Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 164

(Aurora’s POV)

He laughed anyway. “Go ahead and look at me like that. Doesn’t change anything.” He straightened up, but his eyes didn’t leave me. “My blood runs in your veins whether you like it or not. Funny how that works out.”

He pulled up a chair and sat down across from me, elbows on his knees. But his posture wasn’t conversational anymore – it was the posture of someone who had already decided the order of events and was simply deciding where to start.

“Here’s how this works,” he said. “The money you walked away with from that divorce. I want it.”

I kept my voice flat. “The settlement isn’t what you think it is. Any transfer requires me to be free to authorize it. You let me go first.”

He shook his head slowly. “That’s not how this goes. You think I’m stupid enough to hand you back and end up with nothing and a pair of handcuffs?” He tilted his head, studying me again. That look. That same look “Besides. The money’s not the only thing on the table anymore.”

He licked his cracked lips. His eyes moved down my body again, slowly, and then back up to my face, and the smile that spread across his mouth made every hair on my body stand up.

“I’ll let you go,” he said. “Eventually. But first-” he paused, let it sit there between us, “-I’m going to collect a

little interest.”

He stood. He rolled his shoulders like a man settling in for something he’d been looking forward to. He reached out and touched my hair – just the ends of it, just his fingertips – and I wrenched my head away so hard my neck cracked.

He laughed. The sound of it filled the basement.

“I like that,” he said. “That’s good. Keep doing that.”

He called toward the door. “Get in here.”

The door opened.

Martha walked in.

1

I stared at her. For a moment I couldn’t process what I was seeing – my brain kept trying to reframe it, kept

offering me alternative explanations. Then it landed, and the horror of it was a different kind than Neil’s,

quieter and deeper and somehow worse.

“It was you,” I said. My voice came out very steady. “You took Leo’s phone. You sent me that message.”

Her expression flickered. Something moved across her face that might have been guilt, but she straightened her spine and let it harden into something else.

“If you hadn’t insisted on the divorce,” she said, “none of this would have happened. If you’d stayed with

5 Chapky Jasper-”

“Mom-”

*I didn’t have a choice.” Her voice went sharp. “He threatened Leo. He threatened my son. What was ! supposed to do?”

Claim

I looked at her. I felt something go very quiet inside me – not breaking, just emptying out. A coldness that had nothing to do with the damp floor.

She knew. She had walked in here, seen me on this floor, seen the way he was looking at me and she was still holding her ground. Still justifying it. Still choosing him.

The two people in front of me were not my parents. They had never been. They were just two people who had decided I was something to be used.

Neil cut across us. “Enough.” He looked at Martha. “Get your phone out. Camera on.”

Martha’s hands were shaking, but she reached into her pocket.

Neil turned back to me. He crouched down again, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, and something in his expression had shifted – the pretense of negotiation was gone now, stripped away entirely. What was left underneath was uglier and more honest.

“Didn’t think I’d end up with a daughter this pretty,” he said. His voice had dropped to something almost

conversational, which was somehow worse than if he’d shouted. He reached out and touched the strap of

my shirt, pulling it slightly off my shoulder. “She’s a hell of a lot better looking than you were,” he added,

glancing back at Martha without looking away from me for more than a second.

The full shape of it hit me all at once – what the camera was for, what *interest* meant, what he intended

to do and to record and to keep.

Something tore loose inside me. Not panic – something rawer than panic, something that had no name

except *no.*

I threw my weight sideways so hard I toppled off the chair and hit the concrete floor shoulder–first. Pain

exploded up my arm.

I didn’t stop.

I kicked out with both legs, screaming – not a calculated sound, not a decision, just something that ripped out of my throat from somewhere I didn’t know I had. I twisted against the rope until I felt the skin of my wrists tear open, and I kept screaming, kept fighting, because the alternative was unthinkable and I refused, I *refused,* I would not stop until my body gave out entirely.

“Hold her down-” Neil snapped.

I kicked him. I felt my heel connect with something solid and heard him swear, and for one savage second, it was enough.

Cowapter 11 Bev

He grabbed my T-shirt.

The door exploded inward.

Not opened – detonated. The metal door hit the concrete floor and the impact shook the wall. I felt it in my teeth.

Phineas stood in the doorway.

Neil swore and bolted for the back of the room. Phineas stepped over the door frame, and his face was stripped of everything except a cold, focused attention that was more frightening than anger. He didn’t look at Neil. He looked at the man behind Neil and said one word – “Go” – and two of his people moved past him.

Martha’s legs gave out. She went down onto her knees and started talking immediately, words tumbling over each other, explaining, justifying.

Phineas crossed the room to me.

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