All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

Ellie’s POV “The lab called twice this morning, Ellie, and both times I let it go to voicemail because I was too afraid to hear the answer alone.” Preston’s hands trembled slightly around his coffee cup as he said it, sitting across from me at the small table in the corner of the bakery, the one beneath Walter’s photograph. I had invited him myself, three weeks after the board hearing, once the dust had finally settled enough for quiet conversation to feel possible again. Nathan had offered to come, but I had asked to do this part alone, woman to man, family to family, without the weight of company business sitting between us. The bakery was quiet that morning, the early rush already finished, sunlight slanting warm through the front windows and across Walter’s photograph on the wall behind us. Preston had arrived early, sitting alone at the small table for nearly ten minutes before I came down, according to Rose, staring up at the photograph like he was trying to memorize every det

Ellie's POV "Do not open it yet," Rose said from the doorway, her voice shaking in a way I had never heard before. "Not until I tell you what your grandfather never let me finish telling you." The key fit the lock on the first try, which somehow made the moment feel heavier, like the box had been waiting exactly for us and no one else. Nathan's hand stayed steady on my shoulder while Lily pressed close against Preston's side, and Rose stood very still, her fingers pressed to her mouth. For a moment nobody in that kitchen moved at all, as though breathing too loudly might undo whatever we were about to find. "Rose," Nathan said gently, "you do not have to explain anything before we look. We can wait." "No," Rose said, shaking her head slowly. "I have waited long enough. Sixty years is long enough for anyone." Inside was not treasure, not in the way Lily had hoped. It was a stack of letters tied together with faded ribbon, a woman's handwriting on the top envelope, and beneath that,

Ellie's POV "I think part of me is afraid to keep reading," I admitted to Nathan, the second envelope trembling slightly in my hands, "because what if it changes how I feel about us." Rose had finally told us who the envelope belonged to, a name that meant nothing to us but clearly meant everything to her. Her sister. A twin sister named Margaret, given up during a time Rose refused to speak about for years, a secret buried so deep that even Preston's arrival had not been enough to shake it loose until now. She had gone quiet after saying the name, retreating upstairs to sit alone with whatever memory it had opened back up. "You do not have to open it tonight," Nathan said gently, sitting beside me on the porch steps where so many of our hardest conversations had happened before, the wood worn smooth from years of exactly this kind of waiting. "I know," I said. "But I think I need to. If I put it down now, I do not think I will ever pick it back up." I broke the seal slowly, my ha

Nathan's POV "I have a daughter I have not spoken to in eleven years, Nathan, and finding this family has made me realize I am done running out of time with the people I love," Preston said quietly, staring into his coffee like it might offer him courage. I had come to check on him after the hospital scare with Ellie, half expecting to find him still shaken from the inheritance claim Vanessa's father was preparing. Instead I found him sitting alone at his kitchen table, an old photograph propped against a stack of unopened mail, a young woman's smiling face staring back at both of us, faded slightly at the edges the way photographs get when they are handled too often in private. "I did not know you had a daughter," I said carefully, sitting down across from him. "Her name is Claire," Preston said. "We had a falling out after her mother passed away. I said things I should not have said, about her choices, about the man she chose to marry. She stopped answering my calls, and I let to

Nathan's POV "I read the article, and I have spent sixty two years wondering if my sister ever thought about me the way I have thought about her every single day since we were separated," Margaret said, her voice trembling through the phone speaker, filling the quiet kitchen where Ellie, Rose, and I sat frozen around the table. Rose had not said a single word since Ellie had put the call on speaker. She simply stared at the phone like it might disappear if she looked away for even a second, tears sliding silently down her face, her hand pressed flat against her chest as though trying to hold something inside it steady. "Rose," Ellie said gently, "do you want to say something." Rose's voice, when it finally came, was barely above a whisper. "Margaret," she said. "I have missed you my whole life without even knowing your name. I did not know I was allowed to miss someone I never remembered meeting, but I did. I always did." The sound that came from the phone was somewhere between a