Mr CEO Your Ex-wife Is Back

6

Chapter 6

Ava

For one terrifying second in that bookstore, I thought everything was over.

Julian's eyes locked onto mine as the book slipped from his hand and hit the floor between us. My pulse thundered violently against my ribs while every instinct screamed at me to run.

But then confusion flickered across his face.

Not recognition.

Confusion.

His gaze swept over me slowly—the shorter chestnut hair, the sharper cheekbones, the colder eyes, the confidence I never used to wear.

I wasn't the trembling woman he buried three years ago. I wasn't Elena anymore.

I was Ava Ross.

"I'm sorry," I said smoothly in French-accented English, stepping back before he could study me any longer.

Julian blinked once, distracted enough by my accent and appearance to move aside automatically.

"My fault entirely," he replied absently.

And just like that, he let me walk away.

I didn't stop moving until I reached the street outside. The freezing Paris air slammed into my lungs as I stood there trembling, staring through the bookstore window at the man who had once destroyed my life.

He hadn't recognized me.

The realization should have comforted me, but instead it unsettled me in ways I couldn't explain.

Because for the first time since leaving London, I understood something terrifyingly clear:

I was finally strong enough to stand in front of Julian Harrington without breaking.

****

I found the news on the television three weeks later. I'd been avoiding it, but this time I turned it on.

Julian's face filled the screen. He stood outside our old house, Sienna beside him, both of them dressed in black. His voice was smooth and his eyes were sad.

"My wife, Elena, has been struggling with mental health issues for years," he said. "The fertility treatments took a toll and she became unstable. Paranoid. She accused people of terrible things."

Sienna pressed a tissue to her eyes. "We tried to help her, we tried so hard."

My sister stood by their side, dabbing at her eyes.

Julian placed a hand on her shoulder. "Elena chose to disappear and run away with her lover, leaving her family, her friends and her responsibilities." He looked directly into the camera. "I hope she realises I still love her.”

The screen cut to a photograph of me. The one from our wedding and another of me supposedly running with my hands interlinked with a man.

I stood in front of the television, my hands at my sides, my face blank. They have buried me alive, and the world was helping them gold the shovel.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, staring at my reflection on it. And that's when I made a promise to myself.

I would make them pay. Every single one of them.

The months after that were quiet. I planned, thinking critically as I made strategies.

Finally, I began letting Daniel into my life and thankfully he didn't bring up Julian. He taught me how to play carrots, taught me how to smile again and I taught myself stop flinching at loud noises.

I requested for personal fders, learning Julian's business, his partner's, deals and his weaknesses. Daniel watched quietly without asking what I was building.

He came one night in winter.

The snow was thick on the ground, the cottage was cold and I'd been sitting at the table for hours, documents spread before me.

“You look beautiful when you're determined.”

I turned to him with a smile as he sat beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“You'd be surprised what an angry woman could do.”

He smiled, and something about his eyes pulled me in. My eyes darted to his lips, and so did his. Before I could think about it, I crashed my lips against his, pressing my body into his.

Daniel's hand slipped to my waist, pulling me even closer as he deepened the kiss. My hands roamed his chest l, traveling down until they rested on the his waist.

My pinky finger brushed the hardness of his c**k, killing all sense of reasoning left inside me.

He pulled back, staring at me with lust filled eyes. “Are you sure you want this?”

“I've never been more sure of anything else.”

That night, Daniel drowned me in a pleasure Julian never gave to me and laying in his arms, the sheets hanging on our waist, I finally spoke up.

“Help me destroy Julian Harrington.”

They will pay with their lives and everything they have…I swear they will.

—

Three years passed.

The night I bought into Julian's company, my finger hovered over the mouse. Daniel stood behind me, he had come earlier that evening with boxes of food and stayed.

These days he always stayed and it was something I now loved.

The number on the screen was large, larger than any I had touched before. It was enough to buy a piece of Julian's empire and kickstart my revenge plan.

I clicked.

Ten percent appeared on the screen first, then the numbers moved to Fifteen, then twenty. I stopped at twenty-five.

I was now an owner of 25% shares to my ex-husband’s company.

Daniel's handslipped around my waist as he pressed a kiss to the side of my neck.

"He won't know it's you," he said.

I closed the laptop and leaned back in my chair. The kitchen was dark, the fire was low and I could see my reflection in the black screen. My eyes were Hollow, my cheekbones were now sharp and my hair was cut short and dyed different. A woman Julian would never recognize.

"Let him wonder," I said.

The shares grew over the next months. Twenty-six. Twenty-eight. Thirty. I bought through different names, different accounts and different countries. Each purchase was small, each trail became cold and each step brought me closer to the number I needed.

The business world whispered about me. I was now a name businesses wanted to partner with even without knowing my face.

Yes… I'd built that much.

Daniel brought champagne on the night I reached thirty-five percent. He set it on the table with a huge smile on his face, holding two glasses. The fire crackled behind us as I looked at the bottle, then at him.

"What's this for?"

He popped the cork as it flew across the room, bounced off the bookshelf and landed on the floor. He poured the gold liquid into the glasses.

"Thirty-five percent," he said. "Largest shareholder outside Julian himself."

I took the glass. "He doesn't know it's me."

"He will, eventually." He raised his glass. "To the woman who built an empire from nothing."

I raised my glance with a small smile on my face as I stared at my reflection through the glass cup.

"To the woman who will burn his to the ground."

Our glasses clinked, the sound echoing in the small kitchen.

We drank as we sat by the fire, talking about the gala. Three months away. Every important business dignitary would be in attendance on Julian's tenth anniversary. The celebration of an empire built on my bones.

I listened, then laid out my plans. Just as we were about to conclude it, I felt a pain that started in my lower stomach. A dull ache I had learned to ignore until it became more intense and it spread.

What the f**k!? What the hell is happening to me!?

I set my glass down, my hand pressed against my abdomen as the room tilted.