Lahat ng Kabanata ng Forbidden Love wtih my Ex-Husband's Billionaire Brother: Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

✿◕Joseph◕✿I didn't know what had gotten into Antoinette, didn't know where she'd found that kind of nerve standing in my office, next to me, like she had any right to that space but whatever it was, I wasn't interested in entertaining it.Not when Giselle was standing right there. Even without her presence, I still wouldn’t."Who are you," I said, looking directly at Antoinette, "to tell me what to do?"The color left her face fast. But I'll give her this, she pulled herself back together quicker than I expected. She leaned in slightly, dropping her voice like what she was about to say was going to change everything."I was recommended by your best friend. Didn’t he talk to you already?"I pulled back and just looked at her for a second."Jeff." I said it more to myself than to her. I still couldn't make the pieces fit. Jeff was a name I trusted, had trusted for years, and hearing it come out of her mouth in this context,

✿◕Giselle◕✿I still couldn't get over it.Joseph had ended a full executive meeting, suits and laptops and a room full of people with places to be, and he had done it for me. Just like that. No hesitation, no visible calculation, just two words and an empty room.I turned it over in my head while I sat across from him. Ken used to say Joseph was dangerous. Cold. The kind of man you didn't want to be on the wrong side of.And maybe that version of him existed somewhere. I wasn't naive enough to think the man who ran a company this size did it entirely on warmth and good intentions.But every single thing he had shown me personally had been the opposite of what Ken described.Kindness I hadn't asked for. Protection I hadn't earned. Space when I needed it and presence when I didn't know I did.And then a quieter thought crept in behind all of that, one I didn't particularly want to look at directly.What happened when the divorce

✿◕Giselle◕✿Nothing could've prepared me for that call.I'd heard Phoebe stressed before, tight deadlines, difficult judges, opposing lawyers who played dirty but this was different. The moment her voice came through the speaker, something in my chest dropped. Like my body understood what my brain hadn't caught up to yet."Hold on one second," I said quickly, pressing the phone against my collarbone.My eyes drifted to Joseph without meaning to. He caught it immediately and without me saying a single word, he was already moving. He glanced at Knox and gave him this look, the kind that didn't need any explanation."Knox." His voice was low, almost casual, but there was nothing casual about it. "The private jet's been waiting. You've got maybe two hours before you absolutely have to be at that airport."Knox nodded once and was gone.Joseph turned to Mandy next. "Go ahead with what I told you."She left without a word, the door clicking shut behind her, and just like that the room empti

 ✿◕Giselle◕✿I had read him completely wrong.This whole time I thought Joseph was different, steady, safe, the kind of man who showed up without wanting anything back. I built this picture of him in my head, this solid, reliable person who just happened to be there when everything else in my life was falling apart.And I let myself lean into that picture because it felt good. Because after everything Ken put me through, I needed something that felt good.But Joseph wasn't that.He wasn't my knight in shining armor. He was something way more complicated than that, a man with patience, with strategy, and apparently, with demands.That was the part that scared me more than anything. Not the demand itself, but how long he had taken to get there. He hadn't rushed, hadn't pushed. He had been careful and slow about it, building my trust layer by layer like he was constructing something he planned to keep.And the moment I final

 ✿◕Giselle◕✿Breathing was starting to feel like work.I sat there trying to pull myself together, but my chest kept doing this tight, fluttery thing that I absolutely hated.How does a man ask for a kiss, straight up, no shame, no hesitation, and then flip a switch and act like nothing happened? Like he hadn't just turned my whole nervous system against me?One second Joseph was looking at me like I was the only thing in the room worth looking at, and the next he was back to being all composed and untouchable, sitting behind that desk like he was born in a boardroom.It wasn't fair. It genuinely wasn't fair how easily he did that while I was sitting here barely keeping it together.I forced myself to focus. There were actual problems I needed to deal with, ones that didn't involve the way his voice dropped when he said certain things."My lawyer can't appear in court tomorrow," I said, pushing the words out before I lost