Rise of the Formidable Ex-wife (Lucia and Alex) novel Chapter 342

14:33 Fri, Aug 7

RISE OF THE FORMIDABLE EX WIFE

Chapter 342

The rain had started by the time Ruth’s car reached the warehouse.

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It came in light sheets off the river, the kind that did not commit to being heavy but was persistent enough to make everything wet and cold and miserable. Marcus was already there. His car was parked at the far end of the concrete and he was standing outside it despite the rain, which was the first thing that told Ruth this was not the meeting she had been expecting.

He was pacing.

He had his hands in his coat pockets and he was pacing in a tight back-and-forth that people did when they could not stay still, when the body needed to be doing something because doing nothing was worse.

Ruth got out of her car.

She had been composing what she would say on the drive over. The progress they were making. The next step now that the boy had been dealt with. The conversation she expected to have.

Marcus walked toward her.

He had covered the distance between them before she had her door fully closed.

The slap was the sound of it first, a sharp crack that went out into the rain and the empty space of the warehouse approach.

Ruth stumbled.

Her hand went to her cheek.

The shock was more than the pain. She looked at Marcus and his face was something she had not seen from him in all the years she had known him. Not the controlled anger she was used to. Something below that. Something that the control had been sitting on top of for as long as she had known him and had not reached before.

“What was that-”

“You tried to kill Lucas.”

The words had no room in them for argument.

Ruth straightened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t,” Marcus said. His voice was very quiet now, which was more frightening than the slap. “You told me it wouldn’t happen. You told me you would handle it carefully. You told me the children were not going to be touched.” His grip closed around her arm. “I gave you one instruction. One.”

“You have no proof,” she said.

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14:33 Fri, Aug 7

RISE OF THE FORMIDABLE EX WIFE

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“I don’t need proof.” He looked at her with the full weight of someone who had known another person for a very long time. “I know how you think. I know the way your mind builds a problem and then finds the part it identifies as the obstacle and removes it. I have watched you do it for years.” He released her arm. “Lucas was never supposed to be an obstacle.”

“He was becoming dangerous-”

“He was becoming clever,” Marcus said. “Those are not the same thing.”

The rain came harder.

Neither of them moved toward shelter.

Marcus turned away from her and looked at the river, and the looking at the river was the thing he did when he was managing something that the direct conversation was making worse.

“Do you know what I saw when I looked at that boy?” he said.

Ruth said nothing.

“Every time Ruth’s people updated me on what was happening in that house,” Marcus said, “and told me Lucas was in his room with his laptop at midnight running searches and following trails and refusing to stop no matter what he found. Do you know what I thought?”

She waited.

“I thought that is exactly what Marco would have done.” He turned back. “He has Marco’s face and Marco’s stubbornness and the same inability to leave something alone when he believes something is wrong. And you tried to kill him.”

“He was going to expose everything,” Ruth said.

“He was going to expose you,” Marcus said. “He had already found your records. He had already followed you. He was days away from having what he needed.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It is not,” Marcus said, his voice cracking across the word. “Because the things you have done in this plan have not all been done with my knowledge and they are not all things I agreed to.”

Ruth’s chin lifted.

“This was your idea,” she said.

“Parts of it,” he said. “Destroying Lucia’s marriage from the inside. Dismantling the life she built. I agreed to that. I agreed to making her feel what it feels like to lose everything.” He looked at her. “I did not agree to a sixteen-year-old boy under the wheels of a vehicle.”

Ruth looked at him steadily.

“They chose her,” she said. “Ria and Lucas and Monica. They chose Lucia over their own father. They stood

14:33 Fri, Aug 7

RISE OF THE FORMIDABLE EX WIFE

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beside her at every turn. They helped her rebuild everything that should have stayed broken. They made it harder and harder to reach her by standing around her like a wall.” Her voice rose. “They are not innocent.”

“They were children,” Marcus said.

“They’re not children now.”

“They were when it started,” he said. “They were when every decision their parents made was made around them and for them, and when Lucia fought to rebuild, she fought for them, and when they stood beside her, they stood beside their mother.” He moved toward Ruth now, and the space between them went. “They were never the target. They were never supposed to be anything. I told you that from the beginning.”

“Marco is dead,” Ruth said. “And the people who benefited from it are living happily in a mansion while his grave has nobody visiting it except us.”

The silence was the loudest it had been.

Marcus turned away.

“Marco destroyed his own family,” he said.

Ruth went completely still.

“He cheated on Lucia,” Marcus said. “He lied to her. He brought Margaret into their lives and he broke something that could not be repaired. He made choices, one after another, that led to that basement.” He did not look at her. “He paid for those choices. And I have lived every day since the phone call knowing that part of what happened to him was what he built himself.”

Ruth stared at his back.

“You’re blaming him,” she said. “You’re blaming your own brother.”

“I’m telling the truth about him,” Marcus said. “Which is different from blame. Marco was many things. He was the best person I have ever known and he was also someone who could not stop making the same mistake until it cost him everything.” He turned. “But none of that touches his children. They didn’t make his choices. They don’t carry his debts.”

He walked toward Ruth one more time.

She had never backed away from him.

She backed away now.

He stopped.

“If Lucas dies,” he said, “I will hold you responsible for it personally.” His voice was very flat. “Not in the way of business disagreements. Not in the way of plans that have gone wrong and require adjusting.” He held her eyes until she understood the difference. “Personally.”

Ruth looked at him for a long moment.

14:33 Fri, Aug 7

RISE OF THE FORMIDABLE EX WIFE

Then she went to her car.

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Fifty meters away, in the shadow of a building that had been assessed as empty and had been carefully entered through a back access point two hours before Ruth arrived, one of Alexander’s security team was still crouched behind a stack of shipping materials.

He had been recording video since Marcus began pacing.

He had photographs of the slap. Photographs of Marcus with his grip on Ruth’s arm. Photographs of the confrontation in the rain. Photographs of Marcus’s face clearly visible in the light from the car headlamps when he had turned during the argument.

He waited until both cars had left.

Then he uploaded everything.

Alexander’s phone vibrated at eleven-forty while the family was outside the ICU.

He almost did not look at it.

Lucia was beside him with her palm against the glass and he did not want to move away from that.

The second vibration.

He looked at the screen.

His assistant’s message.

Sir. Our man followed Ruth. You need to see this.

He turned slightly from the group.

He opened the first photograph.

The warehouse. Rain. Two figures.

He opened the second.

Closer. The woman was clearly Ruth.

He zoomed in on the man.

His breathing stopped.

He looked at the screen.

He looked at the face.

RISE OF THE FORMIDABLE EX WIFE

The eyes.

The jaw.

The angle of the head.

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The posture of a man who had been photographed from forty-five degrees in the rain beside a parked car and was looking toward the woman beside him.

His hand tightened on the phone.

Lucia had turned from the window.

“Alexander.”

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