All Chapters of The Wife He Threw Away : Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

The penthouse was silent. Not peaceful, just silence. The kind of silence that felt wrong. The kind that made the entire penthouse feel too large and too empty. Too quiet. I sat alone on the couch, staring at the television. No assistants, no manager, no publicist. I couldn’t even call Hart because the man was now in police custody. And I wasn’t foolish enough to call him and give Sinclair&co more evidence to prove my connection to him. There were no invitations from brands. No calls. Nothing. Just silence. The television continued playing. Every channel was discussing the same thing: Lucian Dhark. The shooting, Hart Sullivan, the arrest. Not me. Lucian. For perhaps the first time in years, I wasn’t the center of the story. And I hated it. I grabbed the remote and switched channels. Then switched again. And again. Nothing changed. Every station showed Lucian’s face. Every station showed footage from outside the hospital. Every station dis

I had barely slept. The little sleep I managed to get came in broken fragments—twenty minutes here, forty there. Consistently interrupted by hospital monitors, phone calls, and the constant fear that my phone would ring with news I wasn’t ready to hear. But exhaustion wasn’t an excuse. Not today. Today was important. Today was the preliminary hearing. No matter what was happening in my personal life, I was still a lawyer, and this was still the biggest case of my career. I arrived at Sinclair & Co before most of the staff when the city was only beginning to wake up. By the time I reached the conference room, I looked composed and professional. No one would have guessed that less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been standing outside an operating room wondering whether my ex-husband would survive the night. The conference room was already partially occupied. Stacks of documents covered the table, coffee cups sat beside laptops, legal pads were open. Preparation

Lucian was awake. I must have stopped breathing. For one terrifying second, I thought grief had finally broken my mind. He was looking at me! His dark eyes were heavy with exhaustion, clouded by medication and pain, but they were unmistakably focused. On me. Alive. My lips parted before I realized I was speaking. “Lucian?” I squeaked. His gaze softened as he tried to answer. Unfortunately, he could only manage a rasp. His throat was too dry. “Oh…” My hands moved fast, reaching for the glass of water beside his bed. I poured a little more into it, and slipped one arm carefully beneath his shoulders. “Easy,” I whispered. “You’ve been unconscious for days.” Lucian leaned into my support without protest, taking a few small sips through the straw before sinking back into the pillows. “Better?” I asked. He offered a small nod in response. I set the glass down with trembling hands. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. The silence

I woke to suffocating silence. For a long moment, I lay staring at the ceiling of my penthouse, listening to the emptiness around me. Today, there was no assistant bustling through the kitchen. No manager calling before eight in the morning. No makeup artist and stylist asking what I planned to wear. No invitations, no flowers. And worse, no scripts waiting for me. Nothing. The silence felt wrong. It felt offensive. I reached for my phone on the bedside table. The screen lit up instantly. There were hundreds of notifications. My pulse quickened. People were talking about me again, it seemed. Finally! Then I saw the first headline. “LUCIAN DHARK REGAINS CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER BRUTAL ATTACK.” My smile vanished. The next notification. “BUSINESS TYCOON AWAKE AS POLICE BUILD CASE AGAINST HART SULLIVAN.” Another. “CLAIRE MOREAU LEAVES HOSPITAL AFTER DHARK’S CONDITION IMPROVES.” Another. “LUCIAN DHARK EXPECTED TO GIVE FORMAL TESTIMONY SOON.” I star

The hearing had ended hours ago, yet Eva Sterling’s face still lingered in my mind. Not because she’d won. She hadn’t. Not because she’d managed to manipulate anyone. She hadn’t done that either. But it was the desperation in her eyes that stayed with me. For the first time since I’d known her, Eva Sterling had looked afraid. I walked through Sinclair & Co. feeling as though every bone in my body had been replaced with concrete. My heels echoed softly against the polished floor as I made my way toward my office. The case file in my hands suddenly felt heavier than it actually was. The first hearing would take place next week. No more preliminary conferences, no more procedural arguments. This case was finally going to court. When I finally reached my office, I let the thick file fall onto my desk. The sound echoed through the quiet room. For several seconds, I simply stared at it.Months ago, this file had represented the impossible. Irreparable damage. Lucian’s re