All Chapters of The Billionaire’s Abandoned Wife : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

“It’s worse than I expected,” Zoe said.She had read the draft twice. Quietly. Sitting on the kitchen floor with the phone in her lap while Bianca sat beside her and did not say anything because Zoe had asked to read it and reading it required room and Bianca had learned the hard way that the most powerful thing she could give her daughter was room.Zoe handed the phone back.“He describes my hair falling out,” Zoe said. “He makes it sound like it was dramatic. It wasn’t dramatic. It just happened.” She paused. “He says you cried every day. You never cried in front of me.”“I cried in the car,” Bianca said. “On the way home from appointments.”“I know. I could tell when you’d been crying because your voice was different.” Zoe looked at the wall. “He got the timeline wrong too. He says I was diagnosed at three. I was two.”Bianca looked at her daughter.“He got it wrong,” Zoe said. “Which means he doesn’t actually know. He’s guessing from something. From a file that isn’t complete.” Sh

“The right mug,” Ethan said, “is the one with the tea in it.”“That is technically correct,” Zoe said, “and also completely wrong.”Bianca stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her daughter argue about mugs with a man who had been arrested at six fifteen this morning in a different city and the contrast between those two things was so large she had to stand still for a moment to hold both of them at once.She walked in.“What’s wrong with the mug,” she said to Zoe.“It’s the blue one. Sunday mornings are the grey one.” Zoe looked at her with complete seriousness. “You know this.”“I do know this.” Bianca went to the cupboard and took out the grey mug. She handed it to Ethan, who accepted it without comment and switched the tea across with the focused efficiency of a man who had decided this was not the hill.Zoe nodded. Satisfied. She dropped off the counter and went to check on Lily.Bianca and Ethan stood in the quiet kitchen.“You heard,” she said.“You were smiling when you wal

“Who was with him,” Ethan said.He had read the messages over her shoulder before she turned the screen. His voice was completely level and his jaw was the tight version and she had learned the difference between those two things.She called Webb directly.He answered immediately. “I was about to call you.”“Who was with Reeves outside Zoe’s school,” she said.A pause. “We’re running the footage now. The second person stayed at a distance and kept their back to the camera for most of it. Deliberately.” Webb paused. “But we have one frame. A partial. We’re running it through facial recognition.”“How long.”“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.” Another pause. “Reeves is being picked up as we speak. The bail violation is ironclad. He won’t be making any more calls tonight.” His voice was careful. “But whoever was with him is still unaccounted for.”She looked at Ethan.“They were at Zoe’s school tonight,” she said. “Someone stood outside my daughter’s school in the dark with a man who just made

“I’ve been here before,” Ethan said.He was looking at the café on Mercer Street from the pavement outside, hands in his jacket pockets, the same way he had stood outside the first time they met Marshall here, seven days ago that felt like seven months.“Different meeting,” Bianca said.“Different stakes,” he said.She looked at the door. Webb had been notified. Her lawyer had been notified. Ethan was beside her. The officers from last night were still assigned to her building and the school had two uniformed officers stationed outside who Zoe did not know about yet and would definitely ask about later.She pushed the door open.Graham Rowe was already there.He was nothing like she had built him in her head from the message. Late forties. Careful suit. The face of a man who had spent his career being the person in the room that everyone underestimated because he made it easy for them to do that.He stood when they came in. His eyes moved to Ethan and something shifted in them, recogn

“Why us specifically,” Ethan said.He was already beside her, the call on speaker between them, his voice carrying the focused calm of a man who understood that asking the right question first was more important than reacting.Director Oates was quiet for exactly one second. The kind of silence that meant the question was expected and the answer was already prepared.“Because you are the two people who came furthest into this without being connected to any of the institutions Reeves compromised,” she said. “Ms. Adeyemi has no affiliation with the inquiry, no prior relationship with any party in the investigation, and no motive beyond her daughter.” A pause. “And Mr. Harlow is the person whose name was used as the primary vehicle for everything Reeves built. Which makes him the most credible source we have for what the foundation was before it was corrupted.”Ethan looked at Bianca.She held up one finger. One question.“How do we know you’re not compromised,” she said to Oates. “Rowe