All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Wife Revenge Plot : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The street was quiet in the way only residential streets in the middle of a weekday afternoon can be, just the occasional car passing, a jogger, a woman walking a dog too big for her frame. I'd parked across from the brownstone the old neighbour had mentioned, engine off, sunglasses on, doing my best impression of a woman who had every right to be sitting there.I didn't, of course. I had no right to any of this. I had a lie sitting in my chest and an hour I'd stolen from my own husband's trust, and I told myself, over and over, that it would be worth it.*Just a glimpse,* I thought, watching the front door as it might open through sheer force of will. *That's all I need. Just to see her face again.*The dashboard clock ticked past one. Then one thirty. My coffee had gone cold in the cupholder, untouched, and my hands had started to ache from how tightly I'd been gripping the steering wheel without noticing.Nothing.No stroller on the front steps. No small shape in the window. No sig

James called on a Tuesday, his voice carrying an excitement I hadn't heard from him before, warm and slightly nervous in a way that made him sound years younger than he was."There's a gala Friday evening," he said. "The Charitable Foundation's annual event. I want you and Alexander to come with me, if you're willing. I know it's short notice.""What kind of gala?""The kind where half of New York's business world gathers to donate money and network shamelessly while pretending it's entirely about the charity involved." I could hear the wry humour in his voice, the particular self-deprecation of a man who'd clearly attended more of these events than he could properly count. "I'd like to introduce you properly, Lily. To people who matter, to my colleagues, my friends. I've spent twenty-six years unable to speak your name to anyone at all. I'd like the chance to say it out loud, in a room full of people, for once."Something in that request landed with unexpected weight."I'd like that,

The board vote came back unanimous, three days after that difficult meeting, and I stood in front of Wood Industries' entire senior leadership team as their newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, still faintly disbelieving that any of this had actually become my reality. Marcus Whitfield had been the first to shake my hand afterward, his earlier caution replaced entirely by something that looked, unmistakably, like genuine respect.James hugged me the moment the formal announcement concluded, tears streaming freely down his face."Your mother would be so proud," he whispered, holding me tight enough that I felt the words land somewhere deep in my chest. "I only wish she could have been here to see this herself.""She is," I told him, surprising myself with the certainty in my own voice. "In every part of this company she helped build. I intend to honour that properly."---The first weeks proved harder than I'd fully prepared myself for.I no longer worked beside Alexander, our shar

I sat in my office late one evening, the building mostly empty around me, and finally allowed myself to consider something I'd been quietly turning over for weeks now. I had resources now. Real ones, an entire company at my disposal, a security division with capabilities far beyond anything I could have accessed as Alexander's secretary, budget lines I could allocate without needing anyone's permission but my own. The particular authority I'd spent months growing into, still uncertain and unfamiliar most days, suddenly felt like something I could actually put to use for the one piece of my life that remained stubbornly, painfully unresolved. I could find my daughter properly. Not through desperate stakeouts outside a market, not through chance encounters with people who no longer recognised my face, but through the same kind of careful, methodical investigation that had eventually found me in that isolated house. I pulled up the internal directory and found the name I was looking

I hadn't told Alexander everything.Sitting in his office that difficult afternoon, finally breaking the silence I'd maintained for weeks, I'd found myself constructing the same careful lie I'd been telling everyone since the moment I woke up in this borrowed body, that Alena wasn't mine by blood, that she belonged to a close friend who'd died shortly after giving birth, a woman who'd asked me, in her final days, to watch over her daughter if anything ever happened to her.*I promised her,* I'd told him, my voice steady despite the particular ache of building yet another careful fiction on top of everything else I'd already confessed. *I promised Eleanor I would make sure Alena was safe, that Julian actually cared for her the way a father should. I couldn't tell you the truth of how deeply that promise mattered to me without explaining things I still don't know how to say out loud properly.*He'd believed it completely. Of course he had, it was, in its own strange way, close enough to