Todos los capítulos de Five years later, My Billionaire Ex-husband wants me back: Capítulo 81 - Capítulo 90

JanetMy words hung between us like a physical blow, carried on the salt breeze that stirred the canopy of coastal pines above the courtyard.Garrett flinched as though struck across the cheek. His slate-gray eyes, dark with the residual adrenaline of confronting Eleanor, fractured into an expression of raw, hollow grief. He didn't offer an excuse. He didn't cloak himself in corporate polish."During our marriage," Garrett said, his voice dropping to a rough, broken rasp, "I told myself that silence was neutrality. When my mother made her remarks at dinner, when she dissected your background... I told myself that ignoring her was the high road. I thought staying out of it meant I wasn't taking part."He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing against the open collar of his dark sweater."I was a coward, Janet. I told myself I was staying above the noise when I was simply letting her cut you to pieces under my own roof. I should have stood between you and her on day one. I should have disma

JanetThe tide was receding, leaving wide, glossy mirrors of wet sand along the private stretch of beach behind the craftsman house. The evening chill had settled over the bluffs, turning the horizon into a bruised palette of violet and slate.I stood by the weathered driftwood fence, clutching a steaming ceramic mug between both hands. Behind me, the warm amber glow of the living room windows spilled onto the patio, where Martha was guiding the quadruplets through their bedtime reading.Footsteps crunched against the damp gravel path.Daniel stopped two paces away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his dark wool coat. His breath plumed in the cold air, white and fragile. Over the last five years, Daniel had been my steady constant—the voice of calm when payroll ran thin, the pair of steady hands that carried Gavin during late-night croup scares, the partner who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me in front of bankers and retail giants.He looked out over the crashing breakers, his

GavinThe elevator didn't have buttons for regular floors; it had a sleek glass panel that scanned Garrett’s thumb before shooting straight toward the sky.Grayson pressed his face against the reinforced glass wall, watching the tiny toy-sized cars on the avenue shrink into dots. "We're going faster than forty miles per hour! I can feel the pressure in my eardrums! Mom said air has weight, Gavin—do you think the air up here is lighter?!""Keep your hands off the glass, Gray, you're leaving grease smudges," I told him, keeping my feet planted wide on the carpeted floor. My stomach did a weird flip every time the elevator passed a ten-floor marker, but I kept my back straight, my hands tucked into the pockets of my navy trousers.Beside me, Grace was holding Garrett’s hand, her small fingers curled tightly around his thumb. She wore her favorite yellow cardigan, looking out at the sprawling city with soft, dreamy eyes."Look, Garrett," Grace whispered. "The clouds are right outside. The

JanetThe heavy parchment of the revised master agreement lay spread across my desk like an open treaty.For three hours, I went through the clauses with a crimson gel pen, dissecting every paragraph, sub-clause, and appendix with the ruthless skepticism of a woman who had learned the hard way how fine print could be weaponized. I looked for the standard institutional traps: forced equity buyouts triggered by missing quarterly targets, board observer mandates with creeping veto powers, licensing clawbacks, or intellectual property liens masquerading as supply chain indemnifications.There were none.Jade Bloom retained one hundred percent of its voting shares.Jade Bloom held absolute, uninfringed ownership of every proprietary botanical formula, cold-press stabilization protocol, and trademark.Our distinct earthy green and ivory visual identity remained untouchable in every European flagship storefront.And our operational leadership—from raw lavender sourcing along the coast to fin

Garrett"If you deliver this statement verbatim, Mr. Crawford, you are not merely managing a press cycle—you are committing corporate self-immolation."Marcus Hayes paced the perimeter of the executive briefing room on the eightieth floor, his voice rising in rare, agitated cadence. Beside him, Elena Vance, our senior communications director, held a tablet showing live metrics from the financial exchanges."The institutional shareholders will interpret an admission of profound personal misjudgment as executive volatility," Elena warned, her tone sharp and urgent. "The Crawford name has stood for unassailable authority for three generations. If you publicly concede that you were duped by manufactured evidence, that you wrongfully exiled your wife in an irrational fury, and that the entire foundation of the five-year-old scandal was your catastrophic failure... the market will punish the stock. The board will demand an emergency governance review by morning."I stood before the floor-to