Hell Hath no fury like a billionaire's Ex

Chapter 140: A Time of Grief

Diane’s POV

An envelope arrived on a Tuesday morning, four days after we’d laid Sophie to rest. I recognized the handwriting immediately...Liam’s careful script, now somehow smaller and more hesitant than I remembered. The prison return address made my stomach clench, but I tore it open anyway, reading through his words with a mixture of exhaustion and indifference.

My dearest Diane... I know I have no right... I’m sorry for not being the man you deserved...

The words blurred together, generic apologies that felt hollow after everything we’d been through. I folded the letter back up and tucked it into the drawer of my nightstand without ceremony.

Four months later, that drawer would be stuffed with similar letters, all expressing variations of the same remorse, the same pleas for understanding. I stopped reading them after the first few. What was the point? Sophie was dead. Mom was broken. No amount of Liam’s prison-cell letters could change that.

The media storm that followed Sophie’s death was relentless. Every news outlet seemed to have their own version of the story—"Custody Battle Turns Deadly," "Sister Dies Protecting Twins," "CEO’s Ex-Wife’s Family Targeted in Home Invasion."

They dissected every inch of our lives turning Sophie’s heroic sacrifice into fodder for their twenty-four-hour news cycle.

Jackson Torres’s death only added fuel to the fire. Found tortured and mutilated in an abandoned warehouse, stripped of identification, his fingers and eyes removed—whoever had killed him wanted to ensure he could never reveal who had hired him.

The brutality of it should have satisfied some dark corner of my grief, but instead it only deepened my sense of helplessness. Sophie would never get the justice she deserved because her killer had been silenced forever.

On the day we buried Sophie, the sky wept with us. The rain came in gentle sheets, turning the cemetery into a watercolor painting of grays and blacks. I stood at the graveside, Dylan sleeping in my arms while Danielle rested against Noah’s chest, and wondered how a life so vibrant could be reduced to a polished wooden box and a hole in the ground.

The turnout was overwhelming. Robert, my former boss, stood near the back with red-rimmed eyes, still feeling down about my resignation, Mr. Guerrero and Natasha came together, their presence a reminder that some people understood the weight of family loss. Even Henry Reynolds appeared, standing solemnly beside Joan, his face filled with genuine sympathy.

But it was the empty space beside me that hurt the most, the place where Mom should have been standing. She was still in the hospital, still fighting to regain her speech and mobility, still living with the trauma of that terrible day. Dad held my free arm throughout the service, his own grief carved deep into the lines of his face.

When they lowered Sophie’s casket into the ground, I felt something break inside me that I wasn’t sure would ever heal. She’d died protecting my children, and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to enjoy all times that were lost with her.

Four months passed like a slow-moving river of grief. The acute pain softened into a constant ache, the kind that sits in your chest and reminds you with every breath that someone important is missing from your world.

....

Mom came home after bring discharged from the hospital, walking with a pronounced limp but walking nonetheless. The left side of her mouth still drooped slightly, and her speech remained slow and careful, but the fierce intelligence in her eyes was unchanged. noveldrama

Dad had transformed his house into a rehabilitation center, hiring the best physical therapists and speech pathologists money could buy.

"Di...ane," she said when she saw me that first day home, the word thick but clear. She reached out with her good hand and touched my face, tears streaming down her cheeks. "My... brave girl."

I collapsed against her, sobbing like a child. For four months, I’d been the strong one, the one holding everyone together while they fell apart. But in my mother’s arms, even weakened and changed as they were...I finally allowed myself to completely break down.

Dad had hired a small army of help for the house. A new nanny named Sarah, who was gentle with the twins and didn’t ask questions about why we all seemed to jump at unexpected sounds. Extra security guards who patrolled the grounds and monitored the cameras. More Housekeepers who worked quietly and efficiently, understanding that this was a home in mourning.

