Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 74

Chatpter 69: Giving Nick One More Chance

CATHERINE

I took the elevator to my apartment, dropped my coat over the back of the couch, and poured two fingers of whiskey that I didn’t drink immediately, just held it in my hands and thought about how my plan had failed tonight. I stood in my kitchen, which was beautiful and expensive and entirely mine, and I thought about Logan’s face when he’d talked about Sedona managing Nick’s condition. How he was subconsciously comparing me to her, when all this time, reverse had been the case.

*She was doing what a mother does.*

He’d said it like it was simple. Like it was obvious and he was supposed to have seen it all this while.

Like the three years of detailed invisible maintenance was evidence of the signs of a capable mother and he was only now beginning to understand what that meant, now that it was gone.

I set the whiskey down and picked up my phone.

It rang twice before she answered.

“It’s late,” Alina said, which was her version of hello when she was calculating something.

“It didn’t work.” I sat on the couch, leaning my head back, looking at the ceiling of my beautiful apartment.

“Tonight. My plan, to get closer to Nick during this trying period. It didn’t work.”

A pause on her end. I could hear her moving-she was in Geneva, that was six hours ahead, which meant it was nearly three in the morning there, which meant she hadn’t been sleeping, which was typical. Alina slept the minimum required amount and found excessive rest evidence of poor discipline.

“Tell me.”

So I told her. All of it, efficiently-I’d learned years ago that Alina’s attention was most efficiently used when I was concise and went straight to the point instead of telling her unnecessary details.

I told her about the hospital visit, the soup that i had made, Nick’s precise and polite rejection, Logan’s face when he’d talked about Sedona’s remedies, and how i had to leave, because I was retreating to recalibrate my plans although i had framed it as generosity of being considerate of Nick’s feelings.

“And Logan?” Alina asked when I’d finished.

“He’s… harder to read than he was.” I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose. “He’s guilty. The diagnosis changed something between us, made it harder for me to silently put Sedona as the one who abandoned them and therefore the villain. Before he found out, he was hurt and angry-at her, at the divorce, at the disappearance. Hurt and angry I could work with. Guilt is different.”

“Guilt is self-focused,” Alina said. She was walking now, I could hear the soft sound of her heels on her hardwood floors.

“Guilt turns inward. Men in guilt don’t look for replacement; they look for redemption. He’s not looking at

Giving Nick One More Chance

you as a future. He’s looking at you as evidence of what he did wrong.”

I’d arrived at this analysis myself, but hearing it stated plainly still stung.

“The child is the problem, Alina continued.

“The child has always been the problem.”

“Then address the child.”

“I’ve been trying-”

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“You’ve been trying to make him like you,” she said, and the precision of it was the thing about Alina that I’d always both needed and hated. She saw things clearly.

“That’s not the same as addressing the problem. You can’t make him like you, Caterina. He has years of his mother built into him-every preference, every habit, every comfort. You’re working against the very foundation of his upbringing whether you like it or not. You cannot outcompete that with soup.”

“Then what would you suggest?”

The

pause was thoughtful rather than hesitant. Alina was never hesitant.

“Remove the architecture,” she said.

I waited.

“The child’s attachment to his mother is the obstacle. As long as he believes she could come back, as long as he’s holding space for her, you have no room to work in. Children accept what they’re taught to accept.”

“He’s six. He’ll adapt.”

“Then adapt him. Deliberately. You’ve been waiting for it to happen naturally. It won’t. His father is feeding the attachment with all this searching, all this guilt-Logan is essentially keeping the seat warm for a woman who left. And the boy follows the father’s lead.”

I thought about Nick asking Logan if he was actually going to find her. That serious small face, testing the promise. *Okay. Then I’ll wait.*

۴

He was waiting. He’d decided to wait, which meant he hadn’t given up, which meant there was still a seat being kept warm, which meant I was working in a room that hadn’t been fully vacated.

“What are you proposing, specifically?” I asked.

“The boy needs to be elsewhere.” Alina said it easily, like it was simple logistics. “Not disappeared-l understand you have some sentimental attachment to the child, and besides, it would be bad optics. But elsewhere. Away. Somewhere that his constant presence isn’t undermining your position in that household.” A pause. “There are excellent schools. Foreign ones. Structured environments where children thrive and develop independence. Logan would have more time, fewer divided attentions, fewer-”

“Reminders,” I finished.

“Reminders,” she confirmed. “Of what he’s replaced.”

2/3

<Giving Nick ente-More Chance

stared at my ceiling.

Boarding school. The word had its own flavor. Nick away at school was Nick not in the kitchen asking where his mother was, not pushing soup containers to the edge of tables, not watching me with those dark eyes that looked too much like hers.

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