The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 180

Chapter 180

Ethan’s POV

I didn’t plan to follow her.

That was the lie I told myself as I pulled out of the Walker mansion just a few minutes after Cynthia had driven away, keeping a careful distance between our cars like I wasn’t doing exactly what I knew I was doing.

I just needed answers.

That was all.

I wasn’t stalking her. I wasn’t being paranoid. I wasn’t acting like some jealous, unhinged husband who couldn’t let go.

I just… needed to understand.

Because nothing she had said back there made sense.

Cynthia had always been many things but she had never been unfaithful. Not once in all the years we’d been married. Not even when I’d given her a thousand reasons to walk away. Not even when I’d emotionally abandoned her and broken her heart.

She wasn’t the type to two-time.

She wasn’t the type to lie with one man in the morning and smile with another in the afternoon.

So when she’d said, Do you honestly think I would make love to you if I was with Kevin? and then refused to explain, it had lodged itself in my chest like a shard of glass.

If Kevin was really just her boyfriend…

Then what did that make me?

There’s a possibility she may have broken up with him, or something. But I needed to find out myself.

I followed her through the city, watching the familiar streets turn into quieter, cleaner avenues. The buildings became sleeker. The air felt different. More expensive. More controlled.

Azure Lane.

I knew the reputation of this place even without living here, this is where I first met Cynthia in a glimpse inside Kevin Laurent’ car, when I had visited Voss residence to bag a contract.

It was just weird following Cynthia.

She slowed down and so did I.

She turned into a long private drive lined with trimmed hedges and subtle security cameras. I couldn’t follow her in—not without announcing myself—but I didn’t need to.

I could already see the house.

Villa wasn’t even the right word.

It was a mansion.

Five hundred square meters of architectural arrogance sitting behind low, tasteful fencing like it didn’t need walls to protect it.

This was where she lived now?

This was where Kevin lived?

I pulled over just far enough down the road to be invisible but close enough to see through the gaps in the fence.

Cynthia parked right in front of the house.

My hands tightened around the steering wheel as I watched her get out of the car and just in front of her, that same asshole…

Kevin Laurent.

Tall. Relaxed. Too handsome for his own good. The kind of man who looked like he belonged anywhere he stood.

He didn’t hesitate.

He walked straight toward Cynthia as she got out of her car, like he’d been waiting for her, like this was routine, like she was expected.

And then he wrapped his arms around her.

I sat there for several seconds, staring at the closed door of that mansion like it had swallowed something that used to be mine.

My phone buzzed.

I ignored it and I started the engine.

As I drove away from Azure Lane, the world felt quieter.

I was realizing how completely she had already moved on.

And then, as if my mind wanted to punish me further, another truth rose up out of the wreckage.

Grace.

Or rather… the woman I had spent my entire life calling my mother.

Everything I had ever believed about myself was suddenly unstable.

A lie stacked on top of another lie.

The way she had raised me, disciplined me, molded me into the man I was.

Had any of it been real?

Or had I just been a pawn she was grooming for something else?

I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

I drove without direction for a while, letting the city blur past, my thoughts tumbling over each other.

Everything felt tangled and wrong but one thing was painfully clear, though.

Nothing in my life was what it seemed, and whatever Kevin Laurent was to Cynthia…

It wasn’t something I could ignore anymore.