The CEO's Ex-Wife

Finding Her

Chapter 7

Jason's Point of View

For a long minute, I was a statue in the middle of full of people. Suitcases bumped my legs. Someone mumbled an apology. I didn’t move.

It was her. Jennifer.

My brain processed the facts: the familiar angle of her jaw, the stiff line of her shoulders, like a wire pulled too tight. But my heart? My heart made this stupid, hopeful leap. It was a feeling I hadn’t let myself have in years. All that time searching for a ghost, and here she was, flesh and blood, telling me I was the one who didn’t exist.

She looked straight at me and acted like I was nobody. Said the man I was asking about was gone. Dead.

Why lie? The question hammered inside my skull.

A deep ache bloomed right under my ribs. This should have been a happy moment. Instead, it just tore the scab off everything. All the old guilt and confusion I’d buried under meetings and mergers came rushing up like bad water.

Did she really still hate me after all this time? Okay, I was awful that last day. I said things I can’t take back. But six years… I figured time would blunt the sharpest edges. Maybe the anger would fade to something softer. Maybe she’d think of me sometimes, and it wouldn’t all be bad.

But the look she gave me wasn’t soft. It was flat and empty. She saw a stranger. A handsome, angry stranger wearing the face of the man she used to know.

I started walking without any direction. My own hotel lobby felt like a foreign place. All I could see was the way her expression iced over the second her name left my lips. The way her hand closed around the little boy’s wrist. Whose boy was that? and then she was just… gone.

I couldn’t let her disappear again. My hand trembled slightly as I got my phone out. There was only one person I could call about this.

James picked up quickly. “Sir?”

“James. It’s Jason.” My voice sounded raw. “I need a favor. I need you to look into someone.”

A beat of silence. He understood. He’s the only one who knew the whole, sad story. “You’ve seen her.”

“She was here. At The Grand.” Saying it out loud made it both more real and more insane. “But she… she didn’t know me. Or pretended she didn’t. She said I had the wrong person. Said the guy I was talking about was dead.”

Another, longer pause. I could imagine him in his tidy study, taking off his glasses to clean them. “You’re absolutely sure it was Mrs. Owen?”

“It was her,” I said, and the certainty was a solid, heavy thing in my stomach. “She looks different. Her hair’s short. The clothes are expensive. But it’s Jennifer. I’d know her in the dark.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Find out everything,” I said, rubbing my eyes. A sudden wave of tiredness hit me. “Where she’s living. What she’s been doing all this time. If she’s… with anyone.” I got the last words out, even though the idea made me feel sick. “I need to know why she’s hiding. Why the act.”

“I’ll get right on it, sir.”

“Thanks, James.”

I put the phone away and stood there on the sidewalk. Having a plan gave me a flicker of relief, but it was drowned out by this huge, confusing emptiness.

Why the performance? Was it just old pain? Or had she truly erased me so completely that I wasn’t even a footnote anymore? That somehow hurt worse than if she’d yelled at me. To be that unimportant…

The honest truth is, I never got over her. Not even close. After she left, Lucy was… there. Kind. Patient. Everyone thought it was the natural next step. I tried to make it work. But it was like looking at a photo of a feast when you’re starving. It looks right, but it doesn’t fill you up. Lucy wasn’t Jennifer. Every quiet moment alone just echoed with what I’d lost.

And now Jennifer was back. Not a memory, but a person. And she wanted me to be a ghost.

The rest of the day was torture. I tried to focus on work. The numbers on the screen just swam together. I called off my last two meetings. I sat in my quiet apartment and just waited, the silence feeling loud in my ears.

When my phone finally buzzed, it was James.

“James. What do you have?” I didn’t bother with hello.

His hesitation told me everything. “The information is… limited, sir. On the professional side, it’s straightforward. Jennifer Carter. She runs a successful software company out of Toronto. Built it from the ground up, starting about six years back.”

Carter. She’d gone back to her maiden name. Owen was gone. That small, foolish hope that she’d kept some piece of us vanished.

“And her personal life?” I asked.

“That’s where things disappear,” James said, and I heard the puzzlement in his tone. “There’s no trace. No social media profiles. No marriage licenses. No… birth records. No home address listed anywhere but her office. It’s intentional, sir. She’s locked that part down tight. The only pictures are from press events, and she’s always by herself.”

By herself. The words should have comforted me. Instead, they felt lonely. And suspicious. What was so important to hide?

“There has to be more,” I said, frustration edging my voice. “The kid. There was a little boy with her. Find him.”

“I found no legal record of a child, sir. No school enrollments tied to her name. It’s as if the boy isn’t real on paper.”

A chill crept in, mixing with the confusion. Why go to such lengths to hide a child? Unless…

I shut that thought down. I couldn’t go there right now.

“Keep digging, James. There’s always something.”

“I will, sir. It will require more time.”

I hung up and dropped into the nearest chair. Outside, the city was lighting up for the night.

So that was it. I found her, but I hadn’t found anything at all. She was a CEO. A successful stranger. A woman who had cut me out of her story so cleanly it was like I’d never been there.

The empty feeling inside me got bigger. But under it, something else set a hard, stubborn knot of determination.

She could say I was dead. She could build a fortress. But I’d spent six years in the fog, and I’d just caught a clear glimpse of her. I wasn’t going to lose my way again.

She thinks the man she knew is gone. Fine. Maybe he is. But I’m still right here. And I’m not walking away.

“You can hide, Jennifer,” I said to myself. And dangerous thoughts began to flood my mind.