All Chapters of I Own Twenty Percent of My Ex Husband’s Company: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Kael sat alone in his study long after Elara had gone upstairs. The folder was open on the desk in front of him.He read it twice, then a third time. He kept waiting for the part where it broke down, the part where she asked for the house, or half of Sterling Group’s shares, or some big amount of money that would let him tell himself she was just like every other wife who married into money and wanted to leave with more than she came with.He waited for something he could use against her. A threat. Something he could fight against.There wasn't one.She only asked for what the prenup already gave her. Not one dollar more. She didn’t want any part of the company. She didn’t want the house, just a small payment for her own things.It was so fair and clean that it bothered him more than any big demand would have. This wasn’t a woman trying to hurt him. This was a woman simply ending things.Still, he picked up his phone and called his lawyer. Part of him needed to hear that this was just

Kael stood in the bedroom doorway with his arms crossed, watching her pack her clothes into a suitcase. He told himself he felt nothing. He had gotten used to that lie before, and it usually worked.Elara moved through the room without wasting any time. She opened drawers, closed them, and decided what belonged to her in about one second, as if she had already practiced this exact scene in her mind a hundred times.She did not take the jewelry. Kael watched her hand pass right over the case on the dresser. Inside that case were the diamond bracelet he had gifted her for their second anniversary and the emerald set he had also bought her the following year. She did not take a single piece of it.She did not take the dresses either. Not the ones from their trip to Santorini, not the one from their fourth anniversary in Paris, the dress she had worn to dinner, the one he had once told her she looked beautiful in.That dress stayed hanging in the closet. She reached past it and took older

Serena Laurent had been waiting for this moment for so long that she had stopped letting herself think about it directly. But now she could. Now it was allowed. She sat curled up on her sofa the night after the family dinner. A wine glass rested on the arm of the couch. She scrolled through her phone with a soft, glowing happiness she had not allowed herself to feel in years. It was really over. Kael had said the words himself, out loud, at his family’s table. It's finalized. Five years of waiting, five years of being the woman on the side, five years of smiling through holidays where she was not allowed to sit next to him. And now it was finally over. She let herself think about the wedding dress first. Something simple and elegant, not the kind of dress a woman wore when she was trying to prove something. Serena would not need to prove anything anymore, not once there was a ring on her hand and her name next to his in the papers. Ivory, maybe, or the softest pale blue. Som

Five years earlierThe room smelled of old leather and coffee that had gone cold hours earlier. Elara sat between her father and mother at a long conference table. She watched the two families talk about her marriage as if it were just another item on a business deal, because that was exactly what it was.“The Sterling name will bring stability to the partnership,” her father said. He slid a folder across the table toward Kael’s father. “And your family’s manufacturing contracts will open doors we’ve been trying to reach for years.”Kael’s father nodded calmly, as if they were talking about warehouse space instead of two people’s futures. “Agreed. The children get along well enough. I don’t see any problems.”Elara stayed very still for most of the meeting, her hands folded in her lap. She listened while the older men decided her life in the same casual tone they might use to negotiate a shipping contract. She was twenty-three. She had met Kael only twice before this meeting, both tim

Elara had spread three pages of handwritten notes across her small kitchen table by the time Daniel arrived, coffee in one hand, laptop bag over her shoulder, looking more like a woman heading into a real meeting than one hosting a friend for the evening.“You’ve been busy,” Daniel said, glancing at the notes as he sat down across from her.“I couldn’t sleep.” She pushed one of the pages toward him. “I wanted to get this down before I lost the shape of it.”Daniel picked it up and read quietly for a moment, his eyebrows lifting slightly as he moved down the page. Elara watched him read, her hands wrapped around her own coffee cup, trying not to look as nervous as she felt about showing someone the first real thing she’d built entirely with her own idea in years.“Alright,” Daniel said, setting the paper down. “Walk me through it, in your own words.”Elara took a breath and began. Her voice was hesitant at first, but the more she spoke, the more confident she became as the ideas starte