Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Don’t Be My Mother–1

Chapter 7: Don’t Be My Mother

(Aurora’s POV)

His voice echoed up the stairwell.

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I looked down at him. He kneeling on the landing below, Sienna pressed against his chest, his hands shaking against her face.

I felt nothing.

My mother shoved past me and grabbed my wrist with both hands, her nails digging in.

“What did you do?” Her voice cracked against the narrow walls. “What is wrong with you? She came here to talk, and you pushed her down the stairs? After everything she’s done for this family? After everything I sacrificed to give you a decent life? How did I raise someone like you?”

I looked at her fingers wrapped around my wrist. Then I looked at her face.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t look away.

I grabbed her wrist back. Hard. Hard enough that she flinched.

“I didn’t touch her,” I said. “Do you believe me?”

She stared at me.

“I didn’t think so.” I let go of a short, cold laugh. “But I’ll tell you the truth anyway. I didn’t push her. And I genuinely wish I had. I should have pushed harder.”

“You’re lying.” Her face went red. “I saw it. I was right there.”

“You saw what you wanted to see,” I said. “You always do.”

“You ungrateful, vicious-” She pulled her wrist free and pointed down the stairs. “You’re going to that hospital right now and you’re going to apologize to her. Do you understand me?”

“No.”

The word came out of me like something that had been waiting a long time.

“I did nothing wrong,” I said. “I will not apologize.”

She raised her hand. Then she looked at my belly, and she stopped.

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“Worthless,” she spat, and then she was gone, rushing down the stairs after the ambulance.

The stairwell went quiet.

I grabbed the railing with both hands. The edges of my vision went gray, then darker, and I stood very still until the dizziness passed. Then I took out my phone and called Olivia.

“Come get me,” I said.

Fifteen minutes later, a red coupe screeched to the curb below. Olivia was out of the car before it had fully stopped, scanning me from head to toe the moment I pushed through the building’s front door.

“What happened? You look like a sheet of paper. Aurora, I’m taking you to the ER right now-”

“It’s low blood sugar,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine.” She grabbed my arm and steered me toward the passenger door. “You’re pregnant and you’re not eating and you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

I got in. The leather seat was warm from the sun.

“Livvy.”

She was already starting the engine, still talking about iron levels and prenatal vitamins.

“Livvy.” My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. “The baby is gone. It’s been gone since last week.”

She hit the brakes.

The car lurched to a stop in the middle of the quiet street. She turned and stared at me.

“Does Jasper know?” she asked.

I looked out the windshield. A dry leaf skittered across the asphalt.

“I told him,” I said. “He didn’t believe me. He never believes me. The only voice that matters in

that house is hers.”

Olivia didn’t say anything for a moment. I could feel her working through it, the shock giving way to something quieter and angrier.

“Where do you want to go?” she finally asked.

“The estate,” I said. “I need to get my things. I need to finish this.”

(Author’s POV)

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Chapter 7: Don’t Be My Mother–t

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Outside the VIP wing at Cedars–Sinai, Jasper stood in the corridor and couldn’t stop moving. He paced the length of the waiting area twice, then stopped, then started again. His eyes were dry but red at the corners.

The doctor came out and spoke quietly. Sienna’s right wrist had sustained a comminuted fracture. A cast, at minimum six weeks. Physical therapy after. There was a possibility the injury would affect the fine motor control in her fingers permanently. Her piano playing might never fully recover.

Jasper pressed his fist against his mouth and breathed through his nose.

Sebastian arrived twenty minutes later, still in his coat, his face tight.

“How did this happen?” He looked at Jasper. “She was at Martha Higgins’s building. Why was she even there?”

Jasper said nothing. If he told Sebastian that Aurora had been present, the Rathbone family would move on their own. He wasn’t willing to let that happen. Aurora had to answer to him.

Inside the room, Sienna’s eyes opened. She looked at the ceiling for a moment, then at the two men in the doorway.

“It was my fault,” she said. Her voice was thin and careful. “I haven’t been sleeping. The antidepressants make me dizzy. I just missed a step.”

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Chapter 7: Don’t Be My Mother–7

Chapter 7: Don’t Be My Mother–2

Sebastian frowned. “Sienna-”

“I wasn’t paying attention.” She turned her head toward him. “Please don’t make this into something it isn’t.”

Jasper watched her. Her face was pale against the pillow, her right arm wrapped and elevated. Something in his chest pulled so tight it hurt.

Martha appeared at the edge of the doorway, wringing her hands.

“I just wanted to say–Aurora asked me to pass along her-”

Jasper looked at her.

“Get out,” he said.

Martha left.

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Later, after Sebastian had gone to deal with paperwork, Jasper sat on the edge of the bed

and kept his voice low.

“Why did you go there?”

Sienna looked at her wrapped wrist. “She was going to revoke the patent license. I thought if I could just talk to her-”

“She threatened you.” His voice flattened. “She went after you over a business dispute and put you in a hospital bed.”

“Jasper-”

“No.” He took her left hand between both of his. “I’m not letting this go. Whatever she wants, whatever she thinks she’s owed, I will handle it. You are not going to sit here and pay for her

anger.”

Sienna closed her eyes.

The back garden of the Everett estate was cold. The gas fire pit burned low and orange near the stone terrace, and Aurora stood beside it with a small stack of photographs in her hand.

Polaroids, mostly. Three years of them. Jasper squinting into the sun at someone’s garden party. The two of them at a table in a restaurant, Aurora’s smile wide and unguarded, Jasper

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already looking somewhere else. A family photo someone had taken at Christmas, Rosalind between them, all three faces arranged into something that looked like happiness.

She dropped them in one by one. Then she unclasped the Cartier band from her finger and held it over the flame for a moment before letting it fall into the metal basin.

The gate clicked behind her.

Rosalind walked across the garden in her school uniform, her satchel handed off to the housekeeper with a dismissive wave. She stopped when she saw Aurora.

Her nose wrinkled.

“Crawling back to Daddy?” she said. “I knew you couldn’t stay away. It’s always about the

money with you.”

Aurora looked at her daughter. Then she picked up the last photograph from the stack. The three of them, a proper portrait, taken the summer Rosalind had turned four. She dropped it into the fire and watched it curl and blacken at the edges.

“Crawling back?” she said. “Oh, sweetie. You’ve got it wrong. I’m just here to take out the

trash.”

Rosalind’s face went stiff. She turned and walked back inside.

She came back less than ten minutes later, her arms full.

Her face was red and her eyes were bright with fury. She stopped in the middle of the garden. and hurled the armload of things onto the ground. Stuffed animals, a porcelain doll, a hand–sewn bear with a ribbon around its neck. Every birthday gift Aurora had spent weeks choosing, year after year.

Rosalind stomped on them. Once. Twice. Her small heel came down hard on the bear’s soft

face.

“I hate you!” Her voice cracked across the garden. “I don’t want your stuff and I don’t want you as my mom! Not ever!”

Aurora looked at the scattered toys on the cold stone. She felt the familiar dull ache start somewhere behind her sternum, the one she had learned to breathe through, the one that never fully went away.

She looked at her daughter.

“Fine,” she said quietly. “Then I won’t be.”

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Chapter * Misaal )

Chapter 8: Missed–1