Lahat ng Kabanata ng I Left Broken and Fat, I Came Back His Boss With Triplets: Kabanata 31 - Kabanata 40

Emma's POVI do not send it.Not because I am afraid of her.But because sending it would be the first thing I have done in two years that Talia Sinclair got to make me do, and if I press that button tonight, at eleven forty-two on this Friday, while my hands are still cold from the pavement outside my building and my head is still full of Julian's I can wait and my chest is still tight from watching my ex-husband smile his way through a lie in the middle of my dinner, then she wins. Not the war, just this one moment. And she has been winning small moments for two years already, and I am tired of it.I set the phone face down on the kitchen table.Adèle watches me do it.She does not ask what the message said. She does not ask who I was about to send it to. She stands up, walks to the kettle, pours hot water into a fresh cup, drops a teabag into it, and slides the cup across the counter to me without a word."Drink," she says quietly. "Then talk. Or don't. Either is fine."I wrap both

Liam's POVI do not leave the hotel room for thirty-six hours.Not because I have decided not to, but because every time I put my hand on the door I think about walking out of it and then I think about where I would go, and there is no answer to that question that is not either back to her building, back to the restaurant, or into a bar to drink myself into a version of the day that I will regret tomorrow.So I sit on the edge of the bed instead. I order room service I do not eat. I stand at the window and I watch Paris be the weekend it currently is, and I think about the fact that I have not been alone in a room for this many hours in fifteen years.I have always been on the move and always kept myself busy.That is one of the things I understand about myself this weekend, sitting on the edge of a hotel bed at the George V without the buffer of Talia or the office or Marcus or a calendar with someone else's problems on it. I have kept myself busy for fifteen years because being still

Emma's POVI tell him.Not everything all at once, because everything all at once is not a story, it is a collapse, and I have spent two years turning what happened to me into a story that I can carry rather than a collapse that carries me.So I tell it the way I have learned to tell things when they matter, which is slowly, in order, with the exact weight each part deserves and no more.I tell him about the marriage.Not the marriage as it looked from the outside, which was a young CEO and his quiet wife at charity dinners in Los Angeles, but the marriage as it actually was, which was fourteen months of a man who barely looked at me while I stood beside him in rooms that had been built for him and slightly behind him in the specific way certain wives learn to stand when they understand they are not the reason the room exists.I tell him about the Harrington Gala. The dress that would not zip. The black dress I wore instead. The two women behind the pillar and what they said. The car r

Emma's POVBy Thursday afternoon the addendum is ready.Bertrand brings it into my office himself, which he does when something is not routine, and he closes the door behind him before he sits down.“You’ve read it?” he asks.“Twice.”“And?”I look at the document on my desk.Carson Holdings’ revised terms are not generous in a performative way. They are precise. They address every objection our board raised. They give Bellamy Inc leverage in three areas we did not expect to gain leverage. They concede a revenue split that would have been unthinkable six months ago.It is not desperation.It is intention.“He rewrote it himself,” I say.Bertrand nods. “Helena confirmed that.”I lean back in my chair.The office is quiet except for the low hum of the city through the windows and the faint sound of Noémie’s keyboard outside the door.“He is not trying to win,” I say slowly. “He is trying to show me he understands.”“Yes.”“That makes it more dangerous.”Bertrand’s mouth curves, not into

Liam's POVJulian Beaumont's office is small.That is the first thing I notice when I walk in, and it is not what I expected. I have spent the past two days constructing this man in my head as someone who occupies the kind of space I occupy, glass and steel and the quiet arrogance of a corner office on the top floor of a building he owns, and instead I am standing in a third-floor office on Rue de Miromesnil that smells faintly of old wood and coffee, with photographs of his family's factory on the walls and stacks of fabric samples on a table by the window.He does not stand up when I come in.That is the second thing I notice.Every man I have ever met in a professional context has stood when I entered a room. Julian Beaumont does not. He looks up from his desk, he acknowledges me with a small polite nod, and he gestures to the chair opposite him, and he waits.I sit."Mr. Beaumont.""Mr. Carson.""Thank you for seeing me.""You said it did not concern our businesses. I was curious w