All Chapters of Once Discarded, Now Desired : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

The Man I Buried

Nora saw him before he saw her.Ethan Blackwood. Her ex-husband. The man who had handed her divorce papers three years ago without a single explanation and walked out of her life like she never mattered.He was standing at the head of the office in a charcoal grey suit, holding a phone, looking every bit like the powerful billionaire the world knew him to be.And he was staring straight at her.Nora's legs stopped moving. Her heart stopped with them. For one terrible second, the entire world shrank down to just this moment, just this floor, just the two of them and three years of silence standing between them.This was her new job. Her fresh start. The position she had worked fourteen months to earn.And Ethan Blackwood was her boss.She almost laughed. If it didn't hurt so much, she actually would have.The receptionist was still talking beside her but Nora heard nothing. Her eyes stayed on Ethan and he stayed on her. His expression gave nothing away, same as always. Cold. Controlled

Last Updated : 2026-05-12

The Devil Remembers

Nora did not sleep that night.She lay in the dark staring at the ceiling while Diana Blackwood's voice played over and over in her head like a song she could not switch off."Before my son gets any ideas about playing father."She knows about Lily.But how? Nora had been so careful. Three years of care. Different city, different name on the lease, no social media, no contact with anyone connected to the Blackwood family. She had built her new life like a fortress and somehow Diana had still found a crack.She turned onto her side and looked at the small figure sleeping peacefully in the next bed.Lily. Three years old. Dark hair, dark eyes, a little mouth that never stopped asking questions. The most important person in Nora's world and the most dangerous secret she carried.Her son looked exactly like his father.Anyone who had ever seen Ethan Blackwood would know it the moment they looked at Lily's face. Same strong jaw, same serious eyes, same way of going completely still when he

Last Updated : 2026-05-12

The Math He Did

Ethan did not sleep that night either.He sat in his home office with a glass of whiskey he had not touched and stared at nothing while his mind did the one thing he had been trying to stop it from doing since the boardroom.The math.Nora had left him three years ago. Or rather, he had left her. He had signed the papers, walked out, and told himself it was the only way to protect her from what his family would do if he didn't.Three years.And she had a son.A boy. Young enough to still be in a crib or just out of one. He had not seen the child but Clara had mentioned it without realizing what she was saying, something about Nora leaving precisely at five every day to pick up her son from daycare.Her son.He picked up his phone and put it down again without dialing.He was not ready for the answer he already knew was coming.Nora was ready for him the next morning.She had spent the night preparing. She told herself she was calm. She told herself she was in control. She told herself

Last Updated : 2026-05-15

What She Left Behind

Nora made one mistake three years ago.She had told one person.Not a family member. Not a close friend. Just Sophie, her roommate at the time, the only person who had been in that hospital waiting room with her when everything fell apart. Sophie who had held her hand through the worst night of her life and promised to take the secret to her grave.Sophie had kept that promise.But Sophie had a sister. And that sister worked for a cleaning company that held a contract with Blackwood Industries headquarters.Nora figured it out on the bus ride home.It was the only way. The only crack in the wall she had built. She sat on the bus with Lily sleeping against her shoulder and stared out the dark window and felt the pieces click into place one by one.Diana Blackwood had not found her by accident. Someone had talked. And the chain led back to a single conversation in a hospital corridor three years ago that Nora had believed was completely private.She pulled out her phone and called Sophi

Last Updated : 2026-05-15

The Man He Became

For a long moment neither of them moved.Nora stood by the window with her phone still in her hand and Ethan stood in the doorway and the air between them was so thick with everything unsaid that breathing felt like an effort.She spoke first."How long were you standing there?""Long enough," he said.She turned away from him and walked back to her desk. Her hands were steady. She had decided in that moment by the window that she was done being afraid. Fear was a luxury she could not afford anymore."Then you heard nothing that concerns you," she said, sitting down and opening the Henderson file. "It was a personal call.""She called you leverage."His voice was quiet but the words landed hard. Nora kept her eyes on the file."I handled it.""She called my son leverage."The word may hit her like a physical thing. She looked up slowly and found him watching her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. Not the cold control she was used to. Not the careful blankness he

Last Updated : 2026-05-15

The Message.

