Chapter 460
“Absurd!” Finnian cursed under his breath, exasperated. “Are you all
blind?”
Quentin cleared his throat. “We’re not blind, but we might have read the situation wrong. We know you’re not that kind of guy, Finnian. You have boundaries. But… you definitely blurred them. You gave everyone the illusion that you were divorcing Kaia to marry Noelle.”
Finnian felt as though he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. His ears rang. He stumbled back a step, blindly reached down to grab his coat from the floor, and turned away. His face was a mask of sheer humiliation as he yanked the door open and disappeared into the corridor.
Julian looked down at his trembling hand. He had just punched his best friend in the face.
He had definitely overreacted.
But Finnian’s behavior was still infuriatingly hypocritical.
“Julian, whatever the truth is, you shouldn’t have swung at him,” Quentin muttered, clapping a hand on Julian’s shoulder. “If there’s a misunderstanding, we talk it out. You don’t hit a brother.”
“He… he played me,” Julian mumbled, the alcohol suddenly wearing off, leaving behind a sharp wave of regret. “He shouldn’t have given me hope just to rip it away. I lost control.”
“It’s fine. Finnian looked genuinely shocked. Maybe there really is a massive misunderstanding here that we just don’t know about,” Quentin reasoned in a low voice.
Chad waved down a waiter to clean up the shattered glass. “Man, what a total disaster,” he sighed. “Finnian didn’t even know he was giving off that vibe, and he had all of us convinced it was real.”
“I refuse to believe he doesn’t have feelings for Noelle,” Julian said
Chapter 460
stubbornly
“There’s a difference between romantic love and familial love. Is it really that hard to tell them apart?” Quentin asked, rubbing the back of his neck. He thought about his own younger sister, who found him so annoying she wouldn’t even grab dinner with him.
Clearly, Finnian and Noelle didn’t have a normal sibling dynamic.
“He just won’t admit it. He’s too much of a coward to own it,” Julian insisted, utterly convinced that Finnian was hiding his true desires.
Quentin chuckled darkly. “Julian, we all know you’re crazy about Noelle. But take a step back. It takes two to tango. Finnian made mistakes, but what about her? Finnian failed to maintain boundaries, but she didn’t enforce any either. If she had shut it down, we wouldn’t be having this
conversation.”
“Exactly,” Chad chimed in. “Julian, I’m not trying to drag your dream girl, but Noelle lacks boundaries, too. She knows Finnian is a married man, yet she constantly uses the ‘sister‘ excuse to hang out with him, grab dinner, and act overly affectionate. It’s inappropriate.”
Chad was firmly Team Kaia. He respected the brilliant doctor and hated seeing her marriage sabotaged. If Noelle was intentionally trying to wreck Kaia’s life, then Noelle was the problem.
Julian froze, staring intensely at Chad.
Chad took a quick step back, throwing his hands up defensively. He knew Julian worshipped the ground Noelle walked on. “Don’t look at me like that! And don’t even think about swinging at me. We’re friends, and friends tell each other the ugly truth.”
“You’re right,” Julian muttered, sinking back into his seat. “Her behavior lately has been way over the line. Finnian is her brother… actually, before all this ‘adopted sibling‘ nonsense, he was her brother–in–law.”
“Exactly!” Chad snapped his fingers. “A widow and her brother–in–law
Chapter 460
should keep their distance. I heard Josephine wanted to send her abroad for further studies, but she refused. Could she have stayed just to make a move on Finnian? After all, he’s the head of the Sanders family now.”
Julian’s brow furrowed, his mind racing as he pieced it all together.
Quentin took a slow sip of his whiskey. “Finnian gave her the management rights to Aethelstan Biopharma. To anyone watching, that looked like a deliberate move to keep her in the country legally and professionally. And then he banished Dr. Chavez to a new startup like Veridian Future. With that kind of blatant favoritism, who wouldn’t jump to conclusions?”

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