Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 132

Chapter 96 Art Exhibition

Chapter 96: Art Exhibition

(Author’s POV)

The call came the following morning.

Aurora was at her desk in the lab, reviewing data printouts, when her phone buzzed with Gavin’s number.

“Good news,” he said. “Rathbone family returned the funds. All five hundred million. Transferred this morning.”

She sat back in her chair. “Already?”

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“They moved fast. Turns out nobody wants to be on the wrong side of a Sterling filing.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Don’t thank me too effusively. I get a percentage when we win. My motives are entirely mercenary.”

She laughed, and some of the tension she’d been carrying since her coffee shop meeting with Stefan loosened a little. “Still. Thank you.”

“Now that we’ve dispensed with gratitude,” Gavin said, “completely unrelated topic. A friend gave me two tickets to the Hartwell Gallery exhibition this weekend. The modernist retrospective – it runs through Sunday. I have a conflict and every single person I know has the aesthetic sensibility of a parking garage. Do you want them?”

She looked at the data on her desk. She thought about the years she’d spent walking through galleries alone on Saturday afternoons, when the apartment was too quiet and Jasper was somewhere else and she needed somewhere to put herself for a few hours.

“Yes,” she said. “I’d like that.”

“Perfect. I’m meeting with Phineas this afternoon anyway. I’ll drop them off.”

He hung up.

Gavin set his phone down on the conference table and looked across at Phineas, who was sitting with his coffee cup raised halfway to his mouth, completely unhurried.

The gallery tickets were sitting on the table between them. Right next to Phineas’s hand.

“You know,” Gavin said, “you could have just given those to her yourself.”

Phineas took a slow sip of his coffee. His expression gave nothing away, but there was something settled in it – the look of a man who had already worked out every step of

Chapter 96 Art Exhibition

something and found the math satisfactory.

“If I give them to her directly,” he said, “it’s just a gift.”

Gavin waited.

“But if you call her,” Phineas continued, “and she goes to the gallery, and I happen to be there-”

“It’s a coincidence,” Gavin finished.

“It’s a coincidence,” Phineas agreed.

Gavin picked up his own coffee. He looked at the tickets. He looked at Phineas.

“You are a deeply strange man,” he said.

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Phineas said nothing. He just lifted his cup again, and the quiet confidence in his expression said everything he wasn’t bothering to put into words.

(Aurora’s POV)

Leo’s message came in just as I was heading out the door.

*You coming home this weekend?*

I stood on the front step, keys in hand, and typed back: *Probably not. Got plans. I’ll call you later.*

He sent back a thumbs-up emoji. No argument, no guilt trip. That was the thing about Leo – he always seemed to know when not to push.

I pocketed my phone and kept walking.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him. I did. But that house – Martha’s house, the one I’d grown up in and never quite felt welcome in – had nothing left for me anymore. Every room in it held some version of a conversation I didn’t want to replay. Going back would only remind me of exactly how little had ever truly belonged to me there.

The gallery was easier. Quieter. A clean place to be for a few hours.

Gavin had mentioned it offhand earlier in the week – a friend of his, a painter, opening a small exhibition downtown. *You’d like it, he’d said, with that knowing half-smile of his. *It’s your kind of thing.* I hadn’t asked what he meant by that. I’d just taken the ticket.

The show was called *The Silence Between*.

Chapter 96: Art Exhibition

I walked in alone.

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The first painting stopped me before I’d even made it three steps past the entrance. It was titled *Open Sky* – a vast, unbroken expanse of cloud, lit from within by something that wasn’t quite sunlight. The light fell through the gaps in long, slanted columns, and the whole thing had a weight to it, a stillness so complete it felt like the room had gone quiet just to accommodate it.

I stood in front of it for a long time.

I wasn’t thinking about anything specific. Or maybe I was thinking about everything at once- the years I’d spent making myself smaller to fit into spaces that weren’t built for me. The marriage. The miscarriage. The version of myself I’d set aside so gradually I hadn’t even noticed until there was almost nothing left.

“Gavin gave you a ticket too?”

I turned.

Phineas stood a few feet behind me, hands in his jacket pockets, looking at the painting with an expression of mild interest. His tone was casual. Deliberately so.

“He mentioned there was an extra,” he added. “Thought I’d stop by.”

I looked at him for a moment. Then I looked back at the painting.

“Right,” I said.

Gavin had set this up. That much was obvious. I’d been keeping my distance from Phineas for the past two weeks – not dramatically, not with any formal declaration, just quietly stepping back, finding reasons to be elsewhere, keeping our interactions brief and professional. It had felt necessary. Sensible.

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