All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Nathan's POV"You are certain," Sophie said, sliding a folder across the table with the careful precision of a woman used to handling things that could destroy people. "Because once I open this, we cannot pretend we did not see it."I looked at Ellie across the small conference room table, Margaret asleep in the bassinet beside her, and felt the same tightening in my chest I used to feel walking into board meetings with Gerald sitting at the head of the table, watching me for any sign of weakness he could use later."Open it," Ellie said.Sophie had spent two days quietly pulling records, birth certificates, old adoption paperwork, anything that existed in the public system from fifty years ago, moving carefully so nothing would trace back to a firm and raise questions before we were ready to ask them ourselves. It was slower than I wanted, and twice I had reached for my phone to call in a favor from the private investigator the company used for background checks before I stopped myse

Nathan's POV"Someone is out there," Lily whispered from the top of the stairs, her voice shaking in a way that pulled every one of us out of our chairs at once, hearts pounding before anyone had even reached the window.It was almost midnight. Ellie had Margaret pressed against her shoulder, Rose stood frozen by the tin box still open on the table, and Claire had not moved from the spot where the second text message had landed like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples out into every corner of the room. Nobody spoke as we moved toward the front of the bakery, the old floorboards creaking under our combined weight in a way that suddenly sounded very loud.I reached the front window first, easing the curtain back just enough to see the street below without exposing all of us to whoever was out there. A car sat parked across from the bakery, engine off, headlights dark, a single figure leaning against the driver's door with his hands in his coat pockets, watching the buildin

Ellie's POV “Claire,” Nathan said quietly, before anyone else could speak, “look at me before you answer her. Whatever that letter says, it does not change who you are to this family.” Rose unfolded the second letter with the same trembling hands that had held the first one, and I watched her face change before she had even read a single line, because she recognized the handwriting before any of us did. “That is Walter,” she whispered. “That is your grandfather's hand, Ellie. I would know it anywhere.” The room went so quiet I could hear Margaret's small breaths against my shoulder, and I felt Nathan's hand find mine under the table without either of us saying a word about it. “Read it,” Claire said softly. “Please, Rose. If it is about my mother, I want to hear it from you.” Rose's eyes moved across the page, and something in her expression cracked halfway through, grief sliding into something sharper, something closer to disbelief. “Margaret,” she read aloud, her voice thin, “

Ellie's POV “Do not,” I said, my voice shaking with something I could not name yet, “tell me it does not matter what she remembers, Nathan. Tell me the truth instead.” He set the phone down on Rose's desk like it had burned him, and for one terrible second I watched him search for the right words the way he used to search for them in the very first weeks of our marriage, back when he still thought careful silence was kinder than honesty. “It does not matter,” he said. “Whatever she thinks she remembers, it does not change anything about us.” “That is not what I asked you.” Nathan exhaled slowly, and when he looked at me, there was no guilt in his eyes, only a kind of tired honesty I had learned to trust more than any smooth answer he could have given me instead. “I told her things about the company. Strategy, numbers, plans I should never have shared with anyone outside the family. That is what she stole and sold. If she is threatening to say she remembers something else now, some

Ellie's POV “I am not afraid of you,” I said, before Fiona Reyes had even finished crossing the restaurant floor toward our table. She was exactly the kind of beautiful that made people stop talking when she walked into a room, sharp tailored coat, dark hair pinned back like she had somewhere more important to be, and I hated how much that first look at her made every insecure part of me sit up and pay attention. “You must be Ellie,” she said, sliding into the chair across from us without waiting for an invitation, her eyes flicking briefly to Nathan with something between nostalgia and calculation. “I have heard so much about you. The bakery girl who married her way out of Brooklyn.” “I married for a lot of reasons,” I said evenly. “None of them were an escape.” Fiona’s eyes moved over me slowly, the kind of assessment that used to make me feel small back when I first started attending board dinners in dresses that cost more than a month of bakery earnings. I refused to let it wo