Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE’S EX-WIFE BECAME HIS GREATEST RIVAL: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 98

Adrian's PovI wasn’t expecting to see her when I walked into the industry event. Blackwood had been invited as one of several established companies attending, and Sterling, I knew distantly, had earned its own place on the list now. I hadn’t thought much about it until I saw her across the room.*She looks completely comfortable here.* That was my first thought, entirely professional, no weight attached to it.I watched her speaking with several senior executives from a distance. She wasn’t standing behind anyone, wasn’t waiting for someone to introduce her into the conversation. People approached her directly. She listened carefully before responding, asked direct questions, disagreed when necessary without becoming defensive about it. People around her clearly respected whatever she had to say.I noticed something specific. She didn’t check anyone’s reaction before answering. I remembered, watching her, how often she used to glance at me after offering a suggestion during our marri

Elena's PovMy birthday used to begin with one question: would Adrian remember?This year, I woke up without asking it.I didn't reach for my phone hoping for a message. I didn't wonder whether he'd bought something, or calculate whether he might come home early for once. The absence of that old expectation surprised even me, lying there for a moment before getting up, noticing what wasn't automatically running through my mind anymore.I got ready for work the way I did any other day. Sterling had its normal schedule — Maya had meetings arranged, Leo had research to finish on the expansion question we'd been circling for days. I wasn't going to abandon the day simply because it was my birthday, and I wasn't going to let work consume all of it either. Morning for work. The afternoon for an important Sterling meeting. The evening for something simple, with the people I actually wanted around me.Maya wished me happy birthday the moment I walked in, nothing extravagant about it — a small

Elena's POV I knew who had sent the package before I opened it.There was only one person who would have remembered the date — and chosen something that reminded me of the woman I used to be.The notebook inside wasn’t extravagant, which somehow made it harder to dismiss outright. I held it for a long moment before setting it down on my desk. I understood immediately why he’d chosen it. I used to fill notebooks like this one with business ideas, market observations, strategy questions, thoughts I rarely said aloud to anyone — including him, most of the time.He had actually remembered something true about me. That complicated the reaction I wanted to have more than a careless gift ever could have.The notebook pulled me back, briefly, to the years before Sterling — all those ideas that had stayed trapped on paper because I never believed there was room for them anywhere else in my life. I didn’t feel the old sadness, examining it now. I understood, holding it, that I no longer needed

I had spent most of my life believing money could solve almost any problem. It took losing Elena to understand that some problems became worse when I tried to solve them that way.I moved through my usual routine at Blackwood the next morning — meetings, financial reports, decisions stacking up one after another, all of it entirely familiar. And underneath it, I kept remembering how easily I had once solved problems with money. When Elena needed something, I could arrange it. When she wanted something, I could buy it. When our marriage felt strained, I could offer a holiday, an expensive gift, a comfortable experience designed to smooth over whatever had gone wrong between us.I had mistaken my ability to provide for proof that I understood her.Now she had returned a simple birthday gift, and there was no obvious way to make that decision different, no resource large enough to reverse it.I thought about how often, during our marriage, I had tried to compensate materially whenever sh