All Chapters of He married me to ruin my husband : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

They released their statement at nine that night. It stripped away the usual corporate hedging, built instead on the same instinct that had carried them through every crisis since the Q3 leak.**Damian Cole claims he was robbed of a company he helped build. The documents attached to this statement show he never actually left it. For over twenty years, he quietly funded the very business he now calls stolen, through accounts designed specifically to hide his continued involvement. A man who believes he was wronged doesn't keep secretly investing in his own supposed theft. He protects something he never stopped controlling.**Three financial documents accompanied the statement, enough to raise serious questions without revealing every card Denise still held in reserve for the courtroom.By midnight, the story had split the internet cleanly in two. ‘Did Robert Cross Steal His Partner's Company? New Documents Complicate Damian Cole's Claims.’‘Convenient Timing: Cross Family Releases "Evi

Xavier waited by the stage door when the segment finally ended, clearly abandoning the green room the moment the broadcast cut away."Tell me it's not true," Ivy said, before he'd even reached her."I honestly didn't know." Xavier's voice wasn't smooth. "My father mentioned your family's land once, years before our engagement, and called it a smart long-term hold. I never connected that to the marriage itself. I was nineteen, Ivy. I thought he liked you. I never once thought I was being positioned.""You sound so certain.""Whatever my father actually did behind the scenes, I wasn't part of that. I was just a kid who thought his father had finally approved of something I wanted for myself." His hands found her shoulders, softly despite the tremor in his voice. "I need you to believe that, even if it's going to be difficult right now."Ivy stared at his face, searching for anything that didn't match the plain fear and honesty sitting there."I believe you," she said finally. "I don't t

Xavier was already on his feet, the ring box snapped shut and shoved into his jacket pocket, when Ivy caught his sleeve."Wait, before you run out the door, call Ruiz. Don't drive out there blind.""Theo's already patching him in." Xavier put the phone on speaker, his thumb hovering over the screen as if he might still cut the call and go. "Ruiz, talk to me.""I'm four minutes from the gate." Ruiz's voice came through with road noise behind it. "Give me ten before anyone else moves. If there's a person in that house, I want eyes on the doors first."Ten minutes took an hour to pass. Ivy washed the onion off her hands, dried them, and washed them again. Xavier stood at the window without speaking, and every few seconds his thumb pressed the edge of the phone, checking a screen that hadn't changed.Ruiz called back at nine-forty."It's empty," he said. "The lights are on a timer. Same with the radio in the front room. The car in the drive is a rental, parked there this afternoon, engine

Richard had pressed a shoebox into her hands before she left his house, tied shut with kitchen string. "Her things," he'd said. "I couldn't throw them out, and I couldn't look at them. You should have them."Ivy didn't open it until after midnight. She sat on the floor of the spare room, with her back against the bed and the box between her knees.Inside were a dozen birthday cards, a hairbrush with a few dark strands still caught in the bristles, a ticket stub from a play, and an index card in blue ink. ‘Eleanor's lemon cake. Burn the edges AGAIN, less sugar next time.’She read the card three times. She had no memory of the cake or the person who had written the note. Ivy set the card on her knee and pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth until the sound that wanted to come out of her went back down.She did not cry for long. Somewhere in the second minute, the grief turned into something with edges, and the anger arrived all at once. She reached up to the desk, dragged d

Ivy sat. She chose the chair with its back to the glass so the lake was behind her and Damian's face was in full light, and she did not touch the cup.Her right hand went into her coat pocket as if to warm it. Her thumb found the side of the phone and pressed twice, the way she had practised in the car at a red light, not looking down."I see you laid the trail," she said.Damian lifted his cup with both hands and sipped. "I did expect to wait so long before someone discovered that. You took one night. I'd budgeted for a month.""Why would you want me here?""Finding me was never the point. Anyone can be found." He set the cup down, and the saucer rattled once against the porcelain. "I wanted you to come."Ivy let the silence sit. "You told me in the café that this was never about me," she said. "Then my father told me what you said to him in that shed. So I'd like the other version now.""That's fair." He folded his hands. "I met your mother at a gala. I was forty-two and had stoppe