Nora did not sleep that night.She lay in the dark staring at the ceiling with the USB drive sitting on her bedside table like a small dangerous thing. She had not touched it since she got home. She had not plugged it in. She had not thrown it away either.She just stared at it.On one side was Ethan. Sitting at his desk when she left, calm and composed, looking like a man who had finally unburdened himself of something heavy. Looking like a man who had told the truth.On the other side was that message.One line. No name. No number she recognised.Do not plug that drive into any device. It is not what he told you it is. Meet me tonight if you want the real truth about why Ethan Blackwood destroyed your marriage. I was there. I saw everything.She had read it so many times the words had stopped looking like words.Who sends a message like that? Who knew she had the drive in the first place? The only people in that room were her and Ethan. Nobody else had seen him place it on her desk.

Last Updated : 2026-05-24

The War Begins

Nora drove home in silence.She did not turn on the radio. She did not call Sophie. She just drove with both hands on the wheel and her mind running through everything Helen had said like a film she could not switch off.Diana had forged her signature.Ethan had not abandoned her. He had been shown a document that made him believe she had already chosen to leave. He had signed those papers thinking he was respecting her decision. Thinking he was letting her go cleanly because she had asked him to.And all this time Nora had been carrying three years of anger toward a man who had been lied to just as deeply as she had.She pulled into her street and sat in the parked car for a long moment.She thought about the way he had looked at her across that office on her first day. The way he had said her name. The weight she had seen in his face that she had refused to let herself care about.She understood that weight now.He had been carrying the same thing she had.But understanding it did n

Last Updated : 2026-05-26

The Morning After

Nora did not go back.She had told herself she would not and for once in her life where Ethan Blackwood was concerned she kept that promise. She went home, checked on Lily, sat on the edge of her bed in the dark and stayed there until the anger settled into something quieter and more dangerous.Not rage. Rage burned out quickly.This was something colder. Something that I thought clearly.He had used her as bait.He had stood in her office and handed her that USB drive with those steady eyes and that carefully measured voice and let her believe he was being honest with her. Let her believe he was finally, after three years, choosing to trust her with the truth.And the whole time it had been a trap. Not for her. But she had been the instrument of it without her knowledge or her consent.She thought about the way her chest had cracked open slightly when he said he was not asking her to fix anything. The way she had almost, for one unguarded moment, believed that something real was begi

Last Updated : 2026-05-28

The Other Side

Nora did not tell Ethan about the call.Not immediately.She stood in that bathroom for three full minutes after the line went dead, thinking about Richard Cole's voice. Smooth. Measured. The voice of someone who had rehearsed that conversation many times before making it.Someone who was destroyed by the Blackwood family long before you were.She thought about how many people that description could apply to. Ethan's family was old money and old power. Companies acquired and dismantled. People moved aside to make room for Blackwood interests. In twenty years of operating at that level there were bound to be casualties she knew nothing about.The question was which one had found her. And why now.She washed her hands, checked her face in the mirror, and walked back to her desk.At two o'clock she sat across from Henderson in Ethan's office and answered his questions carefully and completely. Henderson was a compact, precise man in his sixties with the kind of stillness that came from d

Last Updated : 2026-05-30

What He Built

Nora did not sleep again that night.She lay in the dark bedroom, eyes wide open, staring at the faint patterns on the ceiling while Lily’s soft, peaceful breathing filled the quiet space.The little boy slept deeply beside her, completely unaware of the storm brewing around him.Ethan’s message still sat on her phone screen like a heavy weight she couldn’t push away.We need to talk.He already knew about Camille Ashford.She was absolutely certain of it.The timing of his message had been too precise, too immediate after her meeting.That could only mean one thing.He had been watching her.Monitoring her movements.The carefully constructed walls she had built around her private life over the past three years were much thinner than she had believed.She turned onto her back slowly, careful not to wake Lily, and rested one protective hand on the edge of the mattress.The anger inside her chest had cooled from a raging fire into something heavier and colder.Something that felt almos

Last Updated : 2026-06-12

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