Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 230

Chapter 225. The Night Before the Hearing

CAMERON

On December 22nd, I had reviewed the documentation package three times, making sure that they were all in order and nothing was missing, this was an acute sign of restlessness, yes i admitted it, was more nervous than I had let Sedona on. I had checked on the witness order, argument structure that we have built to use against Logan tomorrow, to show the court just how much of an incompetent husband he was, I had also reviewed the counter-responses Adaeze had built for everything Logan’s lawyer was likely to deploy to u, trying to make Sedona the bad parent. I had nothing left to review that woul make it any less perfect than it already was. The case was as prepared as it was going to be, and the only thing between now and 9 am tomorrow was the night.

I went to bed at eleven. At one-fifteen, I was still awake. Though I was not accustomed to staying late at night, I was also too restless to fall asleep and ended up listening to the quiet noises around the houses and the distant sounds of cars in the distance.

Lucian’s room was across the hall, where he slept with Lake, despite us formally dating, it was still not yet comfortable for me and Lucian to share a bed, knowing my whole family was here as well. My parents are at the end of the hall, far away from the kid’s rooms so they could sleep in since they were old and were easily tired. Dante and Sedona are on the floor above in separate rooms. The low-register discretion they maintained in the family house.

At one-fifteen, I heard the kitchen. I went down and realized that I was not alone. Sedona was at the counter with tea. She looked up when I came in. She smiled briefly as she held on tight to the cup in her hands as I made my own tea. Sat across from her. Neither of us talked for a couple of seconds.

“Say the thing you’re thinking,” I said.

She merely looked at her cup. She was not gathering the words; she had them. She was only deciding whether saying them made them more real.

“What if the court sees me the way Logan’s lawyer is going to describe me?” she said. “The constructed identity. The orphan story, the departure from the marital home, the gap in the circuit.” She turned the cup slightly in her hands. “I built a whole life on a lie.”

r

“You built a life on survival,” I said. “Those are different stories about the same facts, and Adaeze knows how to tell the second one.”

Sedona was quiet for a minute as she mulled over the words.

“The orphan story was protection,” I said. “You were eighteen and alone, and you constructed something that let you function because it gave you a way to run away from the life that dad and mum had chosen for you, a ife you were right to refuse, if you did not want to live it. That’s not fraud. That’s what people do when they have nothing else.” I looked at my tea. “Adaeze will make the court understand the difference. It’s what we’re paying her for.”

“I know the argument,” Sedona said. “I’ve heard it. I believe it when Adaeze says it.” A pause. “At one in the morning, it gets harder to hold.”

13

The Night Before-The Hearing

“+know.”

She was quiet again, but her eyes were scanning around.

“I am going to be in the same room and at the same table with Logan,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen him since the garden. Since he grabbed my arm.”

Clam

I looked at her, swallowed, and murmured. “I know what I’m going to feel when I see him. But not of fear but with the accuracy of someone who had processed something and was reporting the result of what it

was.

“I know it’s going to be a physical thing first, before I can manage it. I just need to know what to do with that first minute.”

“You walk in behind Adaeze,” I said. “You look at the table in front of you, not at him. You sit down. You let Adaeze’s presence be the first thing you register, not his.” I kept my voice level. “By the time the proceedings start, your body will have caught up with him and you will be ready to face him, you can do this.”

You don’t know that.”

“I know you, that is basically the same thing,” I retorted.

She held a smile on her lips and miffed.

“He cannot touch you in that courtroom,” I said. “There are bailiffs. Adaeze will be between you and his lawyer. I will be in the gallery.” I paused. “You are going to walk in as the person you are. Not the person he spent three years making you believe you were. The court is going to see that.”

Sedona looked at her tea.

“Adaeze said the same thing,” she said.

“Adaeze is correct.”

“You’re both very certain.”

“We’ve both seen your evidence file,” I said. “Certainty is the reasonable response.”

Calmness overtook the entire place. I guess she was merely using the quiet period to plan or articulate her position. It was also possible she was doing the accounting of what tomorrow was going to bring.

“Logan, he’s going to look at me the way he looked at things he considered his.” She added on, her voice less certain than before, her hands briefly gripping the cup as she loosened it.

I thought about the monitoring report, the stalking incidents, the threats,

“Let him look,” I said. “You’ve spent seven months becoming someone he doesn’t have a category for. Whatever he decides he sees, it won’t be accurate.”

She looked up.

23

The Night Before-The Heating

Chim

“You’re not the woman who labelled his suits,” I said. “He’s going to walk into that courtroom expecting her and find someone else entirely. That is going to cost him something.” I paused. “Let it.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify