Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 302

Chapter 302

Chapter 302

The book was open on page forty–seven.

S vouchers

Lucia had been on page forty–seven for twenty minutes, which was not reading so much as resting with something in her hands that gave her permission to be still. The sitting room was warm and quiet, the sofa comfortable in the way it had been since yesterday’s rearrangement, a blanket across her legs. Through the wall she could hear the distant sound of Alexander- on a call in his home office, the low purposeful voice he used for business, which meant he was close and working and the didn’t need to worry about either.

She turned the page without reading it.

In the home office, Alexander set his coffee down and picked up his ringing phone.

His executive assistant. On a Saturday morning. Already.

“Mr. Kane.” The urgency in his assistant’s voice was one Alexander rarely heard, the kind reserved for real emergencies. “We have a problem.”

“What happened.”

The next sentence changed the quality of the morning.

Someone had leaked the pregnancy.

Not a rumor. Not speculation. Specific details, the hospital name, the number of weeks, the collapse, all of it moving across every entertainment site and business publication and celebrity account at once, with the speed of something coordinated rather than accidentally let slip.

“When?” Alexander said.

“It went live at six this morning. We’ve been tracking it two hours. By the time I’m calling you, it’s already at several million views combined.”

He looked toward the wall, in the direction of the sitting room.

“What are the headlines saying?”

The assistant read a few. Billionaire couple expecting at forty two. Lucia Kane pregnant. Another Kane heir on the way. Alexander listened and said nothing, and the assistant kept going.

“The comments,” the assistant said, hesitating the way people hesitate before saying something they’re not sure they should.

“Tell me.”

Too old. Selfish. The baby was about money, about securing inheritance. She had trapped him. One media personality was hosting a live panel on whether wealthy women in their forties should be having children at all. Three influencers were already building content around the story, and the volume was still climbing.

Alexander’s hand rested flat on the desk. He kept it there, deliberately, rather than let it do anything else.

He thought about Lucia on the sofa. About the doctor’s instruction from the day before, the one he’d been enforcing since they got home. About what stress had already cost her body, the weeks of symptoms she’d absorbed quietly rather than say anything, because everyone else was happy and she hadn’t wanted to disturb that.

“Don’t brief anyone yet,” he said. “I’m coming back to you.”

He pocketed the phone and walked.

12:27 Thu, Jul 16 ) ) M•

Chapter 302

5 vouchers

He’d nearly reached the sitting room door when Lucas appeared from the kitchen, tablet in hand, wearing the expression Alexander recognized from the schoolyard and the lawsuits and every other moment something had come at this family and Lucas had already decided how he felt about it.

He held the tablet out. He’d already seen it.

Alexander took it, looked for a moment, and handed it back.

Lucas turned toward the kitchen, and Alexander heard him call Ria’s name, then the sound of the others gathering.

He pushed the sitting room door open partway, and behind him, from the kitchen, Lena’s voice carried through.

“When does it actually stop? When do people stop putting their hands into our family whenever they feel like it?”

Nobody answered right away.

Then Monica, steady and quiet in the way her voice had become when she’d already thought something through. “They won’t. Not while we’re who we are, and not while talking about us makes money for other people.” A pause. “We already know this. We just have to decide what we do with it.”

Ria, after that. “Mum can’t see this. Not today.”

“I’ll block the alerts on everything in the house,” Lucas said.

“I’ll report whatever I can find,” Lena said.

“I’m going in with her,” Monica said..

Then Lucas again, lower this time, the way his voice got when something cost him to say. “She spent years protecting us from everything. Every fight, every person who came at this family, every night she sat up so we could sleep.” A pause. “Our turn.”

Alexander stood in the doorway listening, then looked at his wife on the sofa. She’d already closed her book and was watching him with the attention she brought to his face when she was trying to read what the day had just become.

She waited.

He crossed the room and sat beside her, tablet still in hand. He looked at it, then at her, and decided against managing what she saw, against choosing her information for her and calling it protection. She had never been someone who needed protecting from the truth.

He handed her the tablet.

She read without speaking, scrolling slowly, her face doing very little, the same face she wore in boardrooms while deciding what position to take. He watched her move through the headlines, then some of the comments, then the panel clip, and waited to see what it would do to her.

She scrolled a little further. Then handed it back.

“You’re not upset,” he said. Not quite a question.

She looked at the window. “Do they really have nothing better to do than discuss my unborn child?” A short, humorless laugh escaped her. “I’ve been judged for most of my adult life. When my marriage fell apart. When I built something after it. When I fought back, when I forgave, when I remarried. At every point there have been people who watched and decided they knew better than I did what I should do.” She turned to him. “If I give my energy to strangers who’ve made a business out of having opinions about me, I have none left for the people actually in my life.” She glanced toward the kitchen. “And I have very good people in iny life.”

Alexander looked at her a long moment.

12:28 Thu, Jul 16 ) ) :

Chapter 302

“I’m not,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Used to it,” he said. “I’m not used to it, and I won’t become used to it. They don’t get to do this to my family.”

He stood, kissed her forehead, and went back to the office.

He shut the door and called his assistant back, his voice carrying the flat certainty of a decision already made.

5 vouchers.

“I want every article tracked,” he said. “Every video. Every post containing confidential medical information about that she did not authorize.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find whoever disclosed this. I don’t care how long it takes or what it costs. I want names.”

“We’ve already started.”

my

wife

“Good. Legal files today. Invasion of privacy. Unlawful disclosure of confidential medical information. Harassment. And for any outlet claiming my wife’s pregnancy is financially motivated, defamation.” His voice stayed completely level. “Every single one.”

A pause.

“Sir, several outlets have already pulled their pieces, anticipating this. Their legal teams know your history.”

“Good. Makes it easier to spot the ones planning to keep theirs up.” He looked at his desk. “I’ve tolerated attacks on my character for years. On my business decisions. On my judgment. I absorbed all of it because I can afford to, and because I chose this life and understood the cost.” He paused. “I did not choose this for my wife. I will not tolerate it for my wife.”

“Understood completely.”

“One more thing.”

“Sir?”

“Find the source. Whoever decided my wife’s private medical situation was theirs to give away.”

A moment of quiet on the line.

“That’s what I was about to tell you,” the assistant said. “Cyber already started the trace.”

“And?”

The hesitation in the assistant’s voice this time was different, someone holding information they weren’t sure how it would 7 land.

“Sir, it didn’t come from the hospital.”

Alexander went quiet, his hand pressing flat against the desk.

“The hospital’s system wasn’t compromised,” the assistant said. “It came from somewhere else. Somewhere closer.”

The word closer sat in the office long after he said it.

“Someone close to our family,” the assistant said.

Alexander stared at the wall between his office and the sitting room, where Lucia sat with her book, her blanket, her very

16

OOOG

12:28 Thu, Jul 16 ) )•

Chapter 302

good cushions.

“Find out who,” he said, and ended the call.

C