My Husband Chose His Ex I Became His Regret novel Chapter 87

Chapter 87

Chapter 87

Adrian

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The mansion sits on three acres. I bought the place months ago, before I’d even said “wife” out loud to anyone, not even Lila. Which pretty much says everything about the way my mind works, sprinting ahead, planning for things I barely admit I want.

Seven bedrooms, original millwork, and a library that smells like wisdom piling up since 1910. Which, technically, is true. The grounds slope down to a small lake, the water turns silver in the morning, gold in the dusk, and does something unpredictable at noon that I can’t describe. It’s the kind of house that feels like letting go.

Lila walked through it for the first time yesterday. She said almost nothing. With her, that means she’s taking it in, every detail. She brushed her fingers over the library shelves. She stood in the kitchen, looking out at the lake so long I lost track. She also expressed her joy on how the house is exactly what she imagined and wanted and her favourite part being the room and kitchen and also the library.

“This looks homey and cosy, like two people that love each other and wants to build a home together lives here.” I know she was comparing this to what she was used to with Mark and how that place never felt like home to her. I’m glad this felt like home for her on the first day.

Right now, she’s upstairs. I can barely hear her, just the soft sounds of her moving through a new space, opening drawers, testing windows, the low groan as she crosses the landing. Learning the functionality if this place. She does it steady, quiet, the same way she approaches anything serious.

I’m in the library with the door shut, Thomas Park and Marcus beside me. I’m finally having the conversation I’ve dodged for nine days. The information on the table is way worse than the hints Thomas gave me over the phone from the Maldives.

Thomas is fifty-one, my chief counsel. I’ve seen him alarmed exactly twice. He isn’t alarmed now. He’s careful, which is always more serious. He weighs every word, knowing how information lands changes what you do with it.

He brought a folder. He sets it down between us, doesn’t open it.

“Start from the beginning,” I say. “All of it.”

So he does.

While Lila and I were away in the Maldives, someone with real resources and media contacts started building a narrative. Thomas is sharp with his word, constructing, not spreading. It’s not gossip, not the background social media hum attached to anyone with a public profile. This is deliberate construction to twist the narrative..

Here’s how it goes:

First-Evelyn Vresh, gossip columnist, writes for three outlets at once. In those circles, everyone knows she takes commissions, not for puff pieces, but for hit jobs packages as impartial reporting. Two payments landed in her account lately, both via a PR firm called Strand Associates. Strand Associates has no clients listed. Thomas traced their registration to a holding company. He hasn’t cracked it yet, but he’s close.

11:21 Mon, May 18 M…

Chapter 87

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Second-three separate sources, totally unconnected, with zero media history, approached three different outlets within five days, all telling variations of the same story. The differences seem random, but the core story stays the same, enough to look organic, enough to show one mastermind behind it all.

The narrative? Lila Stark isn’t who she appears.

She’s not just the woman who rebuilt herself after a tough marriage and found something real on the other side. She’s a calculated operator who targeted Aidan Storm, positioned herself at work, executed a romantic strategy to end up married to me. Her first marriage to Mark Knight, the pain and difficulty the media has documented, gets re-spun. In this version, she wasn’t the victim. She squeezed every ounce of value from the relationship, then bailed when she’d gotten all she wanted.

They flip the script: she’s not the victim, she’s the predator.

I can’t believe that even after everything we’ve gone through, some people still wanted us to pull us down further and didn’t even want to believe Lila’s full story.

I let Thomas talk without interrupting. It’s something I’ve trained myself to do, a kind of boardroom discipline, taking in everything before reacting. I’m usually good at it. Tonight, not so much.

Marcus sits left of me, elbows on his knees, hands knotted, staring at the floor like he’s angry but holding it back.

“So who’s the audience?” I ask, after Thomas finishes.

“Multiple,” Thomas says. “That’s why it works. The social media side hooks the general public, people who don’t know her, won’t question the framing, who passively eat this stuff up. The board messaging is different.” He pauses. “Someone’s nudging board members, not directly, through their networks. That story is more subtle. Not predator, but liability. The question being planted: does Aidan Storm’s judgment hold up when he’s personally involved?”

“Which board members?”

“We’ve confirmed two. We suspect five.”

