All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Abandoned Wife : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

“You look exactly like yourself,” Kemi said.She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom in the house that was now theirs, the one that had been waiting, and she was holding Bianca’s hand the way she had held it in hospital corridors and restaurant car parks and kitchen floors and every place the floor had gone unsteady.“That’s what I was going for,” Bianca said.She was wearing the dress she had chosen in November. Simple. Dark green, not white, because she was not performing anyone’s idea of a wedding, she was marrying a specific man in a specific kitchen with the twelve most important people in her life and the bread his mother had made every Sunday and her father’s frame on the wall and she was going to wear the colour she actually liked.“He’s going to lose his mind,” Kemi said.“I hope not. I need him functional for the vows.”Kemi laughed. Then stopped laughing because she was doing the face again and had promised herself she would save it until after the ceremony.Zoe came

“He was my uncle,” Emmanuel Adeyemi said.She was still standing in the kitchen. Ethan had read her face in the first second and was close, not touching, just available, which was exactly what she needed.“His brother was my father,” Emmanuel said. “My father is eighty-one. He has been looking for Thomas’s family for fifteen years. He did not know Thomas had children until the commission announcement this morning.” A pause. “When he saw the name Adeyemi on the framework he asked me to call.”She put the phone on speaker without asking Ethan’s permission because they were past the point where either of them needed permission for anything.“Are you still there,” Emmanuel said.“Yes,” she said. “I’m here. My husband is with me.”Ethan looked at her when she said husband. Not surprised. Just the warmth of it landing.“Your grandfather,” Emmanuel said, “Thomas’s father, came from Lagos in 1968. He brought both his sons. Your father stayed in London. My father came back.” He paused. “We hav

“He said it belonged to my father,” Bianca said.Ethan had put the bread dough down. They were both looking at Zoe in the kitchen doorway and Zoe was looking back with the patient expression of someone who had been carrying this since last night and was relieved to hand it over.“He said he found it when he was clearing out his mother’s house,” Zoe said. “His mother knew your father. They were part of the same community in London in the seventies.” She paused. “He said he found a box. With your father’s name on it.”Bianca was very still.“Did he say what was in it,” she said.“He said he didn’t open it.” Zoe looked at her directly. “He said it wasn’t his to open. He said he’s been holding it for six months trying to figure out how to give it to you without it being about him.” She paused. “He said he knows he doesn’t have the right to do you any favours. But the box isn’t his. And he wants to do this right.”Bianca looked at the kitchen. At the bread dough on the counter. At Ethan be

“He’s crying,” Emmanuel said.She could hear it through the phone. In the background. An old man, eighty-one years old, who had spent thirty years asking about a box and had just been told it was found.“Tell him everything is here,” she said. “The notebook. The photographs. The working notes. The card.” She paused. “Tell him Thomas left something that found its way to the right place.”A long pause while Emmanuel relayed it. Then the background sound changed. The old man’s voice came closer to the phone, not for her but Emmanuel reported what he said: He says Thomas always knew. He says Thomas told him before he died that the important things find the right people eventually. He says he’s glad it only took forty-five years.She almost laughed.“Tell him it took exactly the right amount of time,” she said.Another pause. Then Emmanuel: “He wants to speak to you. He doesn’t have much English but he wants to try.”She sat very still.She looked at Ethan. He nodded once. Whatever you nee

“Are you ready for that,” Ethan read.He had leaned across to read the message. They were still at the kitchen table with their hands together and the question on the screen between them.“Yes,” she said. Without hesitation.He looked at her.“That was fast,” he said.“Six months ago it would have taken me twenty minutes and a conversation with Kemi.” She looked at the phone. “I’ve been building toward visible for a long time. I’m not going to flinch when it arrives.”She typed to Oates: Yes. Send me what you need.Oates replied in four minutes with a list. Photograph. Short biography. A statement from her about what the framework meant. A separate statement from the Harlow Foundation confirming the connection to the foundation’s original programme.She looked at the list.“The photograph,” she said.Ethan looked at it. “They want a professional one. Or one that reads as professional.”“I want Thomas in it,” she said.He went quiet.“Not a combined image,” she said. “Two photographs.