All Chapters of The Perfect Wife Walked Away: Chapter 281 - Chapter 290

320 Chapters

Chapter 281: The Watchers

[Marie's POV]The call came at precisely two-fifteen.I was in the bridal suite of the Baur au Lac. The presidential suite, naturally, the one with the view of the lake and the Alps, and the private terrace where the wedding photographs will be taken in exactly eighteen days. The suite was booked six months ago. Long before Adam jumped into a river, long before his coma, and long before the marriage certificate had been signed in a civil ceremony that lasted eleven minutes and involved exactly zero words of love.I was sitting at the vanity when the phone rang. A white silk robe was draped over my shoulders; my hair was pinned in loose curls for the fitting scheduled for three o'clock. The dress — the final dress, the one that had been designed by a team in Paris and adjusted three times since the engagement — was hanging on the back of the door with the cathedral-length veil attached to its hanger.I picked up the phone on the second ring."Report,” I said tersely.The voice on the o

Chapter 282: Love Isn’t Enough

[Marie's POV]"Unaffected. It falls below the threshold of professional influence. Neither your father nor Elias Ballard considered it worth the effort to block a driver position.""Good. Let him keep it." I leaned back in my chair; my eyes still locked on my reflection. "A man who is exhausted and impoverished is a man who will eventually come home. Let him taste the life he's chosen. Let him feel the cold. Let him understand, in his bones, what it means to give up everything for a woman who —"I stopped. The sentence was incomplete, and I knew why. Because the ending I wanted to say — “who doesn't love him back” — was no longer something I could say with certainty. Not after the hospital. Not after the way Alice had sat at his bedside. Not after the way his hand had found hers and held on, as if letting go would mean drowning.It doesn't matter, I told myself. Love isn't enough. Love doesn't pay the bills. Love doesn't heal shattered hands. Love doesn't give a man back his name or h

Chapter 283: Artfully Maneuvered

[David's POV]I didn’t propose to Lily.This was something that no one seemed willing to understand. The accepted narrative was constructed too quickly, too efficiently, and by the time I realized what had happened, it was already the official version: David Newcombe, crushed by his ex-wife’s betrayal, finds solace in the arms of her step-sister, and proposes marriage the morning after the press conference.Melodramatic. Romantic. In the tabloids, the social pages, and the gossip channels that have been following the stories since the hotel photo leak, the story was simply perfect.And yet, none of it was true.That press conference — the one where Lily stood beside me in her elegant white dress, her hand on my arm, her eyes shining with what I thought were tears — was her idea. Her strategy. She said we had to control the narrative, to get ahead of Alice’s accusations before they took hold.“We need to show a united front, David. We need them to see us together, and recognize that I’

Chapter 284: A Gesture Of Goodwill

[David’s POV]I’m driving. Away from this tangle that has snared me. Not to my corporate head office or my penthouse apartment. Not to any place where I’m supposed to be.Instead, I’m heading to Alice’s villa.Because Camilla was crying.The real kind of tears. The genuine, trembling, chest- heaving sobs of a five-year-old child who wants her mom and doesn’t understand the situation.“I want my mommy. Why can’t I see my mom? Is mom okay? Why isn’t mom here?”Her anguish cut deep, and I had to comfort her. I hugged her. I rocked her. I promised that her mother was fine, she was just resting, and she would see her mother soon.My promise tasted bitter because I didn’t have the right to use the word ‘soon.’ I had no right to decide when Alice would see her daughter. I no longer had the right to decide anything in Alice’s life. She wasn’t my wife anymore. She was, strictly speaking, my ex-wife — a woman who had looked me in the eye and chosen her independence.So, I drove Camilla to the v

Chapter 285: Tales Of Medical Adventures

[Alice's POV]The days that followed were, against all reasonable expectations, happy.It was not the wild, electric happiness of fairy tales — not the fireworks and grand gestures and soaring orchestral scores that the movies promised. But something quieter. Days made of small, ordinary moments that accumulated like snowfall, each one insignificant on its own but collectively transforming my landscape beyond recognition.My mornings began with Adam.He would wake before I did. It was a habit from his residency years, he said, when the body learned to function on four hours of sleep and an internal alarm clock that no amount of retirement from his medical years could disable. And by the time I shuffled into the kitchen, the kettle would be boiling. There would be toast on the counter and the ride-share app would be open on his phone, showing the morning surge pricing in District One."Good morning," he always said, and the way he said it — with that quiet, unguarded warmth, as if my e

