All Chapters of I Own Twenty Percent of My Ex Husband’s Company: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The first sign of trouble appeared during their Monday morning review. Tomas noticed a sudden surge of aggressive buying in one of the smaller regional logistics companies that Vale Capital had quietly invested in several months earlier.“Someone is buying up shares in the company we invested in,” Tomas said, pulling up the data on the shared screen. “They’re moving so fast, and aggressively that the share price is rising before we’ve even had time to react.”Elara leaned forward, studying the pattern, and felt something cold and familiar settle into her chest almost immediately. The structure of the move, the timing, the deliberate pressure applied across multiple connected holding companies at once, all of it carried a signature she recognized instantly: the same careful, methodical aggression she'd watched Sterling Group deploy against smaller competitors more than once during her years married into that family."Trace the companies," she said. "I want to know who's actually behind

Kael found out about Grant Wolcott’s actions from Sterling Group’s general counsel. In a brief, uncomfortable meeting, Sterling Group's general counsel told him that one of the company's longtime board members had used old investment connections he still had access to and launched a personal attack on Vale Capital's investment in a regional logistics company."He acted entirely on his own," the general counsel explained. "No board authorization, no company capital was directly involved, though the connections he used were built during his years of overseeing our investment arm. “Technically, we can deny any involvement. But if this ever becomes public, it's going to look exactly like something Sterling Group orchestrated."Kael sat with the information, feeling a cold, quick anger build in his chest, sharper than anything he'd felt in weeks."Get him in here," he said. "Now!”Grant Wolcott arrived twenty minutes later, unbothered, clearly expecting some minor administrative conversati

She closed the door behind her, deliberately, and stood there for a moment, letting the anger settle into something more controlled before she spoke."You quietly bought into the logistics position after Grant Wolcott's attack," she said, without greeting, watching his face carefully. "Using your own money, and routed it through a channel so it wouldn't trace back to you. You never told me."Kael’s expression changed as he quickly understood what she meant. A brief flicker of pride crossed his face before he noticed it and carefully hid it."How did you find out?""That's not the point." Her voice stayed sharp, controlled. "The point is I spent an entire night proving to myself, alone, without help from anyone, that I could handle a real crisis. I did handle it, Kael. I neutralized that attack completely, on my own, before I even knew who was behind it. And the whole time, you were quietly working behind the scenes to strengthen something I'd already secured.""I found out about Wolco

The industry reception was smaller than most events Elara attended these days, a quiet gathering hosted by a mutual investment contact, and she hadn't expected to see Kael there when she arrived, though some part of her had quietly anticipated it, the familiar pattern of his presence appearing wherever her calendar happened to overlap.He approached her toward the end of the evening, when the crowd had thinned enough that their conversation wouldn't draw the kind of pointed attention it might have earlier.“Could I have five minutes?” His voice was careful and formal, as though he had rehearsed the request beforehand. Elara studied him for a moment, weighing his request against everything that had happened since their confrontation in his office weeks earlier. The tension from that encounter still lingered in her chest, sharp and unresolved.“Two minutes,” she said finally.Kael nodded, accepting the reduced duration without argument, and they moved toward a quiet corner of the recep

Elara stood in the quiet garage, the words he'd just said settled into her chest with a weight she hadn't fully prepared herself for, and felt something old and complicated rise up underneath the careful composure she'd spent over a year building, brick by brick, into something she'd genuinely believed had become unshakeable.The composure wasn't unshakeable. She understood that now, standing there, and feeling the truth of his admission land somewhere she hadn't guarded quite carefully enough.In the long silence that stretched between them, she thought about every version of this moment she might once have imagined, back during the marriage, lying awake beside a husband who felt more like a stranger than a partner, wondering whether he might someday, somehow, say something exactly like this to her. She'd wanted it then, desperately, quietly.She didn't feel that hunger now. She felt something else entirely, grief layered over grief, old and new tangled together in a way that made th