Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 277

<Chapter 242 The Unanswered Call

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Chapter 242: The Unanswered Call

(Author’s POV)

The question landed exactly where it was designed to. Jasper couldn’t answer it directly without making an accusation he couldn’t yet prove. He stood there for a moment, jaw tight, and swallowed everything he wanted to say.

“I’ll wait for your call,” he said finally, and walked out.

He didn’t see Serena standing at the far end of the corridor.

She had come down for water and heard voices and stopped. She caught the last half of the conversation through the half-open door – enough to understand the shape of it. Her father had maneuvered Jasper into a bad investment and let Phineas’s team run straight past him. That much was clear.

She stayed very still, thinking about whether she should say something to her father. Warn him that Jasper was furious. That this might escalate.

Then she thought about the way Jasper had watched the livestream. She hadn’t seen it herself, but she’d heard about it from someone in the building – that he’d pulled up the feed, and when Aurora appeared on screen, he’d gone completely still. The kind of still that meant something.

The kind of still that meant he hadn’t let go.

Serena turned and walked quietly back down the corridor.

Back at Aether Life Sciences, Jasper called an emergency executive meeting that afternoon. The room filled with senior managers who had all seen the same livestream and arrived already knowing what the

conversation was going to be.

He didn’t soften it. “Everett Global beat us to market. The investment thesis we’ve been operating on for

the past year is no longer viable. We pivot now or we don’t recover.”

Someone asked about the current research pipeline.

Jasper looked at the department summary on the screen. Since Aurora had left, Sienna’s research division had produced almost nothing publishable. The pipeline was thin. The reports were thinner.

“We’re rebuilding the R&D team,” he said. “Full restructure. I want recruitment started by end of week.” Nobody argued. Nobody looked surprised. They just looked tired and a little scared, and the meeting ended with that anxiety settling over the entire floor like weather.

Across the city, the Rathbone family was having its own difficult afternoon.

Richard had spent the past several weeks watching Phineas’s pressure campaign dismantle his business relationships one by one, and he had arrived at the conclusion that the only path forward was reconciliation. He called Sienna into his study and told her directly: she needed to reach out to Aurora.

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Chapter 242 The Unanswered Call

Repair the relationship. Give Phineas a reason to stand down.

Sienna sat across from him and kept her face composed.

She couldn’t explain to him why that was impossible. She couldn’t tell him what she had done to Aurora, how many times, or in how many ways. She just said she would think about it, and left the room, and stood in the hallway for a moment with her eyes closed.

That night, she and Jasper came home to the same house carrying the same exhaustion from completely different disasters.

Jasper poured himself a whiskey and sat down without taking off his jacket. Sienna sat across from him and waited.

“It was deliberate,” he said. “The timing was too precise. They knew exactly when to push the product to market. They knew our development timeline.” He turned the glass in his hand. “This started the moment I came back into the family’s orbit. The whole thing – the investment, Arthur’s encouragement, the timeline – it was a setup.”

Sienna said nothing.

“I was the instrument,” he said. “They used me to make a point. To Aurora.”

Sienna knew he was right. She knew it better than he did, because she knew what had triggered it. She knew about the fire. She knew what she had done and what it had cost, and she knew that Phineas had been building this particular response for months.

She couldn’t say any of that.

“Aurora is behind it,” she said instead. “She’s been working Phineas from the beginning. Using him as a weapon.”

Jasper looked at her.

“She’s positioned herself perfectly,” Sienna continued. “She has Phineas, she has the family, she has the platform. Everything that’s happening to us traces back to her.”

Jasper was quiet for a long moment. “Serena,” he said finally. “She could be a go-between. If there’s any channel left to negotiate through, it’s her.”

Sienna nodded. “It’s worth trying.”

Jasper set down his glass and said nothing else.

(Aurora’s POV)

I found out about the blocked number from Phineas himself, which was not how I expected that

conversation to go.

William had apparently asked him about it directly – whether he had cut off Jasper’s access and Phineas had told him yes, without any particular defensiveness about it. He told me this the same evening, sitting

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< Chapter 242 The Unanswered Call

on the edge of the bed, jacket off, watching me process the information.

“William knows the whole thing was planned,” I said.

“He does.”

“And?”

“He didn’t say anything else.” Phineas paused. “He won’t.”

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I sat down next to him. The anxiety I’d been carrying since the launch – that low-grade worry about what William thought of me, whether he blamed me for what Phineas had done on my behalf – had been sitting

in my chest all day.

“I don’t want him thinking I asked for this,” I said. “That I went to you and said, hurt them for me.”

“He doesn’t think that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I told him it was my decision.” He looked at me steadily. “Sienna put you in danger. I dealt with it. That’s the end of the explanation.”

“Phineas-”

***

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