Accueil / Romance / My Billionaire Ex- Husband’s Nemesis / Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

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31. AFTER THE WORD

ELARAThe word went out and the world began to move.Helena released the board records to three newspapers and the regulator within the hour, exactly as she had promised.Lydia filed the trust documentation and the recording with people who had been waiting six years to receive them.And my father, who had spent fourteen years as a man no one could prove existed, walked out of a plain house and let himself be seen.I stayed in the apartment with my mother.When Victoria finally rose from her chair to leave, she stopped in front of me, and for a moment the two of us simply looked at each other."You will regret some of this," she said. "Power changes hands and the people who take it discover it is heavier than it looked. You will learn what I learned.""Perhaps," I replied. "But I will carry it differently than you did."She studied me a moment longer, and then something almost like respect passed across her face."Robert chose your father as a partner because he saw something in him,"

32. THE QUESTION WITH NO PLAN BEHIND IT

ELARAJulian held my hand in the quiet street and for a long moment he did not say anything at all."I have rehearsed this," he admitted. "Which is strange, because the first time I asked you to marry me, I did not rehearse a single word. I simply executed a plan that had been built for me.""I remember," I said. "There was a ring with my name already inside it.""There was," he said, and something like shame moved across his face. "I knew what that engraving meant. I knew what the symbol meant. I put both of them on your hand the way my mother taught me to handle everything, as a way of telling you that you were already owned before you had agreed to anything."I looked at him and let him say it, because I understood that he needed to name what he had been before he could offer me what he had become."That ring was the worst thing I have ever done to you," he continued. "And you wore it for months while you quietly took my entire family apart. I have never admired anyone the way I ad

33. TELLING MY FATHER

ELARAMy father was in the garden when we arrived, even though the light was already fading.He had taken to the garden the way some men take to drink, as a place to put the hours he did not know what to do with after fourteen years of having his hours decided for him.He straightened when he saw us walking up the path together, and his eyes went immediately to where Julian's hand held mine.He did not miss things. He never had. It was the trait that had built a company and the trait that had let him survive being taken, and it was the trait he had passed to me whether either of us wanted it or not."Elara," he said. "Julian.""Dad," I replied. "We need to talk to you."He set down the tool he had been holding and wiped his hands slowly on a cloth, and I recognised the gesture for what it was, a man buying himself a moment to prepare for something he had already guessed."Inside," he said. "Your mother will want to hear whatever this is, and I would rather not have it twice."We follo

34. THE QUIET THAT WAS NEVER QUIET

ELARALydia answered on the first ring, which told me she had been waiting with the phone in her hand."Tell me," I said."Victoria has been moving money," Lydia replied. "Quietly. For the past two months, since the night in the apartment. I only found it because I have been watching every account connected to her that I have access to, and I have a great deal of access now.""Moving it where," I asked."That is the part that concerns me," she said. "She is not hiding it the way a person hides money they are trying to keep. She is positioning it the way a person positions money they are about to use."Julian was driving with one hand and listening, and I put the call on speaker so he could hear."Lydia," he said. "It is Julian. How much money."There was a pause on the line, the particular pause of someone deciding whether to trust the person who had just spoken."A great deal," Lydia said finally. "Enough to rebuild something. Not the empire she had, that is gone and she knows it. Bu

35. THE FIRST MOVE

ELARAThe first move came nine days later, and it did not come the way I expected.I had spent those nine days bracing for an attack. A threat, a danger, a moment of crisis I could meet head on.Instead what came was a phone call from my father, and his voice was strange in a way I had never heard."Elara," he said. "Someone has made an offer to buy Hale Tech."I sat down slowly. "Buy it," I said. "It is not for sale.""It is not," he agreed. "But the offer has come anyway, through a holding company with no name attached to it, and the number is large enough that the smaller shareholders are asking questions I cannot easily answer."I understood at once. "Victoria," I said."I cannot prove that," my father replied. "The holding company is clean. But the offer arrived the same week Lydia found the money moving, and I do not believe in that kind of timing."I thought about Anton Reyes and the patient assembling of pieces.This was not an attack. It was a move on a board, made quietly, d

