My Ex Husband Lost Me To His Rival

Chapter 7 : Invisible records

(OLIVIA POV)

"Fix it before noon.”

That was the only instruction I got. No explanation. No greeting.

The Singapore files were already spread across Blake’s desk when I arrived at seven. Forty pages of merger documentation, legal discrepancies, board communications — work he had dropped on me the same way he always did.

I fixed it.

But this time, before I closed each document, I uploaded it. Every email. Every amendment. Every internal communication that had my fingerprints on it — my language, my solutions, my invisible hand steadying the deal while Blake's name sat at the top of the letterhead.

Ivan had set up the encrypted cloud account two days ago. I hadn't told her what I was putting in it yet. Just asked her to make it secure and say nothing.

She did. And that pause from yesterday's phone call stayed quietly in the back of my mind while I worked.

I copied the last file and closed the folder.

Years of invisible labor. Now somewhere Blake couldn't reach.

"You look busy."

Aria was in the doorway.

She was holding two cups of tea, her black hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a soft cream blouse that probably cost more than my first month's salary before the Sterlings. She looked warm. Effortless. The kind of woman who made domesticity look like a gift she was generously offering.

She walked in without being invited and set one cup on Blake's side of the desk.

Not mine.

I watched her do it and said nothing.

She settled into the chair across from me, wrapping both hands around her own cup, and smiled. "Blake mentioned the Singapore deal has been stressful. I told him he works too hard."

"He does," I agreed.

She looked at me over the rim of her cup. "Nathaniel asked me to read to him again tonight. That book about the little engine." A small pause. "I hope that's okay."

I looked up from the files. Met her eyes directly. "That's fine."

Something moved across her face. She was waiting for more — a flinch, a tightening, any small crack she could widen. I gave her nothing. Just held her gaze with the same neutral expression I used for board meetings and difficult investors.

She looked away first.

"Well," she said, standing, smoothing her blouse. "I'll leave you to it."

She left the cup on Blake's side of the desk.

I didn't touch it.

I took out my phone and called Barr Thompson.

He picked up on the third ring.

"Mrs. Sterling." His voice was careful. It was always careful with me lately. Like a man walking across a floor he wasn't sure would hold.

"I have some questions," I said quietly. "About the contract terms. Specifically the custody addendum."

A pause. "I'm not sure this is the right time—"

"Barr." I kept my voice steady. "I'm not asking you to take sides. I'm asking you to help me understand what I'm looking at."

Another pause, longer. I heard him exhale slowly.

He didn't tell me everything. He was Blake's lawyer first and I understood that. But he confirmed enough. The addendum had conditions. Specific ones. And those conditions required documented evidence of instability or abandonment to trigger.

I had been neither unstable nor absent.

I had been invisible. There was a difference.

"Thank you," I said. "That's all I needed."

I hung up and sat for a moment in the calmness of Blake's office, surrounded by his things — his books, his awards, his carefully curated image of success. Then I opened the desk drawer, took out a small notebook I had placed there that morning, and slid it under Blake's file. Not a story. Just a record.

The sound of the gate made me look up.

Blake's car pulled through the gate just before seven in the evening.

I moved to the window without thinking, staying back from the glass so I wouldn’t be seen.

Blake crossed the garden without looking toward the house. Aria was already outside, sitting on the stone bench with a glass of wine, her face turned toward the evening light. He sat beside her. Said something. She laughed.

I watched for exactly ninety seconds.

I was in the hallway outside the library when Nathaniel appeared.

He didn't say anything at first. He was in his pajamas, hair slightly messy from his bath, holding a book against his chest with both arms. I recognized it immediately. The worn blue cover. The small crease on the spine from how many times we had opened it together.

He held it out to me.

Not a word. Just held it out, his hazel eyes — my eyes — watching my face carefully the way he always watched faces, reading rooms the way I had taught him to without ever meaning to.

I took it from him.

"Come on sweetheart," I said softly.

He turned and walked to his room and I followed.

I read every page. I did the voices the way I always did, the ones that used to make him giggle when he was smaller. Tonight he just listened, curled on his side, his breathing slowing with each page until it was deep and even and completely trusting.

I closed the book.

I sat in the dark, my hand resting on the cover. I watched him until his breathing slowed.

He came to me. With the book. That was enough

Aria could have the bedtime stories Blake witnessed. She could have the garden moments and the tea and the soft performances for an audience of one.

But Nathaniel had walked down that hallway in his pajamas and held out our book without saying a single word.

I stood. Pulled his blanket up. Touched his hair once, lightly.

Then I walked to the door and opened it.

Blake was standing in the hallway.

He had been there a while. I could tell by the way he was standing — not like a man who had just arrived, but like a man who had been watching and hadn't decided yet what to do about what he saw.

His expression was unreadable.

"I didn't know you still did that," he said quietly.

I looked at him for one long moment.

Then I walked past him to our bedroom and closed the door behind me.