บททั้งหมดของ I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT : บทที่ 161 - บทที่ 170

Nathaniel's POV"You had no right to go behind my back," I said to Marcus the moment Emily stepped outside to take the call alone, my voice low and dangerous in the way that used to make grown board members go quiet in a room. "Not with something this fragile."Marcus did not flinch, which surprised me almost as much as the confession itself had. "I know," he said. "I made the calls anyway, because I owed her that much, and because I owed you more than I have ever admitted out loud. You want to be angry with me, Nathaniel, fine. Be angry after we finish fixing what our family broke."I studied him for a long moment, trying to decide whether I was looking at the same cousin who had spent the last several months trying to strip the company out from under me, or someone new entirely, forged overnight by thirty years of buried cruelty finally cracking open in front of him too. "Why," I asked simply. "After everything, why help her now.""Because I have a mother too," Marcus said, quieter

Nathaniel's POV"You have not slept," I said to Emily as the car wound slowly through the hills toward the old church, dawn light barely breaking over the ridgeline, her hands folded so tightly in her lap the knuckles had gone pale."I could not," she admitted. "Every time I closed my eyes I kept imagining what Sofia is going to look like. Whether she will have my mother's laugh. Whether she will look at me and see her instead of me."I reached over and covered her hands with mine, feeling the tension in them slowly ease under my palm. "Whatever she sees," I said, "she is about to meet the woman your mother actually raised. That is not nothing, Emily. That might be the whole point of this trip."She turned to look out the window, watching the hills roll past in the pale early light, terraced groves and stone farmhouses that looked as though they had not changed in a hundred years. "Do you think it is strange," she asked quietly, "that some part of me is almost afraid of liking her. As

Nathaniel's POV"My darling girl, if you are reading this, it means the truth finally found its way to you, and I am so sorry it did not come from me first," Emily read aloud, her voice breaking on nearly every word, and I felt something tighten hard in my own chest listening to a dead woman speak through her daughter for the first time.Emily read slowly, carefully, the church around us utterly silent except for her voice and the distant sound of wind moving through the broken roof above. Her mother had written of the first fire, the second fire, the years of running, the decision to finally stop somewhere small enough that no one would think to look, a bakery in Brooklyn, a good man named Walter who never once asked more questions than she was ready to answer. She wrote of choosing silence not out of shame, but out of a fierce, exhausted determination to give her daughter one single childhood untouched by fire."There were nights I almost told you everything," Emily read, pausing to

Nathaniel's POV"All of it," Emily said into the phone, her voice trembling but sure, and I watched her brace herself for whatever grief or anger her father might finally let himself feel after thirty years of quiet questions he had never asked out loud.We had moved out onto Julian's small stone patio to give her privacy, though I stayed close enough to catch her if she needed me, the way I had promised myself I would every day since that chapel two days ago. "Dad," she said again, softer now. "I am so sorry you found out this way. I wanted to tell you myself. I did not move fast enough."There was a long pause on the line before Walter's voice came through again, and even from a few feet away I could hear the strange, unexpected calm underneath it. "Emily," he said, "I need to tell you something I have never told another living soul, not even your mother knew I suspected it."Emily went very still, her eyes finding mine across the small patio. "What is it, Dad.""The night before sh

Nathaniel's POV"Do you regret any of it," Emily asked me quietly, the two of us finally alone on the small terrace of the farmhouse we had barely slept in since arriving, the whole impossible weekend finally, gently, beginning to settle."Not one second of it," I said, pulling her against my side as the sun dropped low over the hills, painting everything gold in a way that felt almost too gentle after three days this heavy. "I would fly to Italy again tomorrow if it meant watching you find your aunt, your mother's letter, your own courage in that press room today. None of that was easy, Emily. All of it was worth it."She rested her head against my shoulder, quiet for a long moment, and I let the silence stretch, having learned over two years that some of our best conversations happened in the space between words rather than inside them. "I keep thinking about what Sofia said," she finally murmured. "That this is only the beginning. I do not know if I am ready for whatever that means