All Chapters of I'm The Thorn Stuck In The Billionaire Celebrity's Foot: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The funeral drew exactly the kind of press circus Sterling had feared, cameras clustered thick along the cemetery's edges, reporters murmuring theories about Julian Vane's final months into microphones just out of earshot, and Ivy stood beside Sterling through all of it, steady and present, refusing to let the spectacle steal what small, private grief the day still deserved. Delilah arrived alone, dressed simply, standing slightly apart from the small cluster of board members and old associates who'd come more out of professional obligation than genuine mourning."I didn't know if I should come," she admitted quietly, finding Sterling and Ivy near the edge of the gathering. "We hadn't spoken in years, and the last conversation we did have wasn't exactly warm." "I'm glad you're here," Sterling said, and Ivy watched something in his voice soften toward his mother in a way she hadn't heard since the café weeks ago. "Whatever else he was, he was your husband once. You're allowed to grieve

Dinner with Ivy's parents that weekend felt, for the first time in longer than Ivy could remember, entirely unremarkable, her father grilling in the small backyard of the house he and her mother had finally, cautiously started renting again, her mother directing from a lawn chair with the same stubborn insistence on supervising that had governed the move weeks earlier."You're glowing," her mother said, catching Ivy alone in the kitchen while Sterling and her father debated the merits of charcoal versus gas with the particular intensity of two men who barely knew each other yet but had decided grilling was safe, neutral territory. "New job glowing, or something else glowing.""Both, maybe." Ivy busied herself with the salad, feeling her face warm despite herself. "Things feel steady, Mom. For the first time in years, actually steady.""Steady's good." Her mother studied her with the particular sharp attention that had never once, in Ivy's whole life, missed anything important. "Is he

They cut the trip short by a day, the Singapore partnership signed and celebrated hastily before boarding a red-eye flight home, and Ivy spent most of the eighteen hours back turning Reagan's message over in her mind, the small unease from the office hallway resurfacing sharper than before."Ashford Transit," Sterling said, once they'd landed and settled into Reagan's office directly from the airport, exhaustion carved deep into both their faces. "Small company, but it operates almost entirely in the same regional corridor we just secured expansion rights to in Singapore. That's not a coincidence.""He's trying to box you in," Reagan said, spreading a map across the table, the same grim efficiency Ivy had come to associate with genuine crisis rather than routine business. "If he controls enough smaller logistics operations along that corridor, he can make your international expansion considerably more expensive and complicated than it needs to be, even without ever touching Vane Corp'

The legal team spent three days untangling Holt's claim, and by the end of it Ivy understood exactly how carefully he'd built his position, buying Ashford Transit specifically because its existing contracts overlapped, on paper, with the exact regional corridor Vane Corp's Singapore expansion required."It's a manufactured conflict," the lead attorney explained, spreading maps and contract language across Sterling's office table with weary precision. "Real on paper, meaningless in practice, but enough to trigger a legitimate court review that could delay your expansion for months while it gets sorted out.""Months we don't have," Sterling said, jaw tight. "The Singapore partnership has its own timeline pressures. If this drags on too long, they'll start looking at other partners instead of waiting on us."Ivy sat quietly through most of the strategy discussion, her design instincts feeling entirely useless against something this legally technical, until an idea surfaced, small and hal

Sterling stared at the folder for a long moment before finally opening it, and Ivy watched something complicated move across his face as he read through page after page of careful, anonymous donations, dated back further than she'd expected, further than the fraud, further than most of what Ivy understood about Julian Vane's public life."This is nearly two million dollars," Sterling said slowly, "given away anonymously, over almost twenty years, to pediatric cardiac units specifically. My father never mentioned any of this. Not once, in his entire life.""Why pediatric cardiac units," Ivy asked quietly, something in the specificity nagging at her.Delilah's face had gone pale, something old and grieving surfacing behind her eyes. "Because we lost a daughter, before Sterling was born. A heart defect the doctors couldn't fix in time. Julian never spoke about her, not once in all our years together, not even when I begged him to. I assumed he'd simply buried it, the way he buried everyt