All Chapters of After The Divorce: Ex-Husband Regrets And Begs Me: Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

218 Chapters

A Child Is Never Guilty

CELESTINE'S POV:The next day, I drive to Wales.I do not know what I will find. I do not know if Elara will want to come with me. I do not know if the family she is living with will be willing to let her go. I do not know if I am doing the right thing or the wrong thing or something in between.But I have to try.Lysander wanted to come with me. He wanted to drive me himself, to hold my hand, to be there when I met Elara for the first time. But I told him to stay. I told him that this is something I need to do alone. I need to see her. I need to talk to her. I need to know if she is okay.He did not argue. He kissed me and told me he loved me and said he would be waiting for me when I got home.I have three cars following me. Security. Lysander insisted. He does not trust Kier's world, even now, even after everything. He does not trust that there are no more traps, no more secrets, no more people who want to hurt us.I do not argue. I let the cars follow me. I let the guards watch my

Will You Be My Mommy?

CELESTINE'S POV: "How is she?" I ask. "She is... she is a good girl. Quiet. A little sad sometimes, but good. She has been with us for close to two years. We have grown attached to her." I look at my hands. My palms are sweating. My heart is pounding. "I want to bring her home," I say. "With me. She is family. She is my husband's child, in a way. She has a brother now, a baby brother. I want her to have a family." The woman looks at me for a long moment. Then she sighs. "We knew this day might come," she says. "Her father paid us to take her. He told us that if anything happened to him, someone might come. We did not know who. We did not know when." "Her father is dead. Her mother is dead. She has no one else." The woman nods. She stands up and walks to the window. She looks out at the garden, where a small girl with dark hair is playing with a doll. "Her name is Elara," the woman says. "She is three years old. She likes chocolate and stuffed animals and the color yellow. She

Promise Me

CELESTINE'S POV:The drive back from Wales takes four hours, and Elara sleeps for most of it.She is curled up in the back seat of the car, her small body pressed against the door, her dark hair falling across her face. She fell asleep within minutes of getting into the car, exhausted by the emotions of the day, by the strangers and the questions and the sudden, overwhelming change in her life.I watch her in the rearview mirror. Her chest rises and falls. Her lips are slightly parted. She looks so small, so fragile, so utterly alone in the world.I think about what she said to me in that house. ‘Will you be my mommy?’ The words hit me like a punch to the chest every time I replay them. She is only three years old. She has no one. She has never had anyone. And she is trusting me, a stranger, to be the person she needs.I do not know if I am worthy of that trust. I do not know if I can be the mother she deserves. But I am going to try. I am going to try with everything I have.Before w

Big Sister

CELESTINE'S POV: We bring Elara to her room. It is the room we prepared for her, the one with the pink walls and the soft blankets and the stuffed animals that I bought weeks ago, hoping and praying that she would come home with us. There is a bed with a white canopy and a bookshelf full of picture books and a window that looks out over the garden. She stands in the middle of the room, her small hands clasped in front of her, her eyes moving slowly across the walls. I watch her face. Her expression is guarded but something flickers in her eyes. I think it might be wonder. "Do you like it?" I ask. She nods. "It is pretty." "You can change anything you want. The color of the walls. The furniture. The blankets. This is your room. Your space. You can make it whatever you want it to be." She looks at me. Her green eyes are wide. "Anything?" she asks. "Anything." She is quiet for a moment. Then she walks over to the bookshelf and pulls out a book. It is a picture book about a litt

The Children of Our Hearts

CELESTINE'S POV:Bringing Elara home is not easy.I knew it would not be easy. I prepared myself for the tears and the hiding and the quiet, wary looks that she gave me every time I walked into a room. I told myself that it would take time, that she would need space, that I could not force her to love me or trust me or even like me.But knowing something and living through it are two very different things.The first week is the hardest.Elara cries at night. I hear her through the walls, the sound of her small sobs muffled by her pillow. I want to go to her. I want to hold her and tell her that everything is going to be okay. But I know that rushing into her room in the middle of the night will only scare her more. So I wait. I sit in the hallway outside her door, my back against the wall, my hand pressed against my mouth to keep myself from crying too.She calls me "Celestine." Not "Mummy." Not "Mom." Just Celestine, the name of the stranger who took her from the only home she has ev

