All Chapters of My Ex’s Replacement Is A Hockey Billionaire: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Olivia POV"That's not true," I said, my voice shaking so hard the words barely came out coherent. "I didn't touch her. She lunged at me, she was the one who—""Ma'am, I need you to step back from the railing." The guard's voice was carefully neutral, professional in a way that somehow terrified me more than if he'd simply accused me outright. He was already speaking into his radio, calling for an ambulance, calling for police, his eyes flicking between me and Vanessa's crumpled form with a caution that told me exactly how this was going to look on paper regardless of what had actually happened.Ethan's small hand was still fisted in my shirt, his whole body trembling, and some distant, functioning part of my brain understood that whatever came next, I needed to get him somewhere safe before it did."Can someone take him," I said, my voice cracking. "Please, he shouldn't be here for this."One of the other guards, a woman I recognized from the morning shift, crouched down carefully in

Olivia POV"Cuts out how," Roman said, pulling into the garage and killing the engine, though neither of us moved to get out. "Cameras don't just stop recording on their own.""That's what I thought too," Adrian said grimly. "I had our security firm look at it the second I noticed. They're saying it looks deliberate. Someone accessed the system remotely about twenty minutes before Vanessa arrived and disabled that specific camera for exactly the window that matters."My stomach dropped straight through the floor of the car. "She planned this. She didn't just show up in a moment of desperation. She planned the whole thing, down to disabling the one camera that would have proven what actually happened.""We don't know that for certain yet," Roman said, though his voice had gone tight and grim. "But it's the only explanation that makes sense. Vanessa doesn't have the technical skill for something like that herself.""Webb does," Adrian said. "Or at least, someone on his payroll would."T

Olivia POVIt took four more days for everything to fall into place — the digital trail connecting Foster to Webb Industries, Foster's own panicked, hasty confession once investigators showed up at his door with evidence in hand, and finally, the recorded call Ryan had preserved, verified and entered into evidence alongside everything else.The detective called Priya's office on a gray, rain-streaked Thursday afternoon, and I watched Priya's face transform through the course of the call, tension bleeding out of her shoulders with every passing second."They're dropping all consideration of charges against you," she said, the moment she hung up. "Effective immediately. And they're moving forward with charges against Vanessa. Reckless endangerment, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, and given the security breach, likely charges against Foster and potentially Webb Industries as a corporate entity as well."The relief that crashed through me was so total I had to sit down, my legs sudde

Olivia POVWe stayed at the lake house for four full days, and by the time we finally packed the car to head back, I'd nearly forgotten what it felt like to check the news the moment I woke up,The habit crept back the second we crossed back within range of decent cell service, my phone buzzing with two days' worth of accumulated notifications the moment it found a signal, and I felt the familiar knot of anxiety tighten in my stomach even before I looked at the screen.Most of it was noise — follow-up coverage on the Webb Industries scandal, a few messages from Anaya wanting details, one from my mother asking, with the particular gentle persistence only mothers seem to manage, whether I was finally going to tell her the whole story instead of the carefully edited version I'd been feeding her over the phone.I stared at her message for a long moment, guilt creeping in around the edges of the peace I'd just spent four days building. She'd been fighting her own battle this whole time, an

Olivia POVThe prosecutor's office arranged the meeting for two days later, a small conference room downtown, Priya seated beside us, Vanessa's own defense attorney across the table looking considerably less confident than he had during the custody hearing months earlier.I hadn't wanted to come, if I was honest with myself. Some part of me would have been perfectly content never seeing Vanessa's face again for the rest of my life. But Priya had been firm — my presence, as the person Vanessa's actions had most directly harmed, carried weight in a room like this, and Roman had squeezed my hand in the car and told me I didn't have to say a single word if I didn't want to, that simply being there was enough.Vanessa herself looked different, stripped of the polished, camera-ready presentation she'd always maintained before. Plain clothes, hair pulled back simply, no makeup to soften the exhaustion visible in every line of her face. For the first time since she'd walked back into our live