My Husband Chose His Ex I Became His Regret novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88

Chapter 88

Lila

50 vouche

It’s been four days since we moved to the mansion and I pretty much know my way every corner now because I have explored everywhere.

around

I start with the library because it is easy. I can sit there with a book for hours. The house just swallows me up without asking for anything in return. Then I go to the kitchen, which has a window that looks out over the grounds and the lake and I watch the lake change color in the morning. After that I go to the garden, which’s quiet in November but has a special kind of beauty that I know will be amazing in the spring and I walk around it with my hands in my pockets thinking about how I will be here when it all comes back to life.

That thought feels warm in my chest like a coal.

Aidan has been going to work ever since we came here and he instructed me to just soak it in this first week and I can resume next week. Storm Industries is a big deal and it needs him. I have my work, my own phone calls and my own plans for my foundation, which have been quietly getting bigger and bigger. We don’t need to be in the same room to feel close or at least we are learning not to. We are learning a lot of things.

On the next day Aidan takes me to my first big event since our wedding.

It is a dinner for the people who own parts of Storm Industries and it is in a big ballroom in Midtown that has been hosting events like this for a long time. I know what it is before I even put on my dress. It is not just dinner, it is Aidan introducing me to everyone and everyone getting to decide what they think of me. I have gotten prepared for it standing in front of the mirror in my bedroom wearing the navy dress I picked out myself which’s not what people would expect me to wear and that is the point. I have reminded myself of all the times I have walked into rooms and had to prove myself.

I can do this, I deserve to be in this room and I am valuable and a delight to have,

I still think that when we get to the ballroom.

The ballroom is just like you would imagine. High ceilings, big flower arrangements and the sound of two hundred people all trying to seem relaxed and casual. Aidan gets pulled away away which I expected and Thomas appears out of nowhere doing his job and there are people Aidan needs to talk to and Aidan looks at me with a question in his eyes. I answer it before he can even ask.

“Go” I say. “I am fine.”

He squeezes my hand. Then he is gone, swallowed up by the room and I pick up a glass of champagne and I do what I always do. I pay attention to the room.

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A voucher

There is a woman by the window who has looked at me three times in the minute and a half which is more than just casual interest. She is maybe sixty, dressed beautifully with the kind of posture that comes from learning it as a kid and never questioning it. She looks away when I catch her eye but not like she is guilty just like she has seen enough.

There is a man by the bar who is talking to two people and when he turns his body I catch the word “gold digger” which stops being part of the conversation when he realizes I can hear him.

There is a couple in the middle of the room around my age the woman wearing green who smile when Aidans colleague introduces me and their smiles seem real. I make a note of them. Friends or at least people who will not be against me.

Thomas Park appears beside me. I think Aidan asked him to keep an eye on me but Thomas is smart and makes it seem like a coincidence.

“Mrs. Storm ” he says. “How do you like the room?”

“It is informative ” I say.

Something moves across his face something that might be the start of respect.

Thomas and I. He is careful and smart and warm in a professional way and I understand within ten minutes that he is really good at his job and he wants this marriage to work not because he is sentimental but because he has seen Aidan in action for eleven years and he knows that Aidan is better for Storm Industries when I am around.

I appreciate his practicality.

I am on my glass of champagne talking to a fund manager named Daniel, who seems unsure whether to be impressed by me or dismissive and is being very friendly while he decides, when I hear them.

Three men to my left close enough that I can hear them clearly if I keep my face toward Daniel and my attention on them which’s a skill I learned over four years of dinner parties where the important information was always being said just out of earshot.

“She was a nobody.”

“Yeah, Mark Knight nobody, now look at all she is because of Adrian.”

The other man lets out a sound. A small sound that is not quite a laugh.

“He lost his judgment the moment she walked in. You can see it in the decisions he has made over the past months.”

“She will not last ” says the third voice, quieter than the others, which makes it worse.

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Chapter 88

Conviction does not need to be loud.

“We just don’t need her doing more damage before it ends.”

63

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I am looking at Daniel, nodding at something he is saying, my champagne glass in my hand and my face is exactly the way it needs to be and inside me something goes cold and precise the thing that happens when I am being hurt and I decide not to show it.

She will not last.

I have heard versions of that sentence for most of my adult life not out loud but often in the way people act in rooms like this one. The invitation not extended, the introduction not made, the question asked about me instead of to me. I have understood that the sentence is a strategy. If you can make someone think they are temporary sometimes they will leave on their own and save everyone the trouble.

I did not leave.

I am still here.

Aidan finds me twenty minutes later reads my face quickly like someone who has been studying it and comes to stand beside me in a way that says: I am here what do you need.

“Are you all right?” he says, low in my ear.

“I am fine “I say.

He waits, which is something Aidan’s very good at. He has a stillness that is not passive but active, the stillness of a man who knows that silence can be powerful.

“I am fine ” I say again. “I just heard something I needed to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

I look at him. “I needed to know what we are really dealing with. Now I know.”

He holds my gaze and something moves across his face, part concern and part something that looks like the start of understanding what he married.

“Tell me ” he says.

“Later ” I say. “When we are not being watched.”

He nods, takes my hand and holds it at his side not possessively but firmly the weight of: I am not going anywhere.

We spend the hour working the room and I am very good at it. I am, if I am being honest better at it than people in this room because I learned how to do this without any help or

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Chapter 88

May

connections and the skills you earn the hard way are usually stronger than the ones you are born with.

I smile when I need to, ask questions and remember the names of the fund managers kids from something he mentioned in passing and I ask about them at the end of our conversation and watch him change slightly the small surprised shift of a person who expected to be managed and instead was listened to.

I find two people worth knowing. I make two enemies slightly unsure if they have underestimated me.

By the end of the night I have an understanding of this world than I did at the start and that understanding has names on it and some of those names are in the column marked “watch carefully” and some are in the column marked “potential” and one name. The man who said “she will not last” with the quiet conviction of someone stating a fact. Is in a column I do not have a label for yet but will.

In the car on the way home Aidan turns to me,

“The men by the bar ” he starts.

I look at him.

“I was watching ” he says. “I saw your face.”

“My face did not change.”

“Your face didn’t change visibly,” he says. “I know the difference.”

I look out the window. The city moves past, indifferent, doing what it always does.

“They think I’m temporary,” I say.

“They’re wrong.”

“I know they’re wrong,” I say. “That was never the question.” I turn to look at him. “The question is what we’re going to do about it.”

“Whatever you decide ” he says. “I am in.”

I nod. I turn back to the window.

I think about the man’s voice. The question is the damage she does before it ends.

I’m not going to allow myself be treated like a woman that doesn’t matter.

I’m not going to damage my image further or Adrian’s and even the company.

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Tue, May 19

Chapter 88

The city lights move across the window.

I am already planning.

The silence in the car feels different after that.

It is not uncomfortable.

It is strategic.

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