บททั้งหมดของ I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT : บทที่ 171 - บทที่ 180

Emily's POV"They found something else." Five words, and every warm thing about that terrace in Italy went cold in the space of a single breath. I could not make myself ask what.Nathaniel took the phone gently from my hand when my fingers would not stop shaking, and put it on speaker so we could both hear the investigator's voice, tired and careful, the voice of a man who had spent thirty years reading other people's worst days out loud."Mrs. Whitfield, I would rather tell you this in person, but I understand you are overseas." A pause. Paper shuffling somewhere far away. "The fire that destroyed the original bakery was not an accident. We always suspected it, but we have the lab results now. Someone set it deliberately."I sat down hard on the stone bench, the evening air suddenly too thin to breathe properly. "Deliberately," I repeated, like saying the word slower would make it make more sense."There is something else," the investigator said, and I heard Nathaniel's hand tighten

Emily's POV"Dad. Look at me. What is the one more thing you never told me." My father's hands stopped moving over the dough for the first time in thirty years of watching him bake, and that stillness frightened me more than any words could have.We had flown home from Italy two days after the phone call, and I had gone straight to the bakery before I had even fully unpacked, because some part of me needed flour under my nails and the smell of butter in the air before I could face one more piece of my mother's hidden history.Walter set down his rolling pin slowly, his eyes fixed on the counter instead of on me. "Marcus called me this morning," he said. "Told me what they are looking for. Emily, I think I need to sit down for this conversation."We sat together at the small table in the back office where he had once handed me the folder that started this entire impossible year, and for a long moment neither of us said anything at all."I knew your mother went away for a few months, th

Emily's POV"Read it back to me one more time before we seal it, because if I get this wrong I do not think I will forgive myself for the rest of my life." My hands would not stop shaking as I held the single page we had spent four hours writing.Nathaniel sat across from me at the small desk in our hotel room the night before our flight to Chicago, patient in a way that still occasionally surprised me, this man who used to schedule his emotions like line items on a quarterly report now content to sit quietly while I rewrote a letter to a stranger for the ninth time."My name is Emily Hart," I read aloud, my voice unsteady. "I recently learned that my mother, who passed away when I was fourteen, may have given birth to a child before I was born, a child whose adoption record matches information connecting to your name. I am not writing to disrupt your life. I am writing because I have spent my whole life believing I was an only child, and I would like the chance to know if that was ev

Emily's POV"That is his building, the one with the blue awning, I have looked at that address so many times tonight I can see it when I close my eyes." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to, standing on a Chicago sidewalk at seven in the morning with a letter in my coat pocket and my whole chest full of nerves.We had landed two hours earlier, exhausted, wired on airport coffee and adrenaline, Vanessa's forty eight hour favor ticking down somewhere behind us like a clock we could not see but could absolutely feel. Nathaniel stood beside me on the sidewalk, his hand resting lightly at the small of my back, not pushing, just present, exactly the kind of steady I had needed for longer than I had let myself admit."We do not have to do this the second he opens the door," Nathaniel said quietly. "We can introduce ourselves. Hand him the letter. Leave. Whatever he needs.""I know," I said, though my feet would not move yet. "I just keep thinking about what Sofia said. About knocking

Emily's POV"Dad, before you say anything, I need you to sit down, because I do not think either of us is ready to have this conversation standing up." My father's hands went still against the bakery counter for the second time in two weeks, and I hated that I kept having to say those words to the people I loved most.We had flown home from Chicago with Daniel's cautious agreement to visit Brooklyn the following week, no promises beyond that, no grand reunion, just a door left open a careful, deliberate crack. I had spent the whole flight rehearsing how to tell my father that the woman he had loved for over a decade had carried a secret even bigger than the one he had spent years apologizing for.Walter sat down slowly across from me in the bakery's back office, his face already bracing for something. "You found her," he said. "Marcus told me you were looking. Did you find her, Emily.""Him," I said gently. "I found him. His name is Daniel. He is thirty seven years old, an engineer, a