The Billionaire CEO Betrays his Wife: He wants her back
Chapter 196: Not my fault I look like her

Chapter 196: Not my fault I look like her

"Right." He waved a dismissive hand. "Go to HR. They’ll assign you to another office."

"Why?" she asked, still smiling, but there was a sharper edge beneath it now. "I like my office. I like working directly with you. Or am I intimidating you, sir?"

She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice. "I happen to look like your ex-wife. But newsflash, I’m not your ex-wife. I don’t know what happened between you two, but you can’t treat me like this because of her."

Ethan’s jaw clenched. His voice came out low, gravelly and venom.

"You’re right. You’re nothing like my wife. I just don’t want to see your face."

And just like that, he turned and walked off, leaving a trail of tension thick enough to choke on.

Aveline watched him go, a smirk curling at her lips. Noted. If he thought he could sideline her that easily, he didn’t know who he was dealing with. One way or another, Ethan was going to take notice of her.

Inside the washroom, she fixed her lipstick with a careful hand, her reflection smirking back. Her phone buzzed, a text.

You need to meet a client tonight. 7 PM. Details to follow. Damn it. She’d promised Stefan a real date. Quickly, she thumbed out a message.

Aveline: Can we meet at 9 instead? Something came up at work. A minute later, the reply came. Stefan: Anything for you. 9 it is.

Aveline smiled at her reflection, a dangerous little tilt of her head. She tucked her phone away, reapplied her gloss, and left the washroom like a queen stepping onto her battlefield.

—

Stefan made his way to his room after replying to the text Aveline had sent, his mind spinning with a mixture of anticipation and dread. The little white pill still sat in the pocket of his jacket, as if it had grown heavier with every passing hour.

He shut his bedroom door behind him, locking it with a soft click.

The jacket landed on the bed with a careless toss, but his fingers found the pill like they were magnetized to it. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, studying it under the light.

Small. White. Unassuming. But Stefan had been a doctor long enough to know that it’s always the quiet ones you should be most afraid of.

He fetched a small, battered medical reference book from his drawer, not because he didn’t already know what it was, but because it felt safer to confirm it with ink and paper. His stomach dropped.

A high-dose antibiotic medication, often used to treat severe illness... but in doses like this? That wasn’t good. Not for someone like Steve, a man who carried everything on his back and smiled through it like it weighed nothing.

"Damn it, Steve," Stefan muttered under his breath.

He debated for a moment, fingers tightening around the pill. He could confront him. Right now. March into his room and demand to know where he got them, why he was hiding them. But another part of him, the part that still saw his big brother as invincible, hesitated.

What if it was worse than he thought? What if the blood test results weren’t clean? What if Steve was already dying and didn’t want anyone to know? The thought made Stefan’s throat tighten.

He pulled out a small Ziploc bag from his drawer, slid the pill inside, and tucked it safely into his locked desk. He wasn’t ready to tell the others yet, not without the lab results. But tonight, after the date, after pretending for a little while that something in his life wasn’t crumbling... he’d get to the bottom of this.

—

Mara sat in her office, the hum of the city outside muffled by thick glass and heavy drapes. The list for the Los Vinania mission was laid neatly before her, names of brave men and women, eager to follow her lead. She should have felt pride. Purpose. But all she felt was a gnawing ache under her ribs.

She’d decided to join the team. After that half-conversation with Rafael this morning, after hearing his voice crack with tenderness through the phone and failing to answer with anything better than "I know," she knew she owed him. She always claimed she could balance it all, the foundation, the twins, the family, love again but balance wasn’t something you claimed. It was something you proved.

And she was slipping.

With a sigh, she picked up her phone, dialing his number, the familiar sequence already etched into her fingertips. It rang once. Twice. Then straight to voicemail.

Mara’s heart tightened. Was he mad? Was this the moment it cracked for good?

She stared at the call log, debating texting, calling again, anything. But the screen dimmed, and before she could work up the nerve, another call came in.

Ethan.

Her jaw clenched. She let it ring out. She didn’t have the room for him and his carefully veiled manipulation right now. But a text came through immediately after, as if he’d been waiting for her silence.

Ethan: Lucy’s court date is in two days. Mom will be back in the country on Thursday. Thought you should know. Mara swallowed hard. Of course.

Because how could she run off to Los Vinania now? How could she leave the twins with everything spiraling here, Steve’s quiet unraveling, Stefan falling headlong for a stranger with a familiar name, Ethan picking at old wounds, and a court date that could drag her family’s name through the bloodied mud all over again or get her the justice she had long for.

She hesitated.

Her name was on that list. She was meant to be on that plane. But duty came in many forms. Some of it you wore like armor. Some of it felt like shackles. And today... It felt like both.

Mara called in her assistant. "Get Gabriel," she said softly. "He’ll lead the team."

A surprised look flickered across the assistant’s face, but she nodded and left. Mara leaned back in her chair, her hand ghosting over her phone again. Still no word from Rafael.

By noon, she’d cleared her schedule. She left instructions. She shut down early.

Because if there was one thing she would claim today, it was her babies. She would pick them up from school herself. She’d be there, the first face they saw when they came running out those gates. And maybe it was selfish, but right now, she needed to hold the only two souls who loved her without expectation.