บททั้งหมดของ 5 Minutes to Divorce: Hidden Heiress Returns With His Baby: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

Forsaken Heiress: My Ex Husband's New BossChapter 1: Five MinutesThis was the third time I was fixing a mess made in the HENSLEY FILE this week. You would think I got paid better.His footsteps didn't stop at his own office door that afternoon. They stopped at mine.I knew Damian Cross by the sound of his footsteps before I ever learned to read his face fast and even, a good day, fast and clipped, trouble upstairs. Three years married, three years working for him one floor below his own, long enough to know exactly which one was coming before it arrived. This one I'd never heard before."Mr. Cross." I looked up. In this building I was still Ms. Whitfield from the twelfth floor, and he was still Mr. Cross from the forty-first. Frank Delgado was still at the printer behind him, close enough to hear anything Damian didn't bother lowering his voice for. "Did you need the Hensley file?"He didn't answer. He set a manila folder on my desk, holding it at the very edge, like it might burn h

chapter 3: The ClauseThe doorman still smiled at me like I belonged there. The divorce hadn't made the building gossip yet. Small mercies one more night of being Mrs. Cross before the city started talking.Lucinda opened the door herself, waiting the way a spider waits."Amara." She said my name like it cost her something. "How efficient of you to still come running.""I'm here for the Hensley file. Not for you.""Of course." She stepped aside just enough to let me in, not enough to make it easy. "Whatever you are, you're certainly useful. Damian always did say you were good at your job.""It's lovely seeing you here again, Amara." She smiled, already turning back toward the hall. "Habit is difficult to break."Whatever you are. I filed it away with everything else, in the drawer marked for later.Damian was in his study, sleeves rolled, three monitors glowing with numbers I already knew were wrong. Something crossed his face when I walked in, gone before I could name it."You came

Chapter 5: Eleven YearsI heard them before the elevator doors closed."She'll come crawling back within the week." Lucinda's voice, carrying the way it did when she assumed the room had already emptied of anyone worth lowering it for. "Where else does a girl like that have to go?""We need the Ferrers signed before quarter's end," Damian said, lower, already back to business. "Their name is the only thing that gets us to the table with the Whitfields. Nobody else can open that door right now.""And thank God for it," Lucinda said. "Imagine if they ever knew a woman like Amara had worn our name. We'd be a laughingstock in that boardroom before we ever sat down."The elevator doors closed on the sound of her laugh. I said nothing there was nothing to say to a room that had already emptied of anyone worth saying it to, and no one in it would ever know how wrong she was about whose name would actually open that door."No family," Priscilla added, satisfaction thick in it, the sound of a

Chapter 7: Whose BloodJulian didn't start the car right away."Five of them are with us," he said, both hands still on the wheel."And the other seven?"His jaw tightened. "They aren't."That was all he said. Leon had gone ahead an hour earlier to make sure the room was ready, and the city slid past the window, gray and cold beneath a sky that couldn't decide whether it wanted to rain."Leon's run the company in my name this whole time," I said quietly. "Why did they allow it?""Because he isn't blood."I turned toward him. "And me?"His eyes met mine in the mirror."They've spent eleven years praying you'd never come back."I believed him completely. He'd kept me alive for eleven years on information exactly like this, and questioning how he knew would have felt like questioning the air.The boardroom went silent when I walked in.Not respectful silence. Predatory silence, the kind that happens when something people thought was buried sits down across from them."I thought she died."

Chapter 9: The Wolf of Sterling"I'm sorry," Clara said from the doorway, a little breathless. "I told him you weren't available.""It's all right, Clara."The man in the doorway didn't look sorry either. He stepped inside like the room had been waiting for him, and the woman with the tablet followed one careful pace behind."Sterling," he said. "Vincent. Sterling Holdings."The name meant nothing to me. The way Clara went still beside the water table meant something, though I couldn't have said what."You weren't at the table this morning," I said."No.""Why not?""I was late." He didn't offer an apology. He offered a small, cold smile. "Though I'm in better standing than an heir who ran away for more than a decade and never once bothered to apologize."It landed somewhere under my ribs. I set my cup down very carefully."Sterling." I turned the name over like I was reading it off a contract. "You're the final board member. The one who has to hide behind a proxy to buy into Whitfiel