All Chapters of Billionnaire's regret: Ex-wife is an heiress: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Claire sat on the kitchen counter, legs dangling, scrolling through nothing in particular when Andrew called again."What now?" she groaned."You can scratch what I told you earlier." He exhaled into the phone. "He had to leave the state again."Claire was quiet for a moment. "That's exactly why I didn't bother hoping." She ended the call and set her phone down on the counter beside her.In truth, she had hoped… just a little. They texted each other occasionally, surface-level things, nothing that went anywhere. But since she'd been cut off from that side of the family, she hadn't known what to do with whatever was left of that relationship. Hope felt dangerous, but she'd felt it anyway. She wouldn't make that mistake twice.She sat with it for a moment, then let it go.The kitchen smelled like garlic and something herby she couldn't name. She looked up and watched the chef move around the stove with the efficiency of someone who'd done this ten thousand times."When is John getting h

John and Claire sat across from each other in the restaurant, the kind of easy, unhurried conversation flowing between them that neither of them had planned for but neither wanted to stop."I'm telling you, he's consistently funny," John said, gesturing with his fork. "Not a single bad joke in the man's catalog.""That's not what I said." Claire shook her head. "His jokes are fine. They're clever. You chuckle, you appreciate it, and you move on. But when you actually need to laugh, I mean like a full body, lose your breath laughing… you go to the woman every time."John opened his mouth to argue, closed it, and reconsidered. He pointed at her instead. "You know what, I actually can't counter that.""I know." Claire smiled, unbothered."That's annoying." He took the last spoonful from his plate, looking genuinely put out by being right.Claire was still working through her meal, eating slowly the way she did when she was actually enjoying something. "How do you know so many good resta

By the time John got outside, the car was already gone.He stood on the pavement and looked at the empty space where it had been, and then he turned and kicked the curb hard enough to feel it. The anger came out in one sharp, wordless sound that disappeared into the noise of the street.He stood there for a moment with his jaw clenched tight, running through the sequence of the last ten minutes. He remembered Karen's face. The smile she'd worn when she said it. The deliberate use of her biggest weapon, "a date… sorry, meeting."The way Claire's expression had gone still and careful, the way she'd said ‘oh’ in that quiet, composed voice that meant she was holding something together by force.He pulled out his phone and checked the car's location. The dot was sitting at the penthouse. He stared at it for a second longer than necessary, making sure it wasn't moving. She was still there.The relief came fast, and behind it, immediately, the doubt. “Or she's packing.” He thought to himsel

Abraham had been on the couch for two hours.He hadn't moved with any particular intention since he got home — just dropped into it, let the cushions take his weight, and stared at the ceiling while the numbers played themselves back in his head. He had lost nine businesses in the span of weeks. The kind of streak that stops feeling like coincidence at around number four and starts feeling like something else entirely by number nine.He still had two left. Both were mid-project, and he suspected the only reason they hadn't dissolved yet was that the clients needed him to finish what he'd started. The moment he did, they'd be gone too. He could feel it.He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and stared at nothing."Is this about Claire?" The thought arrived uninvited, a little too plausible for comfort. He'd left her, built something new, moved on by every visible measure, and yet from the moment that chapter closed, everything else had started quietly unraveling. He wasn't

The Jenkins family jet was efficient, quiet, and stocked with the kind of small comforts that cost more than they looked like they did. Claire slept through most of the five-hour flight without intending to. She'd closed her eyes somewhere over Pennsylvania and only surfaced when Andrew touched her arm on the descent."We're landing," he said.She sat up, blinked, and looked out the window at the sprawling geometry of Las Vegas below. She'd grown up flying in and out of this city and had never quite gotten used to it. "Are you nervous?" Andrew asked. They flew in together. Claire considered it honestly. "Somewhere between nervous and numb," she said. "I can't tell yet.""It'll be fine.""You always say that.""It's always eventually true," he pointed out.She couldn't really argue with that.The Jenkins estate was forty minutes outside the city. The car turned off the main road and the landscape changed immediately. The noise and density of Vegas gave way to a quiet environment expe