All Chapters of My Billionaire's Ex Husband's Secret Heir: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

11 Chapters

The Stain in the Room

SASHA :The Moretti family house in Milan had always felt like a museum that somehow still breathed.It was the kind of place built to remind everyone that old money never needed to raise its voice. The ceilings were so high the sound of a spoon touching a plate came out small. Old paintings in gilded frames lined the walls like ancestors who still weren’t done judging. The candles on the long dining table burned with a steady glow. Crystal glittered. Silver gleamed cold. Everything was too perfect for ordinary human hands to touch.And I....was the stain in the room.I sat straight beside Rafael, spine aligned, shoulders loose, smile measured. My black dress fell neatly to my knees, simple and clean. I wore my hair down, smooth and glossy, covering one side of my neck. Small diamond studs. Dusty rose lips and I was trying to remember how to breathe correctly.A server set the next course in front of me. I thanked him in Italian polished enough to make people forget I wasn’t one of th

Choose Me, Please

If this were ordinary drama, maybe I would have stood up, rolled my eyes, and told them all to get a hobby. But there was something in the way the entire room held its breath that made my spine go rigid.Vittoria pulled out the first photo and set it on the low table between us.I recognized it before I really had the chance to look.An underground parking garage. Bad lighting. The angle was too far away, too grainy. I was standing there with one shoe off, my body tilted slightly because my heel had snapped. Marco, one of the external project managers who had worked with my studio a few times, had a hand on my waist to keep me from falling.If someone wanted badly enough to believe I was cheating, well, be my guest. Imagination was free.I blinked once.Then twice.The second photo.A printed hotel keycard log under my design studio’s name.The Mandarin Oriental, two months ago.I remembered it. My assistant had booked the suite under the studio because a client from Los Angeles refus

Marble, Whiskey, and Ruin

The front door closed softly behind us, the quiet click echoing through our mansion in Brera, too beautiful, too silent, too expensive to be the home of a broken marriage.The foyer lights glowed softly over pale marble. The white flowers in the console vase were still fresh. Rafael’s coat had been hung up by the staff an hour earlier, before we left for his family’s house.I stood in the middle of it with my throat dry and a thin wave of nausea curling through my stomach, and for the first time since we left the Moretti house, I realized Rafael hadn’t touched me once on the drive home.I turned.He took off his watch first, then set it on the small table by the door with the kind of precision that made me want to scream. His black suit was still perfect. His tie still neat. His face, too.Rafael always looked most dangerous when he didn’t look angry. When everything about him was too calm. Too clean. Like a man who had already made a decision and was now just waiting to see whether y

What I Made

Five years later.Los Angeles felt like a city built out of glass, sunlight, and people far too confident to ever admit they were confused.I stood in the twenty-third-floor boardroom at Jamesson Holdings, facing a presentation screen the size of a mortal sin, while Noelle Jamesson stared at the house renderings in front of her as if they’d been assembled in some ancient dead language.Noelle was blonde, beautiful, and dressed in a cream suit that was clearly more expensive than her understanding of the project. She was the daughter of an American tycoon. An heiress. A social fixture. The kind of last name that opened doors before she even had to knock.The problem was, this week her father had apparently decided it was time for his darling daughter to “lead something,” and unfortunately for me, that something was a major residential project in Malibu with a price tag high enough to make people pretend they had a great deal of patience for idiots.My firm, Aster House, had been appoin

The House by the Sea

My house sat inside a gated community far too expensive for people who still had real-life problems, but Los Angeles had always possessed a slightly cruel sense of humor.At the front gate, the security guard gave a small nod when he saw my car. I lowered the window and offered the minimum required smile, the kind polite enough for the CCTV cameras and cold enough to discourage small talk after a long day. In the back seat, Maxime was singing a theme song about himself in a language only he and possibly a tiny alien cult could understand.“Vroom vroom, Maxime is coming, everybody move, don’t get hit by the tires, this is serious.”Gabriella, sitting beside him with her war tote bag on her lap, didn’t even look up from her phone. “We’re in an SUV, not a monster truck.”“I’m a monster truck in my heart.”I glanced at him through the rearview mirror. “You’re four.”“A little monster truck.”“Of course,” I muttered. “My apologies, Your Majesty of the Giant Tires.”Max grinned wide, his bl

