Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 315

10:50 Thu, Jul 23

Chapter 315

Chapter 315

Lucia and Alexander left the hospital in silence.

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Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Outside the car window, ordinary life kept moving past, a mother pushing a stroller, two kids chasing each other around a lamppost, someone laughing into a phone at a bus stop. All of it fo normal it almost hurt to watch.

eached over and took her hand.

et going?”

her head. “No.” A pause, her eyes still on the window. “I think we both needed that.”

n’t answer right away, just kept driving, his thumb moving once over the back of her hand.

ra while Lucia spoke again, quieter this time, like she was admitting something she hadn’t planned to say our loud

eeing her like that scared me. Not because of who she is. Because of what it reminded me of She swallowed. “One day omeone is fine. The next day everything is different. Just like that.”

Her hand moved to her stomach without her deciding to send it there.

Alexander noticed immediately. He covered her hand with his, gentle, his palin warm over hers.

“We’re going to protect this little one,” he said.

She smiled, small and real, and for a moment the fear loosened its grip just enough to let something softer in

When they got home the house was warm with the sound of the kids somewhere upstairs. Monica came down first, took one look at her mother’s face, and asked, “How did it go?”

Lucia told them she’d gone to see Margaret. The room went quiet in the way it does when nobody expects the answer they just heard.

She kept it simple. She didn

voice or the way her own

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nt from how he usually talked, shower, like he’d been sitting with a to

1. “But knowing she’s lying He stopped airtel scam. Tilon’t the her! arry the anger around forever lanhausung

ing sertle in her chuc quilt and proud, the kind of fooling that isn’est sang

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10:50 Thu, Jul 23 d t ) •

Chapter 315

“I saw that,” Monica said.

“Saw what,” Lena said, already sliding the piece back like it had always been there.

55 vol

Alexander appointed himself referee, which mostly meant taking Lena’s side whenever it amused him to. The laughter came easy after that, spilling across the table, filling up the room in a way that made the earlier heaviness feel like it belonged to a different day entirely.

Lucia sat back at one point and just watched them. Her family Loud and imperfect and completely hers. She thought o how close she had come to losing pieces of this without even knowing it, how easily a life could tilt sideways while you wer busy assuming it would stay steady

This was what she had almost lost. Not the company. Not the house. This.

Later that night, long after the game had ended and the house had gone quiet, Lucia couldn’t sleep. She slipped out of bed/ carefully so she wouldn’t wake Alexander and walked down the hall to the nursery.

The room was still half finished, paint samples taped to one wall, a crib standing empty in the copter, waiting. She stood in the doorway for a moment before she crossed to it and rested both hands on the rail, her fingers curling slowly around the smooth wood.

She let herself imagine it. A small weight in her arms. A cry in the middle of the night that she would get up for without a second thought. A tiny hand wrapping around her finger the way hands do at that age, tight and trusting and unaware of everything it didn’t yet have to be afraid of.

She didn’t hear Alexander come in.

He draped a blanket over her shoulders from behind, and she leaned back into him without turning around, letting the warmth of it settle over her.

“For so many years,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I fought just to survive.”

He waited, his hand resting lightly on her arm.

“Now I just want to live.”

Then let’s live,” he said.

He came around and knelt in front of her, right there in the half painted nursery, and placed his und gently agaitisa her, stomach like he was asking permission for something

“Little one,” he said, quiet enough that it felt like it belonged only to the three of them in that room. “You’ve already hangost this family And you haven’t even been born yet

Lucia pressed her hand over his and felt the tours come, not the kind that fates, the other limh tkind that come when something finally feel like it’s allowed to be good

Liste dood there in the aided sursery with her husbily haja tides bets the singly continually in the curren

and for the first five in longer than the sould eldly remember, the ad

medung to race ag

thing worth walking toward

They inre still standing there, horfand

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10:50 Thu, Jul 23 do.

Chapter 315

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Lucia watched his face change before he’d said more than a few words back into the phone. Whatever warmth had been sitting there a moment ago drained out of it slowly, replaced by something careful and still.

“Alexander?”

He didn’t answer her yet. He was listening, his jaw tightening a fraction with every second that passed.

The voice on the other end was too quiet for her to make out the words, just the shape of a sentence, then another, the obstetrician’s tone even and professional in the specific way doctors kept their voices even when they were about to say something that mattered.

“I understand,” Alexander said. “We’ll be there.”

He lowered the phone slowly.

“Alexander,” Lucia said again, her hand instinctively pressing flatter against her stomach. “What is it?

He looked at her for a moment without answering, like he was still working out how to say it, or whether saying it now would only frighten her before there was anything to actually be afraid of.

“That was Dr. Reyes,” he said finally. “Your latest blood test came back with something unexpected. She wants us both at the hospital first thing tomorrow morning.”

Neither of them said anything else.

The nursery sat around them, half painted, quiet, the empty crib still waiting in the corner exactly as it had been a minute ago, and yet the whole room felt different now than it had a moment before.

Lucia looked at her husband, and he looked back at her, and for once neither of them had the words to fill the silence between them.

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10:50 Thu, Jul 23 d t )