Roses and New Beginnings

LYSANDER'S POV:"Are you a happy baby?" she asks him. "Are you a happy, happy baby?"Alistair gurgles. She laughs. A real laugh. The first one I have heard from her.I back away slowly, careful not to disturb them. I find Celestine in the kitchen. She is making tea, her back to me, her shoulders tense."Celestine," I say.She turns. Her eyes are red."Elara called me Mummy," she says.I freeze."What?""She called me Mummy. Just now. She was playing with Alistair and she looked up and she said, 'Mummy, can I have some juice?'""Did you give her the juice?""I gave her the juice. And then I came in here and I cried."I walk over to her. I wrap my arms around her and pull her close."Happy tears?" I ask."Happy tears," she says. "The happiest tears ever."I hold her. Her body shakes with silent sobs."You are a good person, Celestine Valancourt Ashcroft," I say. "The best person I know."She looks up at me. Her brown eyes are wet."I am just trying to do the right thing," she says."Tha

Athena's Daughter

ATHENA'S POV:A Few Months Later…I give birth to a daughter some months after my wedding.The labor is long. Longer than I expected. Longer than I prepared for. I spent my whole pregnancy reading books and attending classes and convincing myself that I was ready for this. But nothing could have prepared me for the reality of it. The pain. The exhaustion. The moment when the doctor looks at me and says, "One more push," and I think I cannot do it, I cannot do it, I cannot do it.But I do it. I do it because I have to. I do it because my daughter is waiting. I do it because Maxwell is holding my hand and telling me that I am amazing, that I am strong, that I can do this.She is born at 6 AM on a Tuesday and she is tiny and perfect and she has Maxwell's smile and my stubbornness.They place her on my chest. Her skin is warm against mine. Her eyes are closed. Her tiny fingers are curled into fists. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.I look up at Maxwell. He is standing bes

Maxwell's Little Girl

MAXWELL'S POV:The hospital room fills up quickly.Lysander comes first, with Celestine and Elara and Alistair. He looks at my daughter with those gray eyes and his face softens in a way I have never seen before."She is beautiful," he says. "She looks just like Athena.""She has Maxwell's smile," Celestine says. "And I know some of Athena's stubbornness."Athena glares at her. "My stubbornness is a gift."Celestine grins. "A gift to all of us."Elara tugs on my sleeve. She is four now, still quiet, still cautious, but more confident than she was when she first arrived. She looks at the baby with wide green eyes."Is that my cousin?" she asks."It is," I say. "Her name is Isabelle."Elara nods. "She is small.""Babies are very small."Alistair is in Lysander's arms. He is almost a year old, his dark hair thick and his gray eyes bright. He reaches toward his sister, his hand grabbing at the air. He does not understand what is happening, not really. But he knows that something important

Vladimir's Revenge

LYSANDER'S POV: Vladimir Drakon had been quiet since Kier's death and his son Nikolai's imprisonment. That was what worried me. I had spent years in this world, learning to read the spaces between moves, and I knew what silence from a man like Vladimir meant. It did not mean gone. It did not mean defeated. It meant patience. It meant watching from somewhere I could not yet see, waiting for the moment I dropped my guard. I had not dropped my guard. I had informants in places that would make most people uncomfortable to know about. Eyes and ears embedded in the quieter corners of the underworld, people who reported to people who reported to me through channels deliberately designed to be tedious to trace. One of them, a woman connected to a man who is connected to another man who owed me a favour, came to me with news that settled in my chest like cold water. She sat across from my desk with her hands folded in her lap, composed in the way that people who work dangerous jobs learn

Kier's Final Move

VLADIMIR'S POV: I watch my empire burn from a safe house in Eastern Europe. The walls are concrete. The windows are boarded. The only light comes from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. I sit in a wooden chair and I stare at the television screen, watching the news reports, watching my life's work disappear in a flood of red ink and legal jargon and empty buildings. Lysander Ashcroft did this. He did this to me. He did this to my family. My son is in prison. My wife is dead. My allies have abandoned me. My fortune is gone. Everything I built, everything I sacrificed for, everything I bled for, is gone. I should feel something. Anger. Grief. The burning desire for revenge. But I feel nothing. I am empty. Hollow. A ghost in a concrete room. I think about Kier Thornwell. The man who started all of this. The man who came to me with his desperate plea and his broken soul and his willingness to trade everything for revenge. He is dead now. He died in a prison hospital, alone and

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