Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 222

Chapter 187: Confrontation

(Author’s POV)

Martha had been up since seven.

Leo was coming home for the weekend, and she’d already mapped out the whole meal in her head – roast

chicken, mashed potatoes, and an apple pie she’d been meaning to make for weeks. She moved through

the supermarket with more purpose than she showed in most other areas of her life, filling two bags with everything she needed, paying in cash at the self–checkout.

When she turned the corner onto her street and saw the figure standing at her apartment door, she

stopped walking.

Sienna was dressed in a cream coat, posture perfect, expression flat. She looked completely wrong

against the backdrop of the peeling door and the cracked concrete step. Like something expensive placed

in the wrong room.

Martha recovered quickly. She always did.

“Sienna.” She crossed the remaining distance with a smile already forming. “What a surprise. Come in,

come in – let me just get the key-”

She fumbled with the lock, pushed the door open, and ushered her inside with the kind of flustered

warmth she reserved for people she was afraid of.

“I heard about the wedding,” Martha said, setting the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “I saw something online – people talking, you know how they are. But I think you’ve done wonderfully for yourself. Really. Much better than anything you’d have had staying with-”

Sienna turned around and slapped her.

The crack of it was sharp in the small apartment. Martha staggered sideways, catching the counter with her elbow. The grocery bags tipped. Apples rolled across the floor in every direction, bumping against the

baseboards and the legs of the kitchen table.

Martha pressed a hand to her cheek. She hadn’t fully registered what had happened yet.

“Neil came to find me,” Sienna said. Her voice was completely level. “He had a paternity test. He wants ten

million dollars.”

The color drained from Martha’s face.

“Ten million.” Sienna looked at her the way you look at something you’ve already decided to throw away. “Because you were careless. Because you left evidence. Because whatever you did back then, you did it sloppily, and now someone has found the thread and pulled it.”

“I – I didn’t have a choice.” Martha’s voice broke immediately. She sank onto the sofa, hands shaking. “We had no money. Leo was sick – the medical bills were I was desperate, I had nowhere to-”

< Chapter 187 Confrontation

“Leo wasn’t born yet,” Sienna said.

Martha’s mouth closed.

“The switch happened before Leo existed. So don’t stand there and tell me you did it for him.” Sienna’s

tone didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. “You did it for yourself. You’ve always done everything for yourself.”

Claim

Martha started crying. The tears came fast and genuine, the way they always did when her excuses ran

out.

Sienna walked to the center of the room and stood over her.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “Once the Rathbones find out the truth – and they will find out, if this isn’t

handled – they won’t just cut you off. They will come after everyone who knew. Everyone who was

involved. You and Leo both.”

Martha’s crying grew louder.

“They’re not a forgiving family,” Sienna continued. “You know that. You worked for them long enough to understand exactly what they’re capable of.”

“Please.” Martha reached out and grabbed Sienna’s wrist. “Please – Leo is your brother. Your real brother.

You can’t just – if you have any feeling at all, any-”

Sienna pulled her hand free.

“My mother is dead,” she said. “She’s been dead for years. And as for Leo-” She picked up her bag from the chair where she’d set it. “I’ve never considered him my brother. I’m not going to start now.”

Martha’s hand dropped. She sat with her shoulders hunched, tears running down her face, apples

scattered at her feet.

“Keep your mouth shut,” Sienna said. “About all of it. Especially around Aurora. She’s not stupid, and if she picks up on anything – anything – it will unravel faster than you can manage.” She moved toward the door. “Do you understand me?”

Martha nodded. She was still crying.

“Say it.”

“I understand.” The words came out wet and broken. “I won’t say anything. I promise. I won’t say a word”

Sienna looked at her for one more moment. Then she unlocked the door and walked out without looking

back.

Downstairs, she sat in the back of her car and opened her compact mirror. She reapplied her lipstick, pressed the powder puff lightly over her cheekbones, and smoothed the line of her coat By the time she snapped the mirror shut, there was nothing left to see.

Behind the closed door of the apartment above, Martha sat alone and did not move. She looked at the

apples on the floor and didn’t bother to pick them up.

Chapter 187 Confrontation

She had spent years telling herself she’d made the only choice available to her. Now she sat in the wreckage of that story and couldn’t find a single piece of it that still held together. Aurora had cut her off completely. Leo’s loyalty, whatever warmth he still showed her, was directed more toward his sister than toward the woman who’d raised him. And her real daughter had just stood in her living room and looked at

her like she was nothing.

She had made herself nothing. She just hadn’t understood that until now.

Sienna, meanwhile, had already moved on.

Sebastian’s office was on the fourteenth floor of a glass building in the financial district. He was on a call

when she arrived, but he waved her in and wrapped it up within two minutes. That was how it always was

with him – for Sienna, he made time.

Comments