Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE'S BIGGEST REGRET: Losing His Plus-size Ex: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Chapter 82Riley stared at the frame of the SUV, her breath catching in her throat as the keys sat heavy and warm in her palm. The paint caught the soft light spilling out from the open front door, and that massive red ribbon across the hood looked almost ridiculous sitting in the middle of the driveway."Ashton, no..." She shook her head, her voice dropping to a breathless whisper as her eyes darted from the car back to his face. "This is too much. I can't take this.""You can, and you're going to," Ashton said. He stepped closer, wrapping his large hand over hers and forcing her fingers tight around the leather key fob. "You’ve spent the last few months taking taxis in the pouring rain or waiting around for me to finish a twelve-hour shift just to get across town. You’re a lead actress now, Riley. You need your own set of wheels, something safe that belongs entirely to you.""He made the dealer install those extra child locks on the back doors, too," Aniya called out from the porc

Chapter 84The pen felt heavy in Riley’s hand, but as her signature slid across the final page of the contract, a sense of closure settled over her. She scanned the document one last time...The Shadow’s Edge, Supporting Lead, principal photography set to begin in three weeks.Her agent, sitting across from her in the sunlit glass office, leaned back with a wide smile. "Congratulations, Riley. This contract elevates you into a completely different bracket. The studio is already locking in your wardrobe fittings.""Thank you, Greg," Riley said, handing the signed pages back across the desk. "For everything."Leaving the agency building, she walked out into the cool afternoon air, pulling her coat around her shoulders as she reached for her phone. She dialed Ashton’s number, tapping her foot against the pavement as it rang."Hey, sweetheart," Ashton’s voice came through, warm and unhurried despite the faint background noise of the hospital page system. "Tell me you just signed it.""I

Chapter 86The walk back from Iris’s school was terrifying. Riley kept her eyes fixed on the pavement, missing the feeling of her daughter's little hand in hers. Every passing car made her chest tight. Every shadow made her stomach drop.When she unlocked her apartment door, Ashton was sitting at the kitchen with a cup of coffee and three yellow legal pads spread out in front of him. He looked up the second she walked in. "She didn't notice a thing. She just ran into the school yard to play with her friends." Riley said quietly, dropping her keys on the counter.Ashton didn't say anything. He just stood up, walked over, and pulled her tight against his chest. Riley collapsed into him, letting out a long breath she felt like she’d been holding all morning."My lawyer, Evelyn, is already working on it," he murmured into her hair. "I sent her photos of the paper Frederick left you. She's pulling up his files right now."Before Riley could answer, Ashton's phone rang on the counter. He

Chapter 88Riley didn't remember the walk home. One moment she was standing in the dairy aisle with her heart slamming against her ribs, and the next she was fumbling her key into her apartment door, milk carton sweating in her grip.She set the groceries down and pressed both palms flat against the counter, breathing.He'd looked smaller. That was the thing she couldn't shake. Ten years he'd loomed over her, and today, he'd just looked like a tired man in an expensive coat, grasping at a life that no longer wanted him back.Her phone buzzed against the counter. Ashton."Hey," she answered, and her voice came out steadier than she expected."Surgery went well, patient's stable." She could hear him moving, a door swinging shut behind him. "You sound off. What happened?"She almost lied. Almost told him it was nothing, that she was just tired. But she'd promised herself months ago that she wouldn't do that anymore, wouldn't swallow things down just to keep the peace."I ran into Frederi

Chapter 90The words didn't make sense. The words refused to arrange themselves into anything she could understand.Excluded as the biological father.That wasn't possible. She had never been with anyone else. Not once, not for a single night, in the years she'd worn Frederick's or Ashton rings. She knew her own body, her own history, with a certainty that no lab report could touch. And yet Judge Miller was still holding the paper, and Evelyn's face had gone carefully, professionally blank in the way Riley had learned meant something had gone badly wrong.Beside her, Ashton's hand had turned to iron around hers."Your Honor." Evelyn was on her feet before Riley had even processed that she should be worried, her voice sharp enough to cut through the ringing in Riley's ears. "May counsel approach? I'd like to review the chain of custody on this sample.""Sit down, Evelyn." Frederick's lawyer, a thin man named Halloway who'd spent the last two hearings looking like he wanted to be any