บททั้งหมดของ I BECAME THE BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE OVERNIGHT : บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

Emily’s POV“Eleanor, are you certain you’re ready for this, because there is still time to turn this plane around before any of us have to face whatever is waiting in Naples,” I said, watching her hands tremble slightly around her teacup.She set the cup down with more steadiness than her hands had shown a moment earlier. “I have spent twenty years being certain of a lie,” she said. “I would like, just once before I die, to be certain of a truth instead, however painful it turns out to be.”Nathaniel sat across the aisle, quiet in the particular way that meant he was somewhere else entirely, replaying twenty years of birthdays and funerals and empty chairs at holiday dinners, trying to fit a living man into all of it where a dead one used to stand. I reached over and squeezed his hand, and he came back to himself slowly, like surfacing from deep water.“You’re doing the thing again,” I said gently. “Going quiet instead of telling me what you’re actually thinking.”“I’m thinking abou

Emily’s POV“He asked about you before he even asked about Eleanor, which is either the strangest thing I’ve heard all day or the most honest,” Nathaniel said, meeting us at the door with red rimmed eyes and a stillness I recognized immediately.Eleanor didn’t wait for an invitation. She walked past both of us, straight down the narrow hallway, disappearing into the back room with a steadiness that made my chest ache on her behalf. I stayed behind with Nathaniel, giving them the privacy neither of us had any right to interrupt.“How are you,” I asked quietly, watching him lean against the doorframe like it was the only thing holding him up.“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “I thought I’d feel one thing walking in there. Anger, or relief, or nothing at all. Instead I feel every single one of them at once, and I don’t know what to do with all of it.”“You don’t have to know yet,” I said. “You just have to feel it.”From down the hall, I heard Eleanor’s voice, low and unsteady, saying s

Emily’s POV“Emily, you need to come outside right now, because the demolition crew just found something buried under the old floor that nobody, not even your father, seems to be able to explain,” Chloe said, breathless, phone pressed hard against her ear.I dropped what I was doing and ran the six blocks from the temporary shop we’d been operating out of since our return from Italy, my heart pounding with a dozen different fears before I even reached the lot. The original bakery site sat behind a chain link fence now, half demolished, exposing the bones of a building that had burned down before I was old enough to remember it clearly.Walter stood at the center of it, staring down into a shallow pit the workers had dug near the old foundation, his face pale in a way that frightened me more than anything Chloe had said on the phone. “Dad,” I said, ducking under the fence, “what did they find.”He didn’t answer right away, simply pointed down into the hole, where a rusted metal box sa

Emily’s POV“You should ask Marcus who really caused this failure, before you trust him with anything else, ten words on my husband’s phone that I read over his shoulder and instantly wished I hadn’t seen,” I said, my voice tight with a fear I hadn’t expected to feel again so soon.Nathaniel had called that evening from Chicago exactly like he’d promised, and I’d caught the message notification lighting up his screen through the video call before he’d even had a chance to read it himself. “Who sent that,” I asked.“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said, frowning as he read it properly. “Unknown number. Could be anyone trying to stir up doubt right when we need to trust each other most.”“Or it could be true,” I said carefully, hating that the thought had even crossed my mind.“I know,” Nathaniel admitted. “I don’t want to believe it. But I also promised you no more managing things alone, so I’m not going to pretend this message doesn’t exist just because it’s inconvenient.”We sat with it to

Emily’s POV“There’s something else you should know about the fire, nine words on Nathaniel’s phone that made my whole chest go cold the moment he read them out loud to me over the phone that night,” I said, my voice unsteady as I paced the half finished bakery floor around me.Nathaniel had called the second he landed back in New York, exhausted from Chicago, relieved the Vanessa situation had finally resolved itself, only for one more message to arrive before he’d even made it home to me properly. “Who’s it from,” I asked.“Same unknown number as before,” he said. “I think it’s time we actually found out who’s been sending these.”Dana traced it within a day, the number belonging to a small law office in Naples, the same coastal town where Nathaniel’s father had spent his final days. It turned out the caretaker who’d first contacted us had also been quietly executing his final wishes, including, apparently, a letter he’d asked to be delivered only after his estate had properly sett