Cold Husband Burning Regret: The Divorce He Couldn't Handle novel Chapter 559

Natalie ended the call, sent a quick text, and returned to the hospital room.

Rosemary was signing a share transfer agreement. She handed a backup copy to her lawyer, who stood beside her. “This agreement is not to be shown to anyone, and that includes other members of the Howard family.”

The lawyer nodded. “I understand.”

“Furthermore,” Rosemary continued, “add this to my will. The agreement will only take effect upon my death.”

Both Natalie and the lawyer were taken aback. The lawyer asked, “Madam Jensen, what is this about?”

She raised a hand to cut him off. “No more questions. I have long been prepared for this day.”

At that moment, Genevieve Howard was standing just outside the door, holding a bouquet of flowers.

The words from inside drifted through the crack in the door, each one like a tiny needle pricking her heart.

She quickly pressed herself against the cold wall nearby. Her hand tightened on the flowers, crumpling the wrapping paper.

When her mother told her that Evander was alive and with Charlotte, she knew her fantasy of replacing him was over.

In truth, she had never wanted to replace Evander. She deeply admired her brother. Sometimes, she wished they had been full-blooded siblings. That would have been wonderful…

But hearing the Jensen matriarch put the share transfer into her will, explicitly excluding “other members of the Howard family”—she knew that meant her, her father, and her mother.

But her is a Howard, too.

Even if her parents were incompetent, why should she be punished for it?

Genevieve bit her lip so hard she could taste blood. Her knuckles turned white, and she didn’t even notice the thorns from the rose stems digging into her palm.

It was then she fully accepted the truth she had been avoiding: she had never truly been valued by the Howard family. She had been deceiving herself all along.

Genevieve turned and walked away, leaving a few fallen petals scattered on the floor behind her.

…

“But he was the one behind the Tobias incident, wasn't he?”

Charlotte looked up, a flash of surprise