The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 82

Cynthia’s POV

We burst out of the restaurant, the heavy glass door swinging shut behind us with a finality that echoed in my bones. My heart was still pounding from Ethan’s confrontation, his voice cracking across the restaurant accusing me of carrying another man’s child. The audacity of that man. The sheer, blinding nerve.

Lily whimpered against my shoulder, her small body trembling from the raised voices, the sudden chaos. I pressed my lips to her temple, rubbing slow circles on her back. “It’s okay, mon trésor. We’re outside now. You’re safe.”

“Cynthia.”

I looked up. Matilda and Nikolai were crossing the parking lot toward us, moving in perfect sync, as if they’d rehearsed this entrance. Matilda’s arm was looped through Nikolai’s, her fingers curled possessively around his bicep.

“Oh, we see you here again!” Matilda’s voice was bright, too bright, the kind of bright that felt like broken glass wrapped in ribbon. “What perfect timing!”

I adjusted Lily higher on my hip, studying my old college friend. Something was wrong. The warmth I’d once trusted in her eyes had been replaced by something brittle, performative. Her smile stretched too wide, her gaze too sharp. She looked like a woman playing a part she’d practiced in the mirror.

This wasn’t the Matilda who used to sneak cheap wine into our dorm at 2 a.m. and cry with me over failed exams. This was someone else wearing her face acting too sweet like saccharine.

Her eyes slid past me to the restaurant’s floor–to–ceiling windows. Ethan was still inside, staring out at us with the intensity of a man watching his entire world burn.

Matilda’s smile turned slow, knowing, almost cruel. “Oops! The husband is here,” she sing–songed, tilting her head like a child who’d spotted a particularly entertaining fight.

Nikolai’s gaze followed hers. The moment he saw Ethan, something lethal flashed across his face. He wanted to say something but he was cut short by Kevin.

“Let’s go, Cynthia.” Kevin’s voice was low, dangerous. His hand landed on my shoulder, firm, protective, already steering me toward Nathaniel, who stood by the curb with the car keys dangling from his fingers.

I noticed, painfully, how Kevin refused to even glance at Matilda. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, jaw locked so tight I could see the muscle ticking. He looked like a man holding himself together with nothing but willpower.

My stomach twisted.

Last night he’d practically sprinted out of the house the second he heard Matilda was at the club. This morning he’d sounded so happy over the phone when asking if he needed to take me to the university – then, he sounded so gleeful like he had spent the night being worshipped. I’d recognized it because I used to hear it on Ethan’s voice after he came home from Anna.

But now Kevin was treating her like radioactive waste.

And she was standing here draped over Nikolai like a victory flag.

My heart cracked open for my brother.

I hadn’t once stopped to think how this looked from Kevin’s side. How it felt to watch Matilda give Nikolai all her attention. Matilda obviously liked Nikolai.

I made up my mind in that moment, sharp and irreversible.

Whatever pull Nikolai had on me, whatever lingering looks and kind words he said, or gestured he made, I would bury it. I would

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not be the reason my brother’s or my friend’s heart got broken. Kevin had lost enough protecting me. He deserved someone who chose him first, not someone who treated him like a consolation prize.

I would not be part of this triangle. Not even on the edges.

“Take care, Matilda… Nikolai,” I said, voice carefully neutral, already turning away.

Nathaniel had the back door of the sleek black Mercedes open. I slid inside, settling Lily into the car, buckling her with shaking fingers. She was already half–asleep, thumb in mouth, trusting me completely.

Through the tinted window, I could still see Ethan. He hadn’t moved. He stood there like a statue, hands clenched at his sides, eyes burning into the car. Fury, confusion, and something rawer, something that looked disturbingly like devastation.

Good

Let him feel a fraction of what he put me through for eight years.

Let him wonder who the little girl was.

Let him wonder whose arms I fell into at night.

Let him choke on the jealousy he never earned the right to feel.

Kevin hadn’t gotten in with us. “I’ll meet you back at the house. I drove here”

He was gone before I could say anything..

Nathaniel climbed in beside me, closing the door with a soft thud

I closed my eyes, exhaustion crashing over me like a wave.

“Nathaniel?”

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