36: EIGHT FACES

ELARA I started with a list of the eight names that same night. Lydia came to the house, and Julian made coffee none of us drank, and we sat at the table with the eight shareholders written out in front of us. "One of them met with Victoria, or took her money, or owed her something," Lydia said. "People do not betray for no reason. Find the reason and you find the person." "Tell me about all eight," I said. "Everything you have." Lydia had done her work. She always had. "Harlan Voss first," she said. "No relation to me, before you ask. He speaks for the cautious shareholders. Old money, careful, the kind of man who fears loss more than he wants gain." "A man who fears loss is a man who can be frightened into selling," I said. "Note him." "Second, Priya Anand," Lydia continued. "Engineer. She holds her shares because she helped rebuild the company's systems and your father gave her equity instead of a salary she could not be paid yet. She has the least money of the eight

37: THE QUIET ONE

ELARAGreer chose a small church garden on the east side of the city, which told me something before she said a word.It was a place with no connection to money or business, the kind of place a frightened person chooses when they have run out of safe rooms.She was already there when I arrived, sitting on a stone bench with her hands folded, smaller than I remembered from the meeting."Thank you for coming," she said. "And for not telling your father.""You asked me not to," I replied. "I would like to know why."She looked at me for a long moment, and I read her the way I read everyone now, watching for the thing that did not fit."Because your father trusts me," she said. "And what I have to tell you would break that trust if it came out the wrong way."I sat down beside her and waited."Forty years ago I worked for your father when Hale Tech was new," she said. "I loved that company. I loved what he built. And when Victoria took it, I lost my place along with everyone else, and I s

38. WHO IS WATCHING

ELARAI called Greer before I called anyone else.She answered on the second ring and I could hear the fear in the single word she used to greet me."Listen carefully," I said. "Victoria knows we met. I do not know how, but she does. You may be in danger. Where are you right now.""I am home," she said. "I came straight home. Elara, how could she know. No one followed me, I checked, I always check.""I believe you," I replied. "Which is exactly the problem. If no one followed you, then the leak is not at the garden. It is somewhere closer."I told her to lock her doors and to call me if anything felt wrong and to trust no one from the company until I told her otherwise.Then I sat in my car outside the church and thought about how Victoria had known.I had told Lydia about the meeting. I had told Julian. I had spoken to Greer directly, and Greer swore she had not been followed.Four people knew about that meeting. Greer, Lydia, Julian, and me.I did not believe Greer had told Victoria

39. THE BUG WE KEPT

ELARAMy first instinct was to destroy the device.My second instinct, the one I had learned from watching Victoria, was better."We do not remove it," I said, closing my hand around it gently and setting it back exactly where we found it.Julian looked at me. "You want to leave it there.""She does not know we found it," I replied. "That is the only advantage we have left, and it is a large one. The moment we destroy it, she knows we know, and she goes quiet, and we lose the one channel where we can put information directly into her ear."Understanding moved across Julian's face. "You want to feed it," he said."She listened to us build a trap," I said. "Now we build a different one, out loud, at this table, knowing she is listening. Everything we say here from now on is a message to Victoria. We just have to make certain she never realises it is a message."It was a cold and patient kind of move, and I saw Julian recognise it as his mother's kind, and I saw him decide not to say so.

40. WHAT I AM FIGHTING TO KEEP

ELARA I did not sleep after Victoria's message, and in the morning I drove to my parents' house instead of going to the office. I did not tell Julian why. I only said I needed to see my mother, and he understood, because he had learned that some things I needed to do alone. My mother was in the kitchen when I arrived, and my father was in the garden, and for a moment I stood in the doorway and simply watched them. My mother was humming something under her breath while she worked, the way she used to before she got sick, before the years took the music out of her. My father looked up from the garden and saw her through the window and his whole face changed, the way a man's face changes when he sees the person he spent fourteen years believing he had lost. I watched the two of them exist in the same space, ordinary and safe and alive, and I felt something loosen in my chest that Victoria's message had pulled tight. This was what I was fighting to keep. Not the company. Not the tr

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