Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Prejudice-1

(Author’s POV)

The French restaurant was quiet at noon, all white tablecloths and soft piano music. Sienna had chosen it deliberately. A place this refined made tears look elegant.

She’d spent three days calling Serena before the girl finally agreed to meet. Three days of soft pleading, a few strategically placed sobs, and a well-timed reminder that they were practically family.

“I just need you to know,” Sienna said, her voice catching, “I am not that person. I would never deliberately destroy a marriage. Never.”

Serena shifted in her seat. “Sienna, I didn’t say you did.”

“But you’ve been avoiding me.” Sienna pressed a folded napkin to the corner of her eye. “I can feel it. Everyone’s been looking at me like I’m some kind of monster.”

“It’s just the gossip online. It’ll die down.”

“It won’t.” Sienna set down her glass. “Not while Aurora keeps feeding it.”

“Aurora?”

“Jasper’s wife.” Sienna exhaled. “Or she was. She made my life impossible from the day I became a widow. Simply because I was a single woman near her husband. That was my crime.”

Serena frowned. “What did she do?”

“She banned me from the family vacation house. Completely. I found out from the housekeeper.” Sienna’s lip trembled. “At family dinners, she’d give me these looks, these cold, cutting looks, and then the moment I tried to have a normal conversation with Jasper, she’d lose her mind. Screaming that we were having an affair, threatening to call a divorce lawyer, threatening to move into a hotel. Drama, every single time.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“And then she’d go online and post things. Vague enough to deny, specific enough that everyone knew who she meant.” Sienna shook her head. “Victoria and Jasper tried to defend me, and that only made her worse.”

Serena leaned back, arm

crossed, but her expression had softened.

“And poor Rosalind,” Sienna continued, her voice dropping. “That little girl adored her mother once. But Aurora was never there. No school pickups, no bedtime stories, nothing. I was the one who

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Chapter 23 Peutice 1

showed up. I was the one who took her to the park and sat with her when she had nightmares.”

She looked up at Serena. “Is it so strange that the child gravitates toward someone who actually pays attention to her?”

“No,” Serena admitted. “That makes sense.”

“I just want people to know the truth.” Sienna dabbed her eye again. “That’s all.”

Serena was quiet for a moment. “What did you say her name was? Aurora?”

“Aurora, yes. Aurora Caldwell.”

Serena went still.

She pulled out her phone and navigated to the internal HR portal. She found the new hire file for the Bio-Tech division and turned the screen toward Sienna.

“Is this her?”

Sienna looked at the photo. The color drained from her face so fast that Serena actually leaned forward.

“That’s her,” Sienna said quietly.

“She started yesterday. In our R&D lab. Level 5 clearance.”

Sienna said nothing for a moment. Her hand tightened around her champagne flute. She was thinking about the gala, about the way Phineas had stepped in front of Aurora, his voice dropping to something quiet and deliberate. *She’s with me.*

She forced a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s impossible. Aurora was Jasper’s Executive Assistant. She scheduled meetings, ordered his coffee, managed his calendar. She tried to get into the research side of things at Aether Life Sciences once, and Jasper had to turn her down. She simply didn’t have the background for it.”

Serena’s eyes narrowed. “So how is she in our top lab?”

Sienna tilted her head, letting the implication settle on its own.

She didn’t need to say the words out loud. Serena was already connecting the dots, and the picture she was drawing was exactly what Sienna wanted.

“Someone let her in,” Serena said flatly. “Someone who wasn’t thinking with his head.”

Sienna looked away, as if she found the whole couldn’t say.”

Serena pushed back her chair. “I can.”

ning too distasteful to discuss further. “I really

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The lunch ended there.

Serena walked into the R&D building with her jaw set and her heels hitting the floor hard. She didn’t stop at reception. She went straight to Harrison’s office and pushed the door open.

Harrison looked up from his monitor. “Serena.”

“I want to talk about your newest hire. Aurora Caldwell.”

“What about her?”

“What about her qualifications? What about how she got through the screening process?” Serena put both hands on the edge of his desk. “Did someone make a call on her behalf? Did she make a very compelling personal argument for her own hiring?”

Harrison’s expression went flat. “She completed the technical assessment. Full marks on the genomic sequencing evaluation. She corrected a data error yesterday that my team had missed for two weeks.”

“That’s convenient.”

“That’s competence.” Harrison stood up. “And I’d remind you that Phineas made it explicitly clear – administrative staff do not have authority over R&D hiring decisions. That boundary exists for a

reason.”

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Chapter 23: Prejudice-2

“She’s a glorified coffee runner who put on a lab coat.”

“She is a senior researcher,” Harrison said, his voice cooling several degrees, “hired through the proper process, with results on her first day that justify every step of it. If you have a formal complaint, take it upstairs. I’m done with this conversation.”

Serena stared at him. He had already turned back to his screen.

She left.

The executive elevator up to the top floor felt too slow. She stepped into Phineas’s outer office, told his assistant it was urgent, and was waved through before she could second-guess herself. Phineas was standing at the window with a document in his hand. He didn’t turn around when she walked in.

“I want to talk about the new researcher in Bio-Tech,” Serena said.

He turned then. His eyes were already sharp.

“She dressed like she was going to a cocktail party, not a lab,” Serena pressed. “She looked completely out of place. I don’t know what Harrison was thinking, or who put pressure on him, but someone like that has no business being in our core division. She’s not credible.”

“Her name,” Phineas said.

“Aurora Caldwell.”

The temperature in the room didn’t change, but something in Phineas’s expression did. It became very still.

“You are judging a researcher’s scientific ability based on what she was wearing.”

“I’m saying it raises questions about how she-”

“I conducted her final interview,” Phineas said. “Personally.”

Serena stopped.

“So when you suggest she lacks credibility,” he continued, “you are suggesting I lack judgment. Is that the argument you want to make to me right now?”

“I just thought-”

“Go back to your office.” He picked up his document again. “And think carefully about who has

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been filling your head with this kind of thinking.”

Serena’s eyes stung. She blinked hard and turned for the door.

Arthur was standing in the doorway.

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