Chapter 286: No Hiding Any Longer

[Alice's POV]He smiled. That real, unguarded smile that I was learning to live for. "I've had a lot of practice at wanting to be somewhere," he said. "Now I actually am."A week passed. Then two. Adam drove his ride-share shifts in the morning and came home in the afternoon and did his physical therapy exercises in the living room while Camilla ‘supervised.’This meant that she sat on the balance board and refused to move, telling him he was ‘doing it wrong’ with the devastating honesty of a five-year-old. I cooked, or tried to. I read the journals Endall kept sending. I felt the baby grow — the kicks becoming stronger, more insistent, the rolling movements more defined, as if the child was already practicing for the marathon of existence.And I lost even more weight.It happened slowly, then all at once. The same way cancer always progresses. A gradual accumulation of small changes that suddenly coalesce into a reality that can no longer be ignored. My face became sharper, the cheek

Chapter 287: A Battle Declaration

[Alice's POV]"I won't let you die," Adam said. "Do you hear me? I will not let you die. I gave up everything for you — my name, my fortune, my career, my family. And I would do it again tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that. So, I am not going to stand in a hospital corridor and watch you choose a child you haven't met over a life we haven't lived. I can't. Alice, I can't!"His voice broke on the last word. Completely shattered, like glass on stone. The sound of this strong, stubborn, impossible man falling apart on the kitchen floor was worse than any diagnosis, worse even than anything the cancer could do to my body."Adam, you have to understand, I can't give up this baby.”"You're not giving up a baby. You're saving your life. You’re saving Camilla’s mother!”I took his face in my hands. Forced him to look at me."This baby, David's child, is the only good thing other than Camilla, that came out of my marriage. It’s the only piece of that past life that I still carry. And I kno

Chapter 288: Choose Your Percentage

[Alice's POV]I was moved to a room on the oncology ward. A private room. Dr. Ibanez arranged it, perhaps out of professional courtesy towards Adam. The room had a window overlooking the same Alpine view that had been in Adam's room when he was a patient here. The same mountains. The same snow. The same indifferent beauty of a world that did not care whether the people watching it lived or died.I was lying on the bed when Adam came back to the room. He had been making phone calls — to Endall, I assumed, or Camilla’s babysitter. Or maybe to Dr. Ibanez, demanding updates with the ferocity of a man who had been stripped of his medical authority and was compensating with sheer force of will.He sat in the chair beside my bed. Took my hand. Didn't speak."Adam?" I tried."Don't.""I need to know what you saw. On the scans. You saw something."His jaw tightened. His thumb kept moving across my knuckles. A small, repetitive motion, self-soothing, the physical equivalent of counting to ten.

Chapter 289: A Secret Shared

[Alice's POV]Lily was wearing a loose-fitting maternity dress. It was pale blue, cinched below the bust. The kind of dress designed to accommodate a growing belly without sacrificing style. And there was a belly. Small but visible, a gentle curve beneath the fabric that spoke of a pregnancy in its early stages. Three months, maybe. The first trimester just ending.She looked... well. That was the infuriating thing. She looked radiant. Glowing. The way pregnant women in advertisements always look. Serene and beautiful and utterly at peace with the life growing inside them. Her skin was clear, her hair was thick and shiny, her eyes were bright with a vitality that I, lying in a hospital bed with cancer eating my uterus, could not currently summon.Close behind her, with his hand on the small of her back, was David.He was saying something to her, something quiet and solicitous, the kind of intimate murmur that couples exchange in public spaces. His hand moved in small circles on her ba

Chapter 290: Someone Who Has Leverage

[Adam's POV]The corridor smells like antiseptic and despair.I’m standing outside Alice’s hospital room with my back pressed against the wall. I can see her through the narrow window in the door. She’s asleep. She’s exhausted from all the tests, from the sheer effort of keeping a body alive that was determined to tear itself apart from the inside.Fifteen percent.That number echoes in my skull like a death knell. It means an eighty-five percent chance of a world without Alice in it. Fifteen percent means I would probably be standing at a graveside, instead of an altar. The dream I’ve carried for a decade — the church with the lilacs, her head on my chest, a life built from the rubble of our respective disasters — would evaporate like morning dew.But I have made a promise. “Okay. Together. We fight together.”I have pledged to lead the battle with her. To stand by her side, no matter what gets thrown our way.But how did you fight an enemy that also needs a lifeline? How do you wage

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