Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 287

Chapter 274. Free Fatt

CATHERINE

The Hayes Industries publicist called me on a Wednesday, polite and brief, the specific brevity reserved for people whose continued association was no longer considered useful.

“We’re updating our roster of brand-affiliated individuals,” she said. “Given recent developments, the firm feels it’s best to part ways with anyone whose name has been closely linked to the family in public materials. We’ll send a formal notice through your agent. This is just a courtesy call.”

“I haven’t been Logan’s partner in any official capacity,” I said. “I never married him. There’s no contract tying me to..”

“I understand. I just wanted you to hear it directly rather than through your agent. Thank you for your understanding.” Her tone was more like someone who had already finished the conversation in her own head before it started.

She hung up before I’d fully understood anything. Sherry stopped taking my calls the same week.

I told myself, at first, that she was simply overwhelmed, the police questioning, all those was pressing down on her, I understood that, so I left three messages. Warm and careful ones. The same register I’d used on her for three years. The maternal-adjacent warmth that had always gotten me exactly what I needed from her. Until now.

She never called back.

I understood, eventually, what this meant. Sherry had been the easiest person in this entire structure to manage, because she had wanted, desperately, to believe the version of events that kept her son blameless and herself comfortable in that belief.

Now that the comfortable version had collapsed completely, she no longer needed me to help her maintain it. I had been useful exactly as long as the fiction held. The fiction didn’t hold anymore.

The invitational sponsors were more careful about it, which somehow made it worse.

Nothing direct. No phone call like the publicist’s, no formal notice. Just a series of small omissions that accumulated into something unmistakable, my name quietly absent from a press release I’d been told weeks ago I’d be featured in. A sponsorship renewal conversation that kept getting “pushed to next quarter.” An event invitation that simply never arrived, the kind I’d received automatically for the past four years without ever once having to ask.

I called my agent.

“They’re nervous about the proximity,” she said, careful, clearly choosing her words with more caution than she usually bothered with on calls with me. “Not about anything you did directly. Just, your name’s been in some of the coverage. The Hayes situation. Sponsors don’t love volatility right now, even volatility that isn’t technically yours.”

“None of this is mine,” I said.

I know. Fjust told you what they told me.”

I called Alina that evening. Alina had always told me the truth even when it cost her something. I wanted somebody to confirm my position.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify