All Chapters of I Came Back To Make my Ex-Husband Pay: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Seraphina knew Cassian was on high alert.The Halden Group loss had stung, and he was no longer treating her maneuvers like isolated bad luck or mere corporate arrogance. He was looking for her hand in everything now, which meant she had to stop using a hammer.“He’s starting to act,” Zara said, setting a fresh document on Seraphina’s desk. “I hear Renata Cole has been living at her desk since Friday. They’ve locked down the manufacturing partner’s contract before we could even make a formal approach.”Seraphina didn’t look up from her screen. “Good. Let them waste their energy fortifying doors I have no intention of knocking on.”Zara tilted her head. “So we’re backing off?”“We’re changing the game, Zara.” Seraphina leaned back, pen balanced between two fingers. “Cassian expects me to poach his clients from the outside. He expects me to offer cheaper terms and leverage the terminal. He’s building walls against an external raid.”“And what are we actually doing?”“We’re going to use

The boardroom at Devereaux Holdings went silent the second Seraphina walked in, the only sound heard in the room being the sound of her heels clicking on the floor underneath her feet.All eight executives sat in the room and found somewhere else to look at once, which told Seraphina that this particular board meeting had not been drawn up with her name anywhere on the list of attendees, confirming attendance.Vivienne, the CFO at Devereaux, recovered first, because Vivienne always recovered first.“Ms. Voss,” she greeted with a curt nod.“Ms. Norton.” Seraphina took the empty seat near the end of the table, the one that had become hers by default over the last few months whenever she decided to pop in on a meeting, whether anyone liked it or not.“Am I early?”“No, you’re right on time. Miss Voss, you’re not on today’s agenda.”“No?” Seraphina set her tablet down, ensuring she had all she needed to pay rapt attention. “I received an email. A calendar invite. I assumed that meant I wa

Callie Hargrove turned out to be far from anything Seraphina expected.“Sit down, Ms. Voss,” she said, nodding toward the one remaining chair at the small kitchen table. “Grandpa doesn’t like people hovering. Says it makes him feel like he’s already dead and everyone’s just deciding who gets what he leaves behind.”“I’m not dead yet,” Walt said mildly from his spot by the window, not looking up from whatever he was doing with a length of rope in his lap. “Feel free to poke at this old man all you want, though. Free entertainment.”Seraphina sat, feeling Cassian’s eyes fixed on her, and felt a small satisfaction in knowing she’d disrupted whatever careful pitch he’d been in the middle of delivering.“I take it you two know each other,” Callie said, settling back into her own chair, arms crossed as she watched them both.“We’re business partners,” Cassian said.“We’re competitors,” Seraphina said at the same time.Callie’s mouth twitched. “Which is it?”“Both,” Cassian said reluctantly,

The storm rolled in off the water on the fourth night, it was so fierce and came with a heavy downpour knocking the power out across half of Milbrook by nine o'clock and sending Dolores scrambling for candles she kept in a box behind the front desk for exactly this kind of occasion.Seraphina was halfway through reviewing terminal throughput projections by candlelight when her phone rang, an unfamiliar number, and she almost let it go to voicemail before some instinct made her answer."Ms. Voss." Callie's voice was tight and fast her voice jumbling up the words Seraphina almost couldn’t make it, the sound of a car engine behind her. "It's Grandpa. His heart's causing him a lot of pain, I have no idea what’s wrong but he keeps clutching his chest, and the ambulance is fifteen minutes out because of the storm, and I need someone at the house who isn't me, because Grandma's shaking too hard to be useful and I need to focus on driving safely instead of losing my mind.""I'm on my way."Sh

The hospital waiting room smelled like antiseptic and stale vomit, and Seraphina sat in one of the too-uncomfortable-to-sit-on plastic chairs beside Cassian.“We should talk about it,” Cassian said eventually, in a voice barely above a whisper.Seraphina had no plans to talk about what just happened, especially not with the subject himself.“Not here.”“I didn’t say now.” He glanced at her sideways, his gaze somewhat rueful. “I said we should. Eventually. Preferably somewhere that isn’t a hospital waiting room at one in the morning. Walt’s life is more important at the moment.”“Alright then.” She looked at him then and saw how keenly he was looking at her. “Later.”Later wasn’t going to come, not in the way he intended it to.“Later,” he echoed.Ruth appeared an hour later, looking pale but steadier than she’d been at the house, and gave them both a tired, grateful smile.“They’re keeping him overnight for observation,” she said. “The doctor thinks it was a bad angina episode, not a