All Chapters of My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Elena's POV Days had passed since the interview, and Sandra Okafor had not answered a single call. It had not worried me at first. Journalists were busy, I told myself, especially ones working on something as carefully sourced as this story had to be. She had probably gone quiet to fact check, to lawyer up the language, to do whatever careful, invisible work happened in the space between recording an interview and actually publishing it. By the third day, the silence had started to feel different. "She has never gone this long without responding," I said to Alexander, sitting at the kitchen table with my phone in front of me, Sandra's name sitting unanswered in three separate text threads. "Not once, in all the weeks we have been talking. Even when she was busy, she always sent something. Even just a quick line saying she would call later." "I noticed too," he said. His voice was carefully even, the particular evenness he used when he did not want to alarm me before he had

Elena's POV Grace Chen found a way to publish the story within two days, and the speed of it, once she decided to move, left almost no room to breathe between deciding and doing. "Sandra recorded everything properly," Grace explained, sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open, Patricia joining by video call from her own office. "The interview, the sourcing, the document verification. All of it exists independently of her ability to personally publish it. Her editor, once we explained the full situation, agreed that running the story now, properly attributed to her work, was both the right thing to do journalistically and the safest thing to do for her recovery. A story this significant sitting unpublished, with its author silenced, attracts exactly the wrong kind of attention if anyone ever traces the accident back to its actual cause." "Will it put her in more danger?" I asked. "Publishing it without her even being able to consent to the timing?" "We spoke with her direc

Elena's POV Dr. Nwachukwu's voice was the first thing that managed to fully cut through the fog of fear once the initial flurry of tests and monitoring had settled into something calmer. "The baby's heartbeat is strong," she said, and I felt the words land somewhere deep in my chest before I had even fully processed the rest of the sentence. "Everything on the monitor looks healthy. She is not in distress." I let out a breath I felt like I had been holding for the better part of an hour. Tears coming fast and unstoppable, relief so total it briefly stole whatever strength I had left to hold myself together. Alexander, sitting beside the bed, his hand still wrapped tightly around mine, exhaled at almost the exact same moment. His shoulders dropping in a way I had never once seen from him, the careful, composed stillness he carried through almost everything finally cracking open completely. "Then what happened?" he asked, his voice rough. "Why the cramping, the dizziness, al

Elena's POV I showed Alexander the photograph that same evening. He did not say anything at first. He just stood in the kitchen with the picture in his hands, staring at the second row of boys, his jaw tight. "You saw this man outside the bakery," he said. "Three days ago. I thought I was imagining it." "Describe him." "Mid-forties, maybe. Average height. He was wearing a dark jacket. He was smoking." I paused. "It was the stillness that caught me. He stood the way you stand when you are watching something, not waiting for something." Alexander set the photograph on the counter very carefully, the way a person sets something down when they are trying not to react. "I need to send this to Marcus tonight," he said. "Okay." "Elena." He looked up at me. "You were right to trust the feeling. You should always trust that feeling." "I know," I said. "I just did not want to be the person who sees danger in everything." "That is not what you are doing," he said. "That is not who y

Damien's POV I got the call on a Tuesday. Not from Pavel. Not from my lawyers. From a number I did not recognize, which I should not have answered, and which I answered anyway because something in me already knew who it was. "They have a name," the masked voice said. No greeting. No preamble. My chest tightened. "What name?" "Victor Rowe. St. James's people identified him yesterday. They are running a full trace on his finances as we speak." I said nothing for a moment. The name meant nothing to me. But the fact that the figure knew exactly what St. James's security team was doing, in real time, meant something very significant. "How do you know what his team is running?" I asked. A pause. The deliberate kind. "That is not your concern," the voice said. "It absolutely is my concern," I said. "If you have a source inside his operation—" "I said it is not your concern." The flatness of it stopped me cold. There was something different tonight. Less of the careful, patient c