You Want My Grandma’s $8 BILLION Inheritance DREAM ON! SCUMBAG, Watch Your Empire COLLAPSE Overnight! Chapter 04
xAlex didn’t get home until eleven that night.
He pushed open the door with the watch box in his hand, wearing that familiar smile.
“Evie, did you miss me?”
I sat on the couch and smiled back at him.
“I did.”
He walked over, bent down, and kissed my forehead before handing me the box.
“Open it.”
I did.
The watch was beautiful.
“Do you like it?”
“I do.”
A satisfied smile crossed his face.
He loosened his tie and leaned back against the couch.
“I’m dead tired. I met with three different groups of clients on this trip. Every one was harder to deal with than the last.”
I poured him a glass of water.
“By the way…”
I kept my tone casual.
“You drank red wine on the plane?”
His hand paused for a split second as he took the glass.
Only a split second.
“Yeah. They served it in first class. I just took a sip.”
“Aren’t you allergic to alcohol? You always said you couldn’t drink wine.”
He laughed.
“It was just a taste. I’m fine.”
I didn’t ask anything else.
He went to take a shower.
I stayed on the couch and opened Sophia’s Instagram.
She had just posted something new.
Forty minutes ago.
The picture showed two tiny hands wrapped around a large hand.
The caption read:
Daddy’s home.
There were more than twenty comments underneath.
All from members of the Langford family.
Alex’s cousins commented:
**The babies are absolutely adorable!**
**Alex looks so natural as a dad.**
Every single comment felt like a knife cutting deeper.
So after leaving the airport, he hadn’t come home.
He had gone to the Langford estate first.
To see the children he had with Sophia.
Only after that did he “come home.”
Back to me.
His fake wife.
Water continued running in the bathroom.
I stood up, walked into the study, and opened my laptop.
I logged into Alex’s email account.
He had never changed the pass word—it was still my birthday.
I went through the messages one by one.
Most of them were work emails, so I quickly skipped past them.
Then I found one from three months ago.
The sender was Diane Langford.
The subject line read:
About Evie
The email contained only two lines.
Alex, you and Sophia can’t keep this going forever. As for Evie, wait until she receives her grandmother’s inheritance. She can’t be allowed to take even a single dollar of that $8 billion with her.
I stared at the screen.
My fingers turned cold.
So it wasn’t just my love they had stolen from me for seven years.
They wanted my money too.
Eight billion dollars.
That was the real reason they had kept me around.
If the state’s marriage records hadn’t exposed the truth…
If Julian hadn’t uncovered everything…
I would have received my inheritance and then watched them use that fake marriage certificate to legally take half of my fortune.
I closed the email and cleared the browsing history.
A few minutes later, Alex came out of the bathroom.
His hair was still dripping wet, and he walked toward me wearing only a towel around his waist.
“Evie, why are you still awake?”
I closed the laptop and turned to him with a smile.
“I was waiting for you.”
He smiled, wrapped an arm around my waist, and lifted me up.
“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
I rested against his shoulder and looked at the back of his head.
Suddenly, I felt like I didn’t know myself anymore.
This man…
The man I had loved for twenty-six years.
When he held me in his arms…
What was he really thinking about?
Sophia?
Or the eight billion dollars?