Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 107

Chapter 72: Searching

Chapter 72: Searching

(Jasper’s POV)

“She came to beg you to save her brother.”

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It wasn’t really a question. The pieces had clicked into place the moment he said it out loud. He watched Sienna’s face and added, “You turned her down.”

The easy smile she’d been holding collapsed. What replaced it was something between wounded dignity and defiance – the expression of someone who’d been caught but had decided not to apologize for it.

“Fine,” she said. “Yes. I turned her down. What of it?”

“What of it,” he repeated.

“Jasper, what exactly do you expect from me?” Her voice sharpened. “Aurora and I have never been close. We’ve never been anything. The only reason I even went through the initial typing was because she was your wife. That’s it. That was the whole reason.” She crossed her arms. “And then she turned around and refused every reasonable settlement offer you put on the table. She wants to take half of everything. Given all of that, you’re asking me why I won’t let someone drill into my bones for her sake?”

Jasper said nothing.

“Your mother and I didn’t threaten her,” Sienna continued. “We simply made clear that cooperation goes both ways. That’s not a threat. That’s logic.”

He looked at her steadily. “So you and my mother sat across from her and told her that if she didn’t drop her settlement demands, Leo wouldn’t get the marrow.”

Sienna opened her mouth.

“That’s what happened,” he said. It wasn’t a question this time either.

She didn’t deny it. She just lifted her chin.

He stared at her. And despite himself, despite everything, a different image surfaced – Sienna at maybe twenty–two, crouching on the side of a road because she’d spotted a stray dog with a gash on its leg. She’d refused to get up. She’d sat there in the dirt in a white dress, holding the dog’s head in her lap and crying quietly until someone called a vet. He’d stood there watching her and thought, with a certainty that had felt almost physical, that she was the most genuinely good person he’d ever known.

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< Chapter 72. Searching

He had no idea where that woman had gone. He wasn’t even sure she’d ever been real.

He said nothing more on the subject. There was nothing left to say.

Sienna saw the silence for what it was. Her expression shifted. The defiance softened, and her eyes went glassy.

“You’re looking at me like I’m the villain,” she said. “Do you know how much a bone marrow donation actually hurts? It’s not a blood draw, Jasper. It’s a procedure. It takes weeks to recover from.” Her voice wavered. “I’ve been terrified of pain my entire life. You know that. You’ve always known that. And now you’re standing there making me feel like some kind of monster because I don’t want to go through a painful medical procedure for a woman who hates me.”

The tears came then. Slow, deliberate, perfectly timed.

He watched them.

He waited to feel something – the old pull, the instinct to close the distance and tell her it was fine, that he wasn’t angry, that he understood. It didn’t come. What came instead was a low, shapeless irritation he couldn’t quite locate the source of. He turned away from her and looked out the window. He pulled at his tie, just slightly, enough to loosen the knot.

When tears became a tactic, he’d found, they stopped working the way they were supposed

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He turned back to her, and his voice came out flat and even. “Stop crying.”

She blinked.

“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “Leo found another donor. The surgery is going ahead.”

The tears stopped. Not gradually – they just stopped, like someone had turned off a tap. She stood very still.

“What?” Her voice had gone quiet. “Someone else donated?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But – the compatibility rate for a full match is – ” She caught herself. Recalibrated. “That’s – that’s fast.”

“It is.”

She was doing the math. He could see it happening behind her eyes – the rapid, invisible calculation of what this meant, what she stood to lose, what leverage had just evaporated.

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Chapter 72 Searching

He picked up his jacket from the corner of the desk.

“Nobody was forcing you,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about the pain anymore.”

He walked to the door without looking back at her.

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The weight that settled on him as he stepped into the corridor was heavy and formless. He couldn’t name it precisely. He only knew that somewhere between her office and the elevator, one thought kept surfacing, clearer each time it came up.

He didn’t want the divorce.

Behind him, in the office he’d just left, Sienna stood motionless. She pressed her lips together until she tasted blood.

(Author’s POV)

Joyce Langford had been home from the hospital for nearly two weeks, and the woman she’d met on the street had not left her mind.

It was a strange thing to be haunted by a stranger. But she couldn’t shake it – the quick, steady hands, the calm voice, the way the young woman had looked at her with an

expression that was both professional and genuinely kind. And something else, something she couldn’t quite put into words. A resemblance. Not to anyone living, but to a memory she’d carried for a long time.

She called Alice into the sitting room.

“Where are we with the search?” she asked.

Alice clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We haven’t been able to identify her yet. The security cameras on that block were angled toward the intersection, not the spot where you fell. And there were so many bystanders that afternoon – the footage is too crowded to make out individual faces clearly.‘

Joyce turned the bracelet on her wrist slowly. It was an old habit, something she did when she was thinking.

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