The letters from Liam kept coming with disturbing regularity. Every few days, another envelope would arrive, another attempt at explanation or apology. I stopped opening them after the tenth one, just adding them to the growing pile in my nightstand drawer. Whatever he was seeking through those letters, I wasn’t ready to be part of it.

Noah had been my anchor through everything. He’d stepped seamlessly into my role at Synergy Sphere, handling the day-to-day operations while I focused on healing and helping my family recover. In the evenings, he’d come home to us with the same gentle consistency, never pressuring me to talk when I wasn’t ready, never making me feel guilty for the days when grief hit me like a tidal wave and left me unable to function.

"Take all the time you need," he’d tell me when I worried about leaving him to handle the company alone. "It will still be there when you’re ready. Your family needs you more right now."

The decision to sell the house came gradually, like watching a sunset—slow and then all at once definitive. I couldn’t drive past it without seeing Sophie’s blood on the nursery floor, couldn’t imagine Dylan and Danielle sleeping in those rooms where violence had shattered our sense of safety. The "For Sale" sign went up on and I felt oddly relieved to see it there.

But the house wasn’t the only ghost I was carrying. One evening, when the twins were asleep and the house was quiet, I found myself standing outside Sophie’s bedroom in Dad’s house. Her things were still there—the books she’d been reading, the pictures on her nightstand, the ridiculous collection of stuffed animals she’d never quite outgrown.

I picked up a framed photo from her dresser, one of us from graduation. We were both laughing our heads tilted together, looking more like friends than sisters who’d spent months barely speaking to each other. Sophie’s arm was around my shoulders, and there was such genuine joy on both our faces.

"Why did you have to leave now?" I whispered to the picture, tracing Sophie’s face with my finger. "Now that I’d completely forgiven you? Now that you were finally being the aunt Dylan and Danielle needed?"

The tears came again, as they always did when I let myself really remember her. Not the Sophie who’d betrayed me with Liam, but the Sophie who’d read bedtime stories in ridiculous voices, who’d made funny faces to my babies, who’d died with my daughter in her arms rather than let any harm come to her.

"They miss you," I continued, speaking to the photograph as if she could hear me. "Dylan is growing so fast now. And Danielle... she cries differently now, like she knows something’s missing. Who’s going to do the voices when I read them stories? You were so much better at that than I am."

I clutched the frame to my chest, my shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. "I’m sorry we couldn’t get justice for you. I’m sorry that bastard Jackson is dead and we’ll never know who really ordered your death. But karma caught up with him, Sophie. Someone made sure he paid for what he did to you."

The room felt so empty without her presence, without her laughter echoing off the walls. I sank onto her bed, still holding the photograph, and let myself imagine what she might say if she were here.

Stop crying, Diane. You’re getting my picture all wet.

The thought made me laugh through my tears. She would have said something like that, some perfectly timed joke to break the tension and make me smile despite my grief.

"Please keep watching over them," I whispered to the photo, to her memory, to whatever part of her might still exist somewhere beyond my understanding. "Keep watching over Dylan and Danielle. They’re going to need their guardian angel."

The house around me was quiet except for the soft sounds of a family learning to live with loss. Dad’s gentle murmur as he helped Mom with her evening exercises. The twins’ peaceful breathing through the baby monitor. The subtle hum of security systems that reminded us we were safe, at least for now.

I set the photograph back on Sophie’s dresser and turned to leave, but paused at the doorway for one last look. The room would remain exactly as she’d left it—Dad had insisted on that. A shrine to the daughter who’d died too young, the sister who’d found her courage in her final moments, the aunt who’d chosen love over her own life.

Outside her door, the drawer full of Liam’s letters was waiting in my nightstand. Tomorrow, another one would probably arrive, another attempt at reconciliation from a man who’d lost the right to my attention. But tonight, I wouldn’t think about him or his guilt or his desperate need for forgiveness.

The letters could wait. The questions about Liam’s guilt or innocence could wait. The decisions about forgiveness and moving forward could wait. For now, it was enough to be alive, to have my children safe, to watch my mother fight her way back to health.