak to you before tomorrow.""My solicitor should be part of a

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghAgnes arrived with shortbread and the particular expression of a woman who had already formed opinions she wasn't going to volunteer unless asked.She sat in the armchair. Ate a piece of shortbread. Looked around the flat in the comfortable way of someone who'd been in it a hundred times."Well," she said finally."Well," Yessica said."It's over.""The legal part."Agnes nodded. That distinction satisfied her. She didn't push for more.They drank tea. The Friday morning stretched into afternoon. Yessica told Agnes about Catherine's phone call, about Theron, about what Lewis had asked for at the kitchen table. Agnes listened the way she always did — fully, without interruption, processing in real time without letting the processing show on her face.When Yessica finished, Agnes was quiet for a moment."He asked to be nearby," Agnes said."Yes.""Not inside. Not in the room. Just nearby.""Yes."Agnes looked at her shortbread. Turned it in her fingers

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghDr. Gillies's practice was a twenty-minute walk from the Grassmarket.They didn't talk much on the way. Not because the silence was uncomfortable — it wasn't. It had the quality of two people moving toward the same thing with their own separate versions of dread, and neither of them pretending otherwise.Lewis walked beside her at the same careful distance as before. On the steeper part of the hill he slowed without comment, matching her pace without making it obvious he was doing so.She noticed. Said nothing.The practice was a converted Georgian terrace on Marchmont Road. The kind of building Edinburgh did without effort — stone and symmetry and windows that had watched two hundred years of ordinary human urgency pass through them.The waiting room was warm. Cream walls, chairs upholstered in something practical. A water dispenser in the corner. Two other women waiting, neither looking up."I'll be out here," Lewis said."I know." She turned towar

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghThe weekend passed quietly.Agnes enforced this with the gentle implacability of a woman who had decided something and saw no reason to negotiate about it. No bookshop. No phone calls that weren't essential. Meals at actual mealtimes. Feet up in the afternoon.Yessica submitted to it because she was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep — the particular depletion of a week that had moved too fast through too many things — and because Claire was quieter when she rested, a steady rolling presence rather than the urgent kicks of the crisis days.Lewis texted twice.Saturday evening: Blood results Monday. I'll be thinking about you.Sunday afternoon: Flat viewing confirmed for tomorrow. Two streets over.She replied to both with single sentences. Not cold. Not warm. Just — present.He didn't push for more.Monday's blood results came through Diana's contact at the practice — Dr. Gillies had Yessica's consent on file for her solicitor to receiv