All Chapters of RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Hazel's POV“There is one more thing I have been keeping from you,” I said softly, watching Julian’s face shift instantly from calm to alert, bracing for a secret the way our family always seemed to.It was a full year after the gala, the garden behind our home blooming warm and golden in early summer, Grace chasing butterflies across the grass while Julian and I sat together on the porch we had claimed as our own quiet corner of the world.“Hazel,” he said carefully, setting down his coffee. “After everything we have survived this past year, please tell me it is a good secret.”I laughed, reaching for his hand and pressing it gently against my stomach, watching realization dawn slowly across his features.“We are having another baby,” I said softly, tears already gathering as his expression cracked wide open into something I had rarely seen from him, pure, uncomplicated joy without a single shadow of debt or duty behind it.“Hazel,” he breathed, pulling me into his arms so quickly Gr

Hazel's POV"He has been watching this house for six months," Diane said, and my hand instinctively went to the window facing the garden where Grace played every morning, as though I could feel a stranger's eyes still lingering somewhere among the hedges.We sat in the study long after Diane had gone, the leather folder now open across Julian's desk, its photographs and papers scattered like fragments of a life we never knew existed, each one a small, quiet accusation against everything we had believed about the family we had built."Six months," Julian repeated, staring at a second photograph, this one recent, showing a man in an expensive suit standing outside our foundation's downtown office. "How did I never notice him.""Because he did not want you to," I said quietly, though the words felt thin against the size of what they were meant to comfort.Marcus arrived within the hour, his tie loosened, his expression grim as he studied the documents Diane had left behind, flipping thro

Hazel's POV"She did not die in an accident," Vivian said quietly, and the words landed in the room like something shattering that could never be gathered whole again, the sound of it echoing long after her voice had fallen silent.We had driven straight from the restaurant to the foundation, finding Vivian exactly where she always was these days, sleeves rolled up, surrounded by scholarship files for girls she had never met but somehow understood completely, the fluorescent office lights humming softly overhead.Julian's face had gone pale the moment I repeated Adrian's words, and now, watching Vivian's own composure crack slightly, I understood why, the two siblings mirroring each other's grief in a way that made my chest ache."What do you mean," Julian asked carefully. "My mother died of heart failure. The doctors confirmed it. I was twelve years old. I remember the hospital.""You remember what Gerald allowed you to remember," Vivian said, setting down the folder in her hands wit

Hazel's POV"Do not touch it," Julian said sharply, stepping in front of Grace before she could reach for the small unmarked box waiting innocently on our porch, his arm sweeping her back with a protectiveness that startled even me.Marcus's security team arrived within the hour, treating our own front steps like a crime scene while I sat inside clutching Grace against me, my heart still racing from the hospital only two days behind us, watching through the window as gloved hands carefully examined the box."It is not a threat," the officer finally announced, carrying the opened box carefully into the study. "It is a letter. And a photograph."Julian's hands trembled slightly as he lifted the photograph first, and I watched his expression shift from wary suspicion into something far more complicated as he studied the faded image, his brow furrowing with a confusion that slowly softened into something else entirely."What is it," I asked, moving closer despite the doctor's orders still

Hazel's POV"Julian Daniel's Hidden Brother, His Sister's Secret Crime," the headline screamed across every screen in our kitchen by seven the next morning, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor before I had even finished reading the first line.Julian stood frozen at the counter, coffee forgotten entirely, scrolling through an article that laid bare nearly everything we had spent weeks trying to protect, his knuckles white against the edge of the counter."How," he said quietly. "We had not released our statement yet. Marcus said we had time.""Someone leaked it first," I said, my hands trembling as I read further down the article, searching for the source of information only a handful of people could possibly have known, the words blurring slightly as panic tightened around my chest.The byline belonged to a journalist named Sophie Vance, and buried near the bottom of the article was a single quoted source described only as "a woman close to the family," the vague phrase