All Chapters of Marrying My Ex-husband's Greatest Enemy : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Four years and eight months ago, Lydia Moore sat in a car outside a jeweler's shop, staring at a ring she'd tried on twice and put back both times.Julian had told her to buy whatever she wanted — that was never the issue. He'd have paid for it without a second thought, the way he paid for everything, easily, absently, the way people do when money has never once been a question they had to sit with.That was exactly why she couldn't do it.Every time she reached for his card, some small voice reminded her what people already whispered at those dinners — that she'd found herself a fortune, that the poor girl from nowhere had gotten lucky. Buying the ring with his money would make it true in a way she couldn't undo. She wanted, just once, to walk into that dinner wearing something that was hers. Something she'd chosen and earned, not something handed to her because the alternative was watching her feel small in front of his family again.She left the shop with nothing, because nothing f

Seraphina hadn't visited her mother in a very long time.She told herself it was because of everything happening — the warehouse, the wedding announcement, Julian's assets being mapped by Evan's people. There was always a reason not to go, and she'd gotten good at finding them.Sitting in her apartment that morning, the transfer records spread across her table again, she finally admitted the real reason.She was afraid of the questions she hadn't asked yet.---Her mother lived two hours outside the city now, in a small house Seraphina had helped her find after everything fell apart. Quiet streets. A garden her mother tended obsessively, the way some people tend grief when they don't know what else to do with it.Elaine opened the door before Seraphina had even knocked, like she'd been watching for the arrival of her daughter."You look tired," her mother said, by way of greeting."I've had a difficult few weeks." Seraphina responded."I gathered as much." Elaine studied her daughter'

Diana rang the doorbell three times, which was how Seraphina knew it was her."I brought rice," Diana said, walking in before she was invited. "And chicken. And a strong opinion that you haven't eaten today.""I had toast.""That's not eating. That's a rumor of eating."Seraphina laughed, and it surprised her. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed at something that wasn't nerves.Diana put the bags on the counter and looked around the apartment. The transfer records were spread across the table again, along with notebooks, sticky notes, and a mug of tea that had gone cold hours ago."Okay," Diana said. "This has to stop.""I'm nearly done.""You've been nearly done for two weeks."She started gathering the papers into a neat pile, slowly, the way you would carry something that might bite."I'm not reading them," she said. "I'm just moving them to the couch. Your table is going to be a table tonight."---They ate at the kitchen counter, sitting side by side. The window o

Lydia woke up before the alarm, the way she had every day since the phone that used to be hers stopped being hers.She lay still for a moment, listening to the house. Evan's breathing beside her, even and slow. The faint hum of the air conditioning. Somewhere downstairs, a door closing softly, which meant Marissa was already awake, already at her post.She had thought about this for three days. She had turned it over so many times that it no longer felt like a decision so much as something she was simply waiting to arrive at.Today, she decided, would be the day.---She used the excuse she'd rehearsed the night before. A dress fitting, unaccompanied this time, because the seamstress needed to make adjustments that required privacy. It was thin, but it held. Marissa waited in the car outside while Lydia went in alone, and for eleven minutes, she was, for the first time in weeks, not being watched.She didn't waste them.There was a landline in the back office of the boutique, an old t

The archive room at Wright Capital hadn't been touched in years.Julian stood in the doorway of it, looking at rows of grey boxes stacked to the ceiling, no order to them that he could see, no index waiting to make this easy. A single bulb buzzed overhead, flickering slightly, like even the building resented being asked to remember this far back."This is going to take a while," he said.The woman who'd let him in, an older records clerk named Patricia who owed him a favor from years ago and had agreed, reluctantly, to look the other way for an hour, folded her arms."I told you. Nothing from that far back was ever digitized properly. If you're looking for someone specific, you're looking at every box with a date sticker anywhere near the years you want.""How many boxes is that?""More than you have time for tonight."---He called Daniel from inside the archive, phone held awkwardly between his shoulder and ear while he pulled another box down from a shelf."Anything?" Daniel asked.