The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 227

Evidence Does Not Expire 

ELIJAH’S POV: 

I read everything. Twice in some places, three times in a few. I went through each document in order and when something required more context I went back and checked it against earlier pages. Mirada had photographed everything clearly and the image quality was good enough to read even the smaller handwritten notes, which was grateful for because some of those documents were old enough that the originals probably would not survive much more handling before something important became unreadable. 

I am not a lawyer and I have never worked in the fashion industry. But I have spent fifteen years reading contracts and agreements in various states of complexity and I know what legal language is doing when it is trying to be clever. When it is trying to make something that is dishonest look like something that is reasonable. 

The original partnership agreement was clean and honest. Mirada named as founding creative partner. A proper profit share structure. Real co-ownership of the creative direction of the house. The language was direct and meant what it said. 

The second document, signed fourteen months later, was a different thing wearing the same type of clothes. Creative consultant instead of founding partner. Profit terms adjusted to terms to be agreed at the discretion of the managing partner. A phrase in the middle of a paragraph that sounded like administrative tidying but was actually a door being quietly unlocked. One that Aldric Voros could walk through whenever it suited him and close firmly behind him. 

He had been planning the erasure even while the first document was still relatively fresh. That was the thing that sat worst with me as I worked through the pages. It was not impulsive. It was not opportunistic in the way that suggests he saw a moment and seized it. He had drawn up that second document with real deliberate intention. He had looked at Mirada across a table at some point, a woman in her early twenties who was pregnant and tired and trusting him, and he had decided calmly and in advance that she was going to disappear from the story he was going to tell about himself. 

There were also press profiles in the folder. Adele had printed several of them. The earliest one was dated four months after the second contract was signed. It talked about the founding of the Voros fashion house. It talked about the brilliant vision behind the first collection, the instinctive understanding of luxury and beauty, the eye that could not be taught. The founding visionary’s name was mentioned nineteen times. 

Mirada’s name was not mentioned once. 

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