Elegant and Sticky

Max pressed his lips together, then slowly pulled out the chair. He tried to climb up by himself, his chubby knee pushing into the seat cushion, one hand gripping the edge of the table. His face was so serious, as if he were scaling the Pottery Barn version of Everest. Once he managed to sit, he immediately straightened his back, placed both hands in his lap, and gave me a smile far too sweet to be trusted in a court of law.I narrowed my eyes. “What is that?”“I’m sitting elegantly.”“Do you know what elegant means?”He thought about it. “Not making Mami become a volcano.”Gabriella nodded slowly. “Academically, close enough.”I walked over to him, bent down, and smoothed his damp bangs with my fingers. His hair was cool from the water, soft, and a little too long in the front. Tomorrow, he needed a haircut. Or next week. Or never, because every time I planned to trim those bangs, Max looked at me like a tragic hero accused of betraying his people.He tipped his face up to me, his bl

Before Eight in the Morning

Today, Maxime Rivera decided that uniform shorts were a form of oppression.I knew this before he said it, because he was already lying flat on his back on the bedroom rug with one leg in the air, his black hair sticking out in every direction, his bangs covering almost half his forehead, and his white undershirt riding up just enough to show his chubby little belly. Beside him, the navy preschool shorts lay abandoned.“Max.”He didn’t answer.“Maxime.”“I can’t go to school today.”I stood in front of the closet in a champagne silk slip dress I still hadn’t changed out of, a thin robe hanging from one elbow, my hair clipped messily on top of my head. One hand held his little white polo. The other held a sock that, for some reason, had already ended up under the pillow.“Why?”He took a long breath.A very long one.Far too long for someone who had only recently learned how to button his pants properly.“Because my body needs vacation.”“Your body took a vacation from logic yesterday.”

Bye, Little Menace

We went downstairs together. The house was still full of clean morning light, the large glass windows in the living room catching the color of the ocean in the distance. In the kitchen, Max’s breakfast was almost gone: small pieces of pancake, strawberries, scrambled eggs he had eaten while complaining that the texture was “too serious,” and milk reduced to a white line at the bottom of his glass. On the island, there was still one small spoon that was, for reasons unknown, completely wet.I decided not to ask.Some things were better off dying as mysteries.In the foyer, Max stopped abruptly.I nearly ran into him. “What now?”He stared at the front door like a tiny actor before stepping onto a stage. Then he took a breath, lifted one hand into the air, and began to sing.“Preschool, I am coming, don’t be scared, I bring snacks and fast car.”I closed my eyes.Gabriella turned to me. “Do you want me to stop him, or should we let art live?”“If art wakes the neighbors, art can be sued.

M for Millionaire

By ten twelve, I had already left Aster House with my laptop still warm in my bag, one unfinished contractor call in my ear, and Nina’s last text message sitting on my screen:[If the tile vendor calls again, I’m faking my own death.]I replied with one hand at a red light.[Do it after lunch. We have invoices.]Los Angeles moved around me the way it always did, too bright, too confident, too expensive for a city that still had potholes. I parked the SUV in front of Max’s preschool with sunglasses on my face and the expression of a woman with three deadlines, one child, and zero tolerance for mothers who stood by the school gate discussing gluten as if it were their ex-husband.Gabriella was already waiting near the entrance with a tote bag on her shoulder, round sunglasses perched on her nose, and Maxime standing beside her while hugging one large sheet of paper to his chest.The moment he saw me, Max lifted the drawing high.“MAMI!”Several heads turned.I lowered the car window a li

A Moral Narrative

After lunch, I moved my laptop and iPad into the living room. I cracked the glass door open so the sea breeze could slip in. I sat on the sofa with my MacBook on my lap, my iPad on the table, Apple Pencil in hand, my hair twisted messily on top of my head. On the screen, the Malibu floor plan stared back at me with all its lines begging to be fixed.Max sat on the rug not far from me, surrounded by Legos like a tiny king who had just conquered a plastic kingdom. Gabriella was half-reclined in the armchair by the window, reading something on her tablet with one eye still on Max.“This is a tower,” Max said.I didn’t look up from the iPad. “Nice.”“This is not a normal tower.”“Of course it isn’t.”“This is a tower for the Batman car.”I redrew the circulation line on the plan. “Your architectural ambition is very specific.”He added a red block on top of a black one. The structure leaned slightly. He tilted his head, assessing it.“Mami.”“Hm?”“If a tower falls, is that design or probl

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