All Chapters of CHASING HIS EX-WIFE: My ex-husband wants me-too late: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The report landed on Antonio's desk at eight forty seven the following morning.It was three pages, typed in the precise and economical language Vincent used for everything that mattered, the language that contained only what was necessary and nothing that wasn't, and it sat on top of the other correspondence his assistant had arranged in order of urgency with a small handwritten note from Vincent in the top right corner that said only: Thought you should see this.Antonio read it standing up, which was how he read things that arrived with that particular note from Vincent, things that Vincent had judged significant enough to flag personally rather than simply including in the standard morning briefing.He read it once.Then he set it on the desk and stood looking at it for a moment before reading it again.It was not a long document. Three pages did not take long to read even when you read them slowly and with the full quality of your attention, which he did both times, looking for s

Lisa Knight had always been good at research.Not in the obvious way, not in the way that required databases or subscriptions or the kind of access that announced itself — but in the quieter, more useful way of someone who understood that the most valuable information about people was rarely in what they published about themselves but in the spaces around what they published, in the connections and the patterns and the names that appeared repeatedly in contexts where they hadn't been invited to appear.She had been researching Enzo Vitale for eleven days.Not obsessively. Carefully, in the hours that belonged to her rather than to Antonio, in the mornings before she arrived at the office and the evenings after she left it, building a picture from the publicly available pieces with the methodical patience of someone who understood that rushing this particular process would produce something incomplete and incomplete was worse than nothing.She knew his professional history, the arc of

She turned from the window.Picked up her phone and called her lawyers."I need you in my office this afternoon," she said when they answered. "I've received a board proposal from Wright Capital Group that requires immediate review. Bring whoever handles governance documentation.""We can be there at two," they said."One thirty," she said, and ended the call.Then she called Lucas.He answered on the second ring the way he always did, as though he had been waiting for the call without knowing he was waiting for it."I need you in my office," she said. "Now, if you can.""Five minutes," he said.She sat back down at her desk and opened the document to page one and began making a second set of margin notes, these ones not about what the proposals said but about what she was going to do about each of them, the specific responses available to her within the existing contract structure, the places where she had leverage and the places where the language was going to require creativity to

By three forty-five they had a complete response strategy.By four fifteen the lawyers had left with their notes and the commitment to have draft language to Jayda by Wednesday evening.By four thirty Lucas had gone back to the track for the end of the afternoon session and Jayda was alone in her office with the thirty-one pages of Enzo's proposal on the desk in front of her and the afternoon light coming through the window at the low angle of a day that was finishing itself and the particular quiet of a room that had held a lot and was now emptying back into its ordinary proportions.She sat with it for a while.Not reviewing, not analyzing, not running the response strategy through her mind for gaps she might have missed. Just sitting with the full complicated reality of the day and what it had required of her and what it had confirmed and what it had left unresolved in ways that no legal strategy could reach.She picked up her phone.There were two messages she hadn't looked at sin

Unless the referencing was itself strategic, was the next calculated move, was the warmth turned up one degree precisely because the document had turned the temperature down and the recalibration was as deliberate as everything else had been.She couldn't know.She had been sitting with the impossibility of knowing for three days and she was not going to resolve it this morning at her desk with the track sounds starting outside and Caroline's draft in her inbox.She picked up her phone and typed.Confirmed. And yes — we can talk. After the board meeting.She read it back.It was honest without being warm and firm without being cold and gave him nothing except the truth of where she was, which was the only thing she had to give that she trusted completely.She sent it.Opened Caroline's draft.And went to work.The revised response was cleaner than the first draft.Caroline had incorporated all fourteen of her notes with the precision of someone who had understood not just the what but