Boss, Your Ex-wife is Married to Your Rival의 모든 챕터: 챕터 31 - 챕터 40

The courthouse office was small and plain. A wooden desk. Two chairs. A window letting in thin morning light. It felt, somehow, more honest than anything gold-plated could have offered.Zayden had insisted on privacy, no press, no announcement beyond what the law required. Just the two lawyers standing quietly near the door, and Rosie, seated on the bench against the wall, swinging her legs in a dress she'd insisted on wearing herself, one sock slightly higher than the other."Is it starting?" Rosie whispered loudly to no one in particular. "Is it starting now..?""Almost," Zayden said, glancing back at his daughter with a small, indulgent smile.Selene stood beside him at the desk, the officiant reviewing the documents in front of them with the same brisk efficiency he probably brought to every appointment that day. No ceremony, no vows exchanged beyond the legal minimum. Just paperwork, and two signatures, and a year already counting down before it had even begun.She thought she'd

The announcement broke on a Tuesday morning, a single line released through both companies' press offices, brief and deliberately unremarkable.“Laurent Group confirms CEO Zayden Laurent has married Selene Whitmore, the ex-wife of Tristan Wolfe”Within an hour, it wasn't unremarkable at all.Business outlets picked it up within minutes, the story spreading faster than either company's public relations team could manage. Speculation exploded across every platform — who she was, how quickly it had happened, and most persistently, the detail no one could resist repeating: Selene Whitmore, ex-wife of Tristan Wolfe, now married to his fiercest rival.“From one empire to the next,” one headline read. “Laurent's sudden marriage raises eyebrows across the industry,” read another.By noon, it was the only thing anyone in either company's orbit seemed to be discussing.---Tristan saw it on his phone during a meeting he stopped listening to the moment the notification appeared, his own name bur

Rosie planned dinner that evening with the seriousness of a wedding planner, insisting on candles even though it was barely seven o'clock, arranging the napkins into shapes that didn't quite work but that nobody had the heart to correct."Mommy, pass the bread," she said, halfway through the meal, not even pausing to notice what she'd called Selene, already reaching for the butter dish herself before anyone could answer.Selene's hand stilled around her fork.Zayden glanced at her from across the table, something careful in his expression, waiting to see how she'd respond.Selene passed the bread without comment, her chest tight with something she couldn't quite name — not discomfort, not quite joy either, something suspended in the space between the two."Daddy, tell Mommy about the frog you found in the garden," Rosie continued, entirely unaware of the weight her own words had just settled over the table."There was no frog," Zayden said. "It was a leaf that startled me.""It was a

Selene sat in the car after leaving Laurent Group, Tristan's words looping through her mind on a track she couldn't seem to switch off.“Someone deliberately made you look guilty.”The memory arrived unbidden, dragging her back two years to a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and grief, machines beeping steadily somewhere behind her, Tristan standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed and his jaw set."Bianca said you'd been skipping appointments," his voice had said, flat and cold, nothing like the man who'd once kissed her forehead over an ultrasound photo. "That you'd been under stress because you kept picking fights. Is that true?""That's not true, Tristan. I did everything right. I don't know why she's saying that.""Why would she lie to me? What does she have to gain?"She hadn't had an answer for that, not one he'd been willing to hear. He'd looked at her like she was something broken, something responsible, something he could no longer fully trust — and she

Zayden's team traced the woman within two days, working through hospital employment records that had been harder to access than expected, given how quickly her file seemed to have been buried."Her name is Denise Farrow," the investigator reported, sliding a printout across the desk. "Worked at Mercy General for eight months, temporary contract through a staffing agency. She left the position three weeks after Selene's hospitalization.""Three weeks," Selene repeated, sitting across from Zayden, the timeline settling uncomfortably into place. "It could be coincidence," Zayden said carefully."It's not," Selene said. "It's too precise to be coincidence."The investigator continued. "After leaving Mercy General, Farrow changed careers entirely. No longer works in healthcare. Currently employed at a private accounting firm two states away. No public record explaining the sudden shift."Selene stared at the printout, the woman's employment history laid out in flat, clinical detail that t