I glance at the folder. “And the old-money crowd?”

“That one runs on its own steam,” Thomas says. “The campaign gives shape to prejudice that was already there. A woman with her history marrying into that world, they were always going to have opinions. Now those opinions have a story”

The library goes quiet.

The fire I started an hour ago burns, neat and steady. Outside, through the high windows, the grounds are pitch black apart from the security lights, and the lake is a perfect black mirror. This really is a house someone could live in. I brought her here to do exactly that. And while we were on our honeymoon, someone worked six days, piecing together a weapon meant to take all that away.

“Evelyn,” I say.

Both of them look up.

11:21 Mon, May 18 M…

Chapter 87

90

55 vouchers

“The source.” The holding company, the PR firm, the timing, it all points to one name, churning in my head since Thomas called that last night in the Maldives. Evelyn Marsh. Ex-board member, current socialite, media house mogul. A woman who told three people at my firm’s annual dinner last spring that Lila Stark was “a very interesting choice,” with that tone you don’t mistake.

Thomas hesitates. “That’s a big accusation.”

“I’m not accusing. I’m telling you where to dig.” I meet his eyes. “Find the link between Evelyn Marsh and Strand Associates. If it’s there, get it documented. Every step. Before Monday.”

Thomas nods and scribbles a note.

“What do we do meanwhile?” Marcus asks. It’s the first thing he’s said since Thomas started.

“We don’t react,” I say. “Reacting fuels the story. We document, trace. Find the source, map the whole thing, then we act.”

Marcus studies me. I’ve seen that look before, it means he knows I’ve nailed the strategy but he thinks I’m missing something else, still deciding if he’ll say it.

“What?” I ask.

“You need to tell her.”

“I will.”

“Tonight.”

“Marcus…”

“Aidan.” He leans in. “She’s upstairs in your house right now, trying to settle into a life someone wants to rip out from under her, and she has no idea how nasty it can get. You do. That’s not a minor thing.”

“I get that.”

“Then tell her tonight. Share the problems and find solutions with her, you both need to always be on the same page and communicate constantly. You can’t start off by keeping secrets because you want to protect her. It will only push her again.”

I watch the fire. I picture Lila upstairs, her soft movements, learning the rooms, trusting this space. I remember her face when she saw the word controversial at JFK, the way she slipped her phone away without another look because I asked her for one night. She gave me that night.

“She just got here,” I say. “After nine days on a honeymoon knowing something was off but not pressing. She carried her bags into this new house, and right now she’s up there trying to make it hers.” My voice stays level. “I’ll talk to her in the morning. When I know the full story. When I can offer facts, and solutions.”

Marcus leans back.

He doesn’t say: that’s not your call. He doesn’t say: she doesn’t need her information managed. He doesn’t say: I’ve watched you do this calculation before and I know how it goes.

Chapter 87

55 vouchers

He says all that with his expression, not his words. Because he knows me well enough to realize I’ve already run it through my head, weighed it, and pushed onward.

Thomas closes his folder, shakes my hand, promises more by Sunday, asks me to call if anything blows up sooner. His car is waiting outside. I hear it crunching away as I walk Marcus to the front door.

Marcus pauses in the entrance hall. It’s stunning, the original staircase, ceiling high as the sky, a light fixture twenty feet up warming everything below.

“She survived Mark Knight,” Marcus says. “She built herself from nothing. Walked into your boardroom and held her own against people who’d been doing this longer than she’s been alive, and she didn’t flinch.” He looks right at me. “She can handle the truth, Aidan. What she can’t handle is learning later that you had it and stayed silent. That’s the thing that breaks trust.”

“I know,” I say.

“Do you?”

“I’ll tell her in the morning,” I repeat. “That’s my plan.”

He studies me one last moment. Then he nods, steps out into the cold.

I close the door.

The hall settles into silence. The staircase curls up to the landing, and if I listen, I can make out the faint movements, Lila, the woman I married, in the house I bought for us, learning where everything is, deciding if she can root herself here.

I go upstairs.

She’s in the main bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the bed, book open, reading glasses on-she wears them only when she thinks I won’t notice, which, for reasons I can’t explain, feels deeply endearing. She looks up as I walk in.

“Done?” she asks.

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