Alle Kapitel von MY EX-HUSBAND IS ALIVE AND WANTS ME BACK : Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

Alessia didn't tell Nikolia about Viktor's offer. Not yet. She'd driven home from the estate with the weight of it sitting heavy in her chest, turning the conversation over and over, trying to decide what to do with a truth that felt too dangerous to say out loud before she understood what it actually meant. By the time she pulled into her own driveway, she'd made a decision — she would watch, and wait, and say nothing until she had more than a feeling to bring to him.Which made it considerably harder to sit across the kitchen table from Nikolia the next morning, pretending everything between them was simply complicated in the ways they'd already discussed."You're quiet," he said, glancing up from his coffee."I'm tired." It wasn't a lie, exactly. "It's an early morning for a first visit.""I appreciate you agreeing to it." His hands were wrapped around the mug too tightly, the same nervous grip she remembered from years ago, before important board meetings, before anything that act

Alessia hadn't planned on attending the charity dinner that Friday. Between the Kessler negotiations, the twins, and everything unresolved with Nikolia, the last thing she wanted was another room full of small talk and champagne. But the event benefited a children's hospital wing Bellamy Atelier had helped design pro bono two years earlier, and skipping it would have sent a message she didn't want to send.She was three minutes into a conversation about seating charts with the event coordinator when a familiar voice appeared at her shoulder."Ms. Bellamy. We meet again."She turned to find Cassian, effortlessly at ease in a room full of people trying too hard, a glass of wine in one hand that he didn't seem particularly interested in drinking."Mr. Devereux." She kept her tone polite, professional, careful. "I didn't expect to see you here.""I make it a point to support good causes." His smile was warm, easy, disarming in exactly the way that made her want to be more careful, not les

"Every single day." Alessia repeated it back to him like the words might rearrange themselves into something less devastating if she said them slowly enough. "Five years. You had someone watching me every single day for five years, and you're telling me this now, standing in my kitchen, like it's a footnote.""It's not a footnote. I know exactly what it is.""Do you?" Her hands were shaking again. "Because I don't think you do, Nikolia. I don't think you understand what it feels like to learn the entire architecture of your grief had an audience the whole time.""I never watched the grief itself. I told you — confirmation of safety, nothing more.""You keep saying that like it makes it better." She paced the length of the kitchen, needing to move, needing somewhere to put the fury that had nowhere else to go. "It doesn't make it better. It makes it worse. It means you built an entire secret infrastructure around my life and called it love.""It was love." His voice cracked on the word

Alessia stood in the silence Rafael had left behind, waiting for him to say something, anything, that might make the last five minutes easier to carry. He didn't."Tell me about the debt," she said finally, quieter now, some of the fire drained out of her voice by exhaustion. "You said Nikolia helped your family with something. What was it?"Rafael exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair. "My younger sister. Camila. Eight years ago, she was in a car accident that left her with injuries that needed specialized surgery — the kind of surgery that wasn't available anywhere near where my family lived, the kind that cost more than my parents could raise in a lifetime.""And Nikolia paid for it.""He did more than that." Rafael's voice had gone quieter, rawer than she'd ever heard it. "He found the surgeon. He arranged the transfer. He handled it so quietly that my family never even knew where the help came from until years later, when I finally told them myself. Camila walks today

Alessia knelt down so she was level with her son, taking both his small hands in hers, buying herself a moment before she had to find an answer worthy of the question he'd just asked."Come here," she said, guiding him off the stool and into the living room, settling onto the couch with him curled against her side. "I want to talk to you properly. Not standing in the kitchen."Adrian went quiet and still, the way he always did before something important, waiting with a patience that made her chest ache."Your father isn't leaving because he wants to," she said carefully. "There's a lot going on right now that's complicated, and some of it isn't fair to explain to you the way I'd want to. But I need you to hear me say this clearly: your father staying away this week isn't about you, or Aria. It's about grown-up things that have nothing to do with how much he wants to be here.""Then why does it feel like it's happening again?" Adrian's voice was small, uncertain in a way that undid her