Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 147

Chapter 111. The Verdict is In

Chapter 111: The Verdict Is In

(Aurora’s POV)

Eleanor had already ordered by the time I arrived.

+25 Ponte

She waved me toward the seat across from her and gestured at the table. Roasted chicken breast with asparagus, a bowl of cream of mushroom soup, and a salad platter arranged between us.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Lunch rush. I didn’t want us waiting forty minutes for food.”

I looked at the spread and almost laughed. “This is already more than I can finish. It’s perfect.” The restaurant was quiet for a Tuesday – white tablecloths, low ceilings, the kind of place that attracted the older money crowd who preferred conversation over atmosphere. Eleanor fit it exactly. She sat with her back straight and her silver hair pinned perfectly, wearing a cream blazer and heirloom earrings, looking entirely at ease.

We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular. The weather. A new gallery opening downtown that she’d attended over the weekend.

Then she set down her soup spoon and looked at me with that careful, measured expression I was starting to recognize.

“Has anything interesting come up recently?” she asked. “At work, or otherwise?”

I understood what she was actually asking.

I set my fork down and met her eyes. “I’ve been in the lab most days. Honestly, I’ve barely seen Phineas – maybe twice in passing this week. And I haven’t heard anything that would concern you.” I paused. “He keeps his distance from the people he manages. I don’t think I’m well-positioned to notice things you wouldn’t already know.”

Eleanor smiled, but there was something careful in it. “You’re being very honest with me.”

“You came all the way here,” I said. “You deserve an honest answer.”

She nodded slowly, accepting that.

We ate for a moment in silence. Then she said, “Has the divorce decree come through yet?”

“Not yet.” I kept my voice even. “Still waiting.”

She made a small sound – not quite sympathy, not quite something else. She seemed to be deciding whether to ask her next question.

“Jasper,” she started, then stopped. She folded her hands on the table. “I won’t pry into that. But I did want to ask – and tell me if it’s none of my business – why did you give up custody of your daughter?”

I’d been asked this before. By Olivia, by my lawyer, by people who thought they understood the situation and didn’t.

Chapter 111. The Verdict is in

I picked up my water glass and set it back down.

25 Points

“Rosalind doesn’t want me,” I said. “She wants Sienna. She’s been wanting her for a long time, probably longer than I realized.” I kept my voice steady. “If I’d fought for custody and won, she would have spent every day resenting me for taking away the person she actually chose. I wasn’t willing to do that to her.”

Eleanor was quiet.

“I tried everything in that marriage,” I said. “I tried to be what they needed. I tried to make myself fit into that family.” I paused. “But I was never the one they chose. I was just there by default. And in the end, that made all the difference.”

I said it without bitterness. It was just true.

Eleanor looked at me for a long moment. She didn’t offer a platitude. She didn’t tell me I’d done the right thing or that it would get better. She just nodded, once, like she understood something she hadn’t before.

(Eleanor’s POV)

Eleanor didn’t know the specifics. She didn’t know the timeline, the details, the particular shape of what had happened in that marriage. But she’d been alive long enough to recognize what Aurora’s voice was carrying – a bone-deep exhaustion and a grief she’d long stopped trying to explain. That kind of resignation didn’t come from a single wound. It accumulated.

A woman who’d stopped fighting for her own daughter. That wasn’t bitterness. That was something worse.

They talked for a few more minutes – lighter things, easier things. Aurora glanced at her watch and reached for her jacket.

“I should get back,” she said. “But next time, it’s on me.”

Eleanor smiled. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Aurora stood, said goodbye, and walked toward the restaurant exit. Eleanor watched her go.

She moved quietly. Purposefully. Petite frame, dark chestnut hair, the particular way she held her shoulders – composed, like she’d had years of practice keeping herself together in public.

Eleanor reached into her handbag.

She pulled out the photograph Serena had sent her weeks ago – the one taken at the company event, blurry and distant, showing the silhouette of a woman standing near the window. She’d been carrying it around since then, looking at it occasionally, not quite sure what she was looking for.

She looked at it now.

Then she looked at the exit where Aurora had just disappeared.

The profile. The posture. The way the figure in the photograph stood.

Eleanor held the photo for a long moment. Then she slid it back into her handbag.

Chapter 111: The Verdict is dri

She was being ridiculous. Phineas had never, in his entire adult life, shown any interest in a colleague He found the concept distasteful – she knew this because he’d said so directly, more than once, in exactly those words. And he would never pursue a woman still legally married to someone else. That was simply

not who he was.

She was letting her imagination run away with her.

She picked up her coffee cup and finished the last of it, and she told herself firmly to stop.

(Aurora’s POV)

My phone buzzed before I’d even reached the door.

I pulled it out. A message from Gavin.

*Decree’s in. Call me when you’re back at your desk.*

。

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