All Chapters of From Ex-wife to his Uncle's Obsession : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

(Author’s POV) Tiziana had spent three entire days beside Adelina’s hospital bed, and she had not wasted a single minute of it. She adjusted pillows before Adelina could ask. She brought meals from the restaurant Adelina preferred. She sat patiently through the dragging afternoon hours without complaint, summoning nurses the instant Adelina’s water glass looked less than half full. She played the role of the devoted, selfless daughter flawlessly, with the ease of someone who had practiced it all her life. Stefano came every day. And he noticed. With each visit, his attitude toward Tiziana softened visibly. The careful restraint he usually maintained around her loosened little by little every time he walked into the room. Tiziana noticed every subtle shift and quietly stored each one away. But Adelina herself remained unmoved. What sat heavily in Adelina’s chest was the memory of five hundred million dollars. Not five hundred. Not five thousand. Five hundred million. Money

(Author’s POV) The call came the following morning. Celeste was seated at her desk inside the Aetheris Biotech laboratory, reviewing a stack of printed data reports, when her phone buzzed with Sebastian Argentieri’s number across the screen. “Good news,” he said the moment she answered. “The Argentieri family returned the funds. All five hundred million. The transfer came through this morning.” She leaned back slowly in her chair. “So quickly?” “They moved faster than I expected. Apparently nobody enjoys being on the receiving end of a Sebastian legal filing.” She could hear the amusement in his voice. “Don’t thank me too enthusiastically. I earn a percentage if we win. My motives are entirely selfish.” Celeste laughed softly, and some of the tension she had carried since her meeting with Stefan loosened slightly. “Even so,” she said, “thank you.” “Now that we’ve finished pretending gratitude matters,” Sebastian continued, “completely unrelated subject. A friend ga

(Author's POV) Adelina had been home from the hospital for three days when she heard about the returned funds. She was sitting in the sunroom with a cup of chamomile tea when her assistant told her. She set the cup down, folded her hands in her lap, and allowed herself a brief moment of satisfaction. Five hundred million dollars, returned in full. That meant Argenteri had blinked. That meant someone in that family had enough sense to see the situation clearly. But the satisfaction faded quickly, because the underlying problem hadn't changed. Tiziana was still in this house. Still at Stefano's side. Still, as far as Adelina could tell, fully intending to stay there. Adelina thought about the years Tiziana had been married to Arturo. A long marriage, a wealthy one, and not a single child to show for it. The estate had passed to Tiziana almost entirely. Arturo's share of the family assets, his investments, his properties, all of it, gone to a woman who now wanted to move si

(Author's POV) Stefano went still. “There's not going to be any baby boy,” he said. “But what if there is?” He pulled her closer. “You are always going to be the most important person to me. That doesn't change. Nothing changes that.” Bianca Conti pressed her face against his jacket and said nothing more. He drove home in silence, and the silence wasn't entirely about Bianca Conti. It was about the fact that when he tried to picture giving her a real family — a stable home, a mother who actually belonged there — only one face came to mind. It had always been only one face. He found Adelina waiting in the living room. “Don't do that again,” he said. He didn't raise his voice. “Bianca Conti is already going through the divorce. She doesn't need strangers being paraded through here on top of it. Don't bring anyone else into this house.” Adelina watched him walk up the stairs. She sat with her coffee going cold in her hands, and for the first time since she'd made the call

(Celeste Moretti's POV) Vincenzo got back in the car and set his phone face-down on the console. The door clicked shut. He didn't start the engine right away. “Tonight was a failure on my end,” he said. “A management failure. I'll have a clear answer for you before you walk into work tomorrow morning.” I looked at him. His jaw was tight, the anger in him carefully contained but visible—in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand rested on the steering wheel without moving. Like a man who had already decided something and was simply waiting for the appropriate moment to act on it. “What actually happened?” I asked. “To the door, I mean.” He was quiet for a beat. “Someone jammed a piece of cardstock into the lock cylinder.” He said it flatly, the way you describe something that has already moved past the category of surprising. “Folded, inserted from the outside. It wouldn't have been visible unless you were looking for it.” I stared at him. I thought about last night.