Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 242

Chapter 242

The stadium lights were already on when they arrived, flooding the field in that specific artificial brightness that made everything look slightly more vivid than real life.

Lucia had not been to a football match months. She had forgotten the smell of it, grass and cold air and the particular mix of food from the vendors along the concourse, and the noise, the crowd filling in around them as they found their seats, the overlapping sounds of people settling and talking and pointing at the field where the players were warming up.

She could pick Lucas out from a distance. He moved differently on a football field than he moved anywhere else, with an ease that was almost unrecognizable compared to the careful measured way he carried himself in the house, in conversations, in rooms where something heavy was being discussed. Out there he was just himself without the weight of anything.

“There,” Monica said beside her, pointing.

“I see him,” Lucia said.

Monica had brought her sketchbook. She was already drawing something in the margin of a half-finished page, her pencil moving while she watched the players warm up, her eyes going back and forth between the page and the field in the quick rhythm she had when something was catching her attention and she could not decide whether to watch or record it.

Lena was reading the match programme with the seriousness she brought to all printed material. Ria had taken the seat at the end of the row and immediately pulled out her phone, not ignoring the match, just managing several things at once the way she always did

Alexander bought four cups of hot chocolate from the vendor two rows down without being asked.

The match started at seven.

For forty minutes everything was exactly what it was supposed to be.

Lucas played well. Better than well. He was fast in a way that made the crowd react with that involuntary collective sound, the intake of breath followed by noise, and the third time it happened Lucia found herself on her feet without having decided to stand up, her hands cupped around her mouth, shouting his name with a volume she had not produced in a long

time.

Monica looked up from her sketchbook at that. At her mother, on her feet, face flushed from the cold and the shouting entirely unguarded. Monica smiled. Looked back at her sketchbook. Drew something.

At half time Lucas’s team was ahead by two goals. The family sat back in their seats, flushed and loud and Lena was describing a specific play to Alexander with the intensity of someone who understood the tactical nuance of it, which surprised Lucia because she had not known Lena followed football closely enough to have opinions.

“When did you learn about football?” Lucia asked.

“Lucas explained it to me at dinner about a month ago,” Lena said, as if this were obvious. “He had a whiteboard diagram”

“Of course he did,” Ria said, without looking up from her phone.

Lucia leaned into Alexander slightly. He put his arm around her shoulders, the warmth of him against the cold of the night air, and she sat in the noise and the brightness of the stadium lights and felt, for the first time in weeks, that the world was simply the size of this row of seats.

Then Kia’s phone rang.

2:04 pm P

Chapter 242-

She looked at the men and her expression changed, the small quick shift of someone who did not recognize the number but answered anyway because she always answered unknown numbers in case they were about work.

She

put it to her ear

The crowd noise around them made it impossible to hear what was being said. Lucia watched Ria’s face instead. Watched the moment the expression went from professional attention to something else, the jaw tightening slightly, the head coming up from the slight forward angle she used when listening on the phone.

Ria stood up and moved to the aisle, one hand pressed to her other ear to block the crowd noise.

Lucia watched her.

Sixty seconds. Ninety, Ria stood in the aisle with her back to the row, saying almost nothing, just listening, and then she said something short and sharp that Lucía could not hear and ended the call.

Lucía watched her.

Sixty seconds. Ninety. Then Ria’s posture shifted and Lucia could tell from the set of her shoulders that whatever was being said had found its mark.

Ria’s voice came through the crowd noise in fragments, barely audible from the row, but her face was fully visible. The jaw set. The chin lifting slightly. The expression of someone who had just been spoken to in a way that required a decision about how to respond.

“I know who you are,” Ria said into the phone, her voice carrying the careful flatness she used when she was controlling something that wanted to rise. A pause while she listened. “I understand that.” Another pause, longer. “Mrs. Lowes, I am going to stop you there. She turned slightly so Lucia could see more of her profile, her free hand pressed against her other ear. “You have called my personal number. My personal number, which means you found it specifically for this purpose. That is not doing the right thing. That is harassment of a different kind.”

A pause. Ria’s jaw tightened further.

“I am not going to pass a message to my mother,” Ria said. “I am not your messenger. I am not involved in whatever dispute your family has decided to continue despite being told by a court to stop.” Her voice dropped slightly, not softer, quieter, the way it dropped when she meant something completely. “My family is at my brother’s football match tonight. He worked very hard to be on that team. We are watching him play. You have interrupted that with a phone call from a number we dja not give you, and I am asking you not to call this number again.”

Another pause. Longer.

Something Marie said made Ria close her eyes for exactly

one second.

“Then do what you feel you need to do,” Ria said. “But do not call this number again.”

She ended the call

She stood in the aisle for a moment before turning back to the row, looking at nothing in particular, the way you looked when you were putting something back in its place inside yourself before returning to the people who needed you to be alright.

Then she came back and sat down

W wapshot Monica asked

Xia locker aber avbe. Not at Monica

2:04 pm PA

Chapter 242-

Marie,’ she said.

POR

The warmth of the last forty minutes shifted slightly. Not dramatically. The stadium was still bright and loud and Lac still on that field and his team was still winning, But something had come in from outside and was sitting as the now wath them now.

“What did she say?” Lucía asked, keeping her voice level.

“That we should do the right thing.” Ria said. “Stop hiding behind lawyers and court orders. That she was going to make sure everyone knew what kind of family we were. She paused “Standard. She did not say anything specific

Lucia looked at Alexander.

Alexander looked at the field.

The muscle in his jaw moved once.

“She called your phone,” Lucia said.

“She called my phone,” Ria confirmed.

“They found your number,” Alexander said.

“Apparently, Dad.”

Lucia sat with this for a moment, her hands pressed together in her lap, the hot chocolate going ouid in the

beside her. Marie had found Ria’s personal number. That was not accidental. That was researched and deliberae and a

direct violation of the spirit of the restraining order even if it was not technically a violation of its lesser

“She is going too far,” Lucia said, and her voice came out low and/controlled and Alexander heard the thing woder control because he always did.

“She is,” he agreed.

“The restraining order should have ended this.”

“It should have,” he said.

Lucia’s jaw was tight. “I want to call the lawyer tomorrow. I want them to know that Marie made contact throug I want it documented.”

“It will be,” Alexander said.

“They are not going to stop,” Lucia said, and that was the real thing under all the rest of it, the time she thought they had finally reached the end of it. That this family was the kind of family

Ria turned in her seat to look at her mother directly.

“They will stop,” she said.

Her voice was not uncertain. It was not performing certainty either, the way people pert to comfort someone. It was the voice Ria used when she was telling the truth as se

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