All Chapters of Married To My Ex-Husband's Uncle: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Dante.The numbers on the screen had stopped meaning anything useful twenty minutes ago.That was the detail I kept circling back to. Not the Thursday meeting. Not Victor's last update on Axel. Not the particular shape of Gerald's moves that still wasn't sitting right. The numbers had stopped meaning anything and I'd been staring at them anyway because the alternative was acknowledging why.The front door opened at 9:43.I didn't look up.Her footsteps crossed the entrance hall. I paused at the kitchen. Then continued toward the study. She stopped in the doorway without me turning around to confirm it."You're back," I said."I am."Neither of those sentences carried anything useful. We both knew it.She moved into the room. Took the chair across from my desk and sat. The study was quiet. Chicago pressed itself against the glass."Did Victor find him yet?"I set my pen down."Darwin's phone last pinged near O'Hare." I kept my voice level. "He's either already out of the city or makin

Xena.The line went silent for a few seconds. Multiple questions ran through my mind. Who was on the line? Where was my dad? "You took your time," the voice finally said.. My thumbnail pressed into the edge of my phone case. Once. Then I stopped."Who is this?""Someone who has been trying to have this conversation for quite some time." A pause that held things in it. "You're a difficult woman to get alone with.""I manage.""You do." Something in that made the situation more unsettling. "Your husband is quite charming, by the way."The thumbnail stopped."You met Dante.""He didn't tell you?"It couldn't be? I looked at the wall across from me. The particular patch of it that had been doing nothing useful for the past hour. My chest was doing something I wasn't going to examine directly.Dante had left to find Reeves at the abandoned Yale property. "We haven't had the chance," I said. "Since yesterday.""Mm." A sound that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite anything else. "

Dante.I laughed.It came out before I'd decided anything about it. The short genuine kind that arrives when the brain receives something it flatly refuses to file as real.Xena didn't smile.The laugh ran out of road."You're serious," I said."Yes."I opened my mouth."I'm tired." She said it before I got there. And her tone told me she wasn't in the mood. She sounded like someone who had already argued every side of something before bringing it up. "The family. All of it. It's too complicated and I don't want to be a part of it anymore." A pause that had weight in it. "I want to start over. Find something that's actually mine."Nothing that I could get hold of.No accusation. No specific grievance I could address or dismantle or offer a solution to. Just a woman standing in my kitchen at whatever hour this was telling me she was tired.I looked at her.Then at the pot on the stove.I crossed to the cabinet then pulled out a bowl. Ladled broth into it and set it on the counter in f

Adrian."I understand that," I said. "What I'm asking is why.""Mr. Yale." The officer's voice had the specific quality of someone reading from a script they hadn't written. "Visitation for Ms. Cross has been restricted pending further review. That's all the information available to me at this time.""Further review of what.""I'm not at liberty—""You've said that twice.""Because it's the answer, sir."I looked at the wall across from the desk. The kind of surface that had absorbed a thousand versions of this conversation and retained nothing from any of them."When does the review conclude," I said."I don't have that information.""Who does."A pause. The pause of someone who did have that information and had been instructed about what to do with it."Someone will be in touch," he said.The line went quiet.I set the phone down on the kitchen counter and stood there for a moment. Third call this week. Third version of the same script delivered by a different voice. Pending review.

Axel"The Meridian acquisition closes Friday," I said. "I want the legal team on the documentation by tomorrow morning. Not afternoon. Morning.""Yes sir." Priya had her tablet open, pen moving. "And the Harlow account?""Push it to next week. They've been pushing us for three months. I’m pretty sure a week won't kill them." I closed the folder in front of me. "Anything else."The room did its quiet shuffle as the meeting concluded. Six people filing out with the particular efficiency of a team that had learned not to linger. The door closed.I stayed in the chair.The boardroom had a view I'd spent two years earning. Chicago from forty floors up, the lake in the distance, the grid of the city laid out with the indifference of something that had been there before me and would be there considerably after.I looked at it and felt nothing useful.The tablet on the table had seventeen unread messages. Two from legal. One from the Harlow account ignoring the push I'd just issued. The rest