All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Abandoned Wife : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

“Who is it,” Bianca said.Rosalind did not answer immediately. She got up, went to the kitchen, came back with the coffee pot and refilled both cups like she needed something to do with her hands before she said the next thing.Bianca waited. She was good at waiting.“Three years ago,” Rosalind said, sitting back down, “when Ingrid started coming after me, there was someone inside the foundation who tried to stop it. Quietly. Moving things around so the complaints against me didn’t land. Rerouting schedules back. Small things that bought me time even though in the end it wasn’t enough.” She wrapped both hands around her cup. “I didn’t know who it was for a long time. I found out after I left.”“Who,” Bianca said again.“Grace,” Rosalind said. “Ethan’s assistant.”Bianca went still.Grace. Who had greeted them every Thursday with Zoe’s name already on her lips. Who had sat with Zoe in the corridor outside Ethan’s office reading something on her phone while Bianca was inside. Who had lo

“I heard that,” Bianca said.“Heard what,” Kemi called from the kitchen. “I dropped a spoon. Kitchens are full of spoons. It happens.”Ethan’s forehead was still against hers. She felt him almost smile before he pulled back, just slightly, enough that she could see his face. His eyes were warm in a way that had nothing composed about it, nothing managed, just open, and she was not used to being looked at like that and did not know yet whether to move toward it or away from it.She moved toward it. Just barely. Just enough that the distance between them stayed smaller than it had been before Sunday.“She’s not subtle,” Ethan said quietly.“She’s extremely subtle for Kemi.” Bianca straightened and picked up her tea from the table. Her hands were steady. She was mildly proud of that. “She once announced at a family dinner that I needed to start dating again by passing me a folded piece of paper with a man’s number on it in front of my grandmother.”Ethan looked at her. “Did you call him?

“You look like you slept for twenty minutes,” Kemi said.“Nineteen,” Bianca said, and picked up her bag.Kemi had made eggs. Bianca had eaten half of them standing at the counter because sitting down felt like something she did not have time for. Zoe was already at school, dropped early, kissed twice, told everything was fine in the voice Bianca used when everything was the opposite of fine and Zoe was old enough to know the difference and kind enough not to say so.The foundation building looked the same as it always did. Glass and quiet money and the receptionist who knew Zoe’s name. Except this morning there were two men in suits near the entrance that Bianca had not seen before and Grace was already at her desk at seven fifty-two with the expression of a woman who had been there since six.Grace looked up when Bianca walked in. Something moved through her face. Relief, maybe. Or the specific feeling of a thing finally arriving that you have been waiting for long enough to stop bel

“Give me the phone.”Ethan said it quietly. She turned the screen toward him and watched his face as he read the chyron running under his sister’s image. She watched the exact moment he understood what Ingrid had done.He did not move for three seconds. Then he set the phone face down on the table and picked up his water glass and took a slow drink and set it back down, and the control of that, the deliberate measured calm of it, told her more about what it was costing him than any reaction would have.“What is she saying,” Bianca said.“Play it,” he said.She turned the phone back over and pressed play on the link Kemi had sent. The sound was low but the restaurant was quiet enough. Ingrid’s voice came through, steady and carefully broken, the performance of a woman who had practiced this particular register.“I love my brother,” Ingrid was saying. “And it’s because I love him that I can’t stay silent while I watch someone take advantage of his position and his kindness. He has alway

“Who sent this,” Ethan said.He had ended his call the moment she showed him the message. Three words on a screen from a number neither of them recognised and the specific weight of it sitting in the car between them like something that had not decided yet what it was going to become.“I don’t know,” Bianca said.“She knows everything.” He read it again. “Which she. Ingrid. Or someone warning you about Ingrid.”“If it was warning me about Ingrid it would say she knows. Present tense, immediate. This says knows everything. That’s broader.” Bianca looked at the number. “It could be Daniel.”Ethan went quiet. Thinking. She had learned the shape of his thinking silences by now and this one was moving fast.“Daniel was at the board meeting request,” he said. “He knows about the footage. He knows about Rosalind because Ingrid told him enough to use as a weapon. If Ingrid told him about the account in my name.” He stopped.“He’s telling me she has it all,” Bianca said. “The transfers, the ac