Semua Bab His Billion-Dollar Regret: The Forgotten Wife Returns: Bab 71 - Bab 80

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghLewis called back at nine forty-one.She was at the kitchen table with a cold cup of tea and the specific alertness of a woman who had been sitting in the dark for an hour doing arithmetic she didn't have all the numbers for yet."Talk," she said."Marcus pulled the Bellamy tender file," Lewis said. "The one from eighteen months ago. The commercial project that went to a competitor on a technicality." A pause. "The technicality was a compliance question raised by Graves two days before the evaluation panel met. A question about Bellamy's project insurance documentation.""Our documentation was complete," she said."I know," he said. "Marcus found the original submission. Everything was in order." A beat. "The question Graves raised referenced a document that wasn't in the submission criteria. It wasn't required. He invented a gap that didn't exist."She looked at the dark window."He disqualified me on a document that wasn't required," she said."Yes

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghShe read the message twice.Fiona Park. Independent board member. Sterling Industries. Harrison had called her this evening — the same evening Marcus found the motion, the same evening Lewis read it at this kitchen table.Harrison was already moving.She typed back: How did you get this number.The reply came in under thirty seconds.Iona Macrae. She's my cousin. She told me you were someone worth calling.Yessica looked at the ceiling for one second.Iona Macrae, family law solicitor, Edinburgh. Fiona Park, independent board member, Sterling Industries. Cousins. The specific Edinburgh architecture of a city where the professional networks were smaller than they appeared.She typed: What did Harrison say.Can we speak. Not text.She called.Fiona Park answered on the first ring. Her voice was measured, the careful register of someone who had decided to make this call and was not going to perform uncertainty about it. "Thank you for calling directly,"

POV: Lewis | Location: Edinburgh"You've been talking to my board," Harrison said."Our board," Lewis said. "I'm still CEO."A pause. The specific pause of a man recalibrating. "For now," Harrison said."Yes," Lewis said. "For now. Which is why I'm talking to them." He moved to the window. The Edinburgh morning below, indifferent and clear. "You filed a Section 168 motion eleven days ago and buried it in the supplementary papers. You want to have the conversation about who's been talking to whom."Silence."Marcus found it," Harrison said."Marcus finds everything eventually," Lewis said. "You've known that for six years.""I expected more time," Harrison said. Not an apology. A tactical assessment."I know you did," Lewis said. "That's the problem with building on a timeline you didn't share with the person it concerns.""Lewis." Harrison's voice shifted. The father version. Measured, certain, the tone that had ended arguments for thirty years. "This isn't personal.""You used Rose i

POV: Lewis | Location: EdinburghHe had sent the text before he knew.That was the thing he would carry.He had been standing outside the hotel on a grey Wednesday morning with two bags and a lease signed the night before, looking at the Edinburgh castle in the low cloud, and he had picked up his phone and typed the message because it felt like the right thing to mark the moment with — I'm here, I'm staying, no expectation of response — and sent it before he understood that somewhere across the city, in a hospital room he didn't know about, Yessica was holding a daughter he didn't know existed.He found out eleven weeks later.But on the morning itself he had just stood on the pavement outside the hotel with his bags and the Edinburgh grey and the specific feeling of a man who had made the most consequential decision of the last three years and was standing in it.His phone showed delivered. Not read.He pocketed it and went inside.The hotel near the castle was not the penthouse.He

POV: Yessica | Location: EdinburghShe had told him to bring nothing.He brought nothing. She checked when she opened the door — no flowers, no gift, no anything that would make the moment into a production. Just Lewis in a grey jacket, hands in his pockets, standing on the Marchmont landing at two PM exactly."Come in," she said.He came in.Claire was in the sitting room with her blocks. She looked up when Lewis walked through the door and said: "You came," with the tone of someone whose logistical prediction had been confirmed."I came," Lewis said."Mama said you were coming at two," Claire said. "It's two.""It is," he said."Good," Claire said. She went back to her blocks.Lewis looked at Yessica.She looked at him."Rose is in the small room," she said. "She's awake."She took him to the doorway.Rose was in the bouncy seat, not the crib. Two weeks old now — the newborn quality still fully present but already shifting, the face that had arrived at six forty-two AM beginning to