Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 145

Chapter 109 No Wedding

Chapter 109: No Wedding

(Aurora’s POV)

I got to the office at ten.

+ Points

The internal announcement system notification was already sitting at the top of my screen when I opened my laptop – a formal statement, precisely worded, the kind of language that leaves no room for interpretation. I read it twice.

*Serena Everett, effective immediately, has been terminated for serious violations of workplace conduct

standards.*

I sat back in my chair.

The lab was quiet around me. Sylvia hadn’t come in yet, and the only sound was the low hum of the incubation units along the far wall. I looked at the notification again, at the clean, impersonal formatting of it, the way the words arranged themselves into something that felt almost surgical.

I’d already suspected Serena was involved in what happened last night. She was the only person in this building who was close to Sienna and had any reason to resent me. But knowing it and seeing this – seeing her name printed in a formal company notice, attached to Phineas’s signature at the bottom – were two different things.

He’d fired his own niece. In front of the entire company. No quiet conversation, no private reprimand, no family-sized exception carved out of the policy. Just a notice, clean and final, like any other personnel

action.

I stared at his name on the screen for a long moment.

for

I picked up my phone twice. Put it down both times. What was I supposed to say? *Thank you terminating your family member on my behalf?* It would sound strange. The company had followed its own rules. Sending a personal message would make it into something it didn’t need to be.

I turned my phone face-down on the desk and went back to work.

(Author’s POV)

Sienna knew nothing about Serena’s termination.

Jasper, meanwhile, was in a good mood. The funding from Everett Global had come through, and the genetic research project – the one that had been stalled for months after Aurora walked away with the patent – had been formally approved for restart.

He’d been quietly pleased with himself all day, turning the situation over in his mind, savoring the particular satisfaction of a man who believes he has recovered lost ground. Aurora had taken the patent. Fine. He still had the project. He still had the backing. It was a setback, not a defeat. That was what he told himself, and by evening he had almost convinced himself it was true.

Chapter 109 No Wedding

+28 Pointa

That evening, at dinner, he reached into his jacket pocket and set a dark blue velvet box on the table.

Victoria looked at it without touching it.

He opened it himself. A diamond necklace, the stones set close together along the chain, catching the light from the chandelier above. He stood and fastened it around Sienna’s neck with the practiced ease of a man performing a gesture he had rehearsed.

Victoria picked up her fork and set it back down. “You’re not worried,” she said, her voice dry, “that Aurora’s lawyer will find a way to claw that back too?”

Jasper’s expression stiffened for a moment. “If it weren’t for Sienna pushing me to approach William and secure Everett Global’s support, that project would still be dead. She made that happen.”

Victoria said nothing. She cut into her steak with more force than necessary.

Sienna sat beside him and kept her expression gracious and warm. *As long as I’m useful*, she thought, *he won’t let go of me.* That was the calculation, and it had always worked. It was the only calculation she had ever fully trusted.

Then Jasper set down his wine glass and said what he’d been building toward all evening.

“Once the divorce decree comes through, I want to register the marriage.”

Victoria put down her knife and fork. “Jasper.”

“I know what you’re going to say.

“She was your brother’s wife.” Victoria’s voice was controlled but hard. “Do you understand what people will say? What they’re already saying?”

“I stopped caring what people say a long time ago.” He reached over and took Sienna’s hand. “And Rosalind wants this. She’s been asking for it. You know that.”

The name worked exactly as he knew it would. Victoria’s mouth closed. She wasn’t going to fight him on Rosalind – not directly, not at the dinner table.

A long silence. The chandelier hummed faintly overhead. Someone’s cutlery clinked against porcelain. “Fine,” Victoria said at last, the word coming out like something she was releasing against her will. “Go to the courthouse. Handle it quietly. But I will not host a wedding. I will not stand in front of our friends and family and celebrate this. That is not something I’m willing to do.”

Sienna felt the smile on her face go rigid.

She kept it in place. She made her voice light. “Of course. Simple is fine. Just the two of us, something small. That’s more than enough.”

Victoria didn’t look at her.

Jasper squeezed her hand.

Chapter 109 No Wedding

Sienna looked down at the necklace glittering at her collarbone and thought: *no ceremony. No white dress. No witnesses.* Years of waiting, years of managing and maneuvering, years of being careful and patient and necessary – and the prize was a courthouse signature that Victoria would spend the rest of her life pretending hadn’t happened. A marriage that would exist on paper and nowhere else that mattered.

She kept smiling until dinner was over.

Back in the bedroom, the door clicked shut behind her, and the smile dropped.

She picked up the stuffed rabbit she’d left on the dresser – the one she’d bought for Rosalind, part of the ongoing campaign to be the mother Rosalind wanted – and threw it hard at the wall. The soft thud it made when it hit was deeply unsatisfying. She kicked it when it landed on the floor anyway.

No wedding. No ceremony. Nothing she could point to and say: *this is mine, I earned this, I belong here.* Just a piece of paper that Victoria would never acknowledge and a seat at a table where she’d never be fully welcome. She had spent years becoming indispensable, and indispensable was still not the same as belonging.

She was still standing there, breathing through it, when she heard Jasper knock.

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