Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE'S CONTRACT WIFE : Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

Ellie's POV "You should hate me right now, and instead you called me back within the hour. I would like to understand why," Vanessa said, meeting me at a small coffee shop three blocks from the bakery, sunglasses on despite the overcast sky. The coffee shop smelled like burnt espresso and rain soaked coats, ordinary in a way that felt strange against the extraordinary mess my life had become in the last two months. I watched Vanessa through the window before going in, noting how different she looked without an audience, shoulders slightly bowed, the polish dimmed just enough to make her look almost human. I had almost not come. Sophie had told me flatly it was a bad idea, that Vanessa Cole did not do anything without a reason attached, and the reason was rarely kind. But something in the way she had called that morning, quiet and unusually rattled, had made me curious enough to say yes. "I want to understand what you actually know," I said, sitting across from her. "Not what yo

Ellie's POV"The board will vote Friday on whether to formally challenge the validity of this marriage under the coercion clause, and I would like everyone in this room to understand exactly what that means before we proceed," the chairman said, his voice carrying flatly across a boardroom that suddenly felt much smaller than it actually was.Sophie had wanted to come with me, folder of legal precedent tucked under her arm, ready to argue procedure if anyone tried to shut me out of a room I had every right to sit in as Nathan's wife. I had asked her to wait outside instead, some stubborn part of me insisting that whatever happened in that boardroom, I needed to face it on my own two feet, not hiding behind someone else's paperwork.I sat beside Nathan at the long table, the only person in the room without a title carved into a nameplate, and felt every eye shift toward me the same way they had at the wedding, weighing, calculating, deciding whether I belonged in a room built for peopl

Ellie's POV"You did not sleep, you did not eat, and you have been staring at that same cold cup of coffee for twenty minutes, so start talking before I call your grandmother," Sophie said, dropping her bag on my kitchen table like a woman ready for war.I had not called her. She had shown up anyway, the way she always did whenever something in my life cracked loud enough for the whole city to hear it. I told her everything, the diner, the email, the one second of hesitation on Nathan's face that had said more than any answer he gave me afterward. Sophie listened without interrupting, which frightened me more than if she had argued, because Sophie always argued."So he looked for you before the eviction notice," she said finally. "That is not the same as sending the eviction notice.""It is not that simple, Soph.""It is exactly that simple, and you know it, but you are too tired and too in love to say it out loud." She reached across the table and took my hand, her voice softening. "

Ellie's POV"I want to see your phone, the actual device, not a photo of a screen, because photos can be edited and I need to know if you understand the difference," I said, sliding into the same diner booth across from Diane Foster for the second time in three days.She looked smaller than she had the first time, her coat pulled tight even though the diner was warm, her eyes darting toward the door every few seconds like she expected someone to walk through it who should not have known she was here. I had come with Sophie waiting in the car outside, and Marcus's list of questions folded in my coat pocket, and a steadiness I had built overnight out of nothing but stubbornness and refusal to fall apart twice in one week."Who called you the night before you reached out to me?" I asked, watching her face carefully the way I had learned to watch faces behind a bakery counter, reading customers who lied about wanting less sugar in their order.Diane's hand tightened around her coffee cup.

Ellie's POV"Before this board votes on anything, I would like the record to show that the man asking you to doubt this marriage is the same man whose own badge accessed the executive floor at two in the morning the night the files disappeared," Marcus said, sliding a folder across the boardroom table before Gerald had even finished sitting down.The room went silent in a way I had not heard since the wedding, three hundred whispered guests replaced now by a dozen board members in tailored suits, all of them staring at a single sheet of paper like it had teeth. Gerald's face did not move at first, decades of practice holding his expression perfectly still, but his hand, resting flat on the table, tightened just enough for me to notice."Badge logs can be spoofed," he said smoothly. "Anyone with basic access could manipulate a timestamp.""They can," Marcus agreed. "Which is why we also pulled elevator camera footage from the lobby that same night, the one camera nobody thought to wipe