All Chapters of HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

BrettIt was me. Roberta, it was me. I was in that hospital. I gave the order. I have been sitting beside you every day knowing what I did, and I can not do this anymore, I can not look at you like this and keep—She pulled back.She looked at my face.I felt her looking."If Irene arranged it," she said, and her voice had that quality it got when her mind was moving fast — clipped, focused, the slight furrow between her brows deepening. "If she was behind it. If the VIP was a Riggs connection. Brett, she is capable of that. I wouldn't put anything past her at this point. If she orchestrated Ziva being moved from that ICU deliberately—" She stopped. Her hands tightened slightly where they rested against my chest. "Then that is a conspiracy. That is criminal. That ties her directly to Ziva's death and I can—" Another stop. She pressed her lips together. "This is the thread. This is the one that connects everything."She was spiraling, and I watched it happen and said nothing because I

Roberta's POV I knocked a second time."Come in."I pushed the door open.He looked up from his desk. Just for a second. Then his eyes went back down to whatever was in front of him and something in that half-second — the way the look came and went, the way he didn't quite land on me the way he always landed on me — made me stop just inside the doorway.I sat in the chair across from him."Are you done?" I said. "We can go home."He didn't look up.I had planned it on the walk here — that I would tell him at home, not in this office, not with his company around us and the day still on both of us. Home felt right for that kind of truth. Home felt like the right place to say *sit down, Brett, there's something I've been carrying and I can't carry it alone anymore.*But he wasn't looking at me."The driver will take you," he said.I looked at him.At the top of his head. At his hands on the desk. At the complete, deliberate focus on whatever was in front of him that had nothing to do wi

Roberta's POV The car rode in silence all the way home.I watched the city pass and thought about Nolan's face when the slap happened. The way his eyes had gone wide. Too young to understand what he had witnessed. Old enough to be frightened by it.I'm sorry you saw that.I meant it. I had meant every word I said to Millie and I did not regret a single one of them, but Nolan — Nolan had done nothing. He had sat in that chair with his tablet and his glass and his innocent, uncomplicated aliveness and he had not asked to be brought there.It's already done, I told myself. You can't take it back.I couldn't take any of it back.The car stopped.I got out.***Brett was in the sitting room.He stood when I came in — stood up from the sofa like he had been waiting, or like he had been trying to look like he hadn't been. He looked at me and something moved in his face and for one second — one full, complete second — I thought: he's going to ask me what happened. He's going to see it on my

Millie's POV Eleven o'clock. I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and listened to the house, and Jace was not beside me. He hadn't been there for hours. He had said he was going to his study to work. That was at eight. It was almost midnight now. Three days had gone by since I sat across from Roberta in that restaurant. Three days, and I still couldn't believe my eyes. I pressed my hand to my cheek. The skin was normal. Cool. Completely fine. And yet. I pressed harder. Like I needed to feel it. Like if I pressed hard enough, I could find the outline of what Roberta had done — the shape of her hand, the specific humiliation of it, the fact that it had happened at all. How dare she I clenched my fingers into a fist. The memory of that moment burned through me. The way Roberta had caught my wrist. The way she had looked at me like I was nothing. The way she had slapped me. I threw the blankets off. I walked out of the bedroom. I went downstairs. I walked toward the study

Roberta’s POV I sat at my office desk with the city glittering far below and formed an image in my head. The image of the Grand Central Tower that I had been creating at Brett's home. Its been four days. Four nights. Foam dust in my hair, glue dried in the creases of my fingers, the deep ache in my shoulders that had stopped feeling temporary. I had cut and sanded and fitted every piece myself, pouring everything I had into something solid. Grief. Fury. The stubborn need to prove I was still here. The Grand Central Tower rose from the base like a held breath. Eighty stories. Mixed-use. The tallest building in the city. Mine. Almost done. I'm so close. I can't stop now. I have to finish this. I have to show them what I can do. I looked out the window. The city stretched below me. Buildings. Streets. People living their lives. None of them knew what I had been through. I have to prove that I'm not just the woman who lost her daughter. I'm the woman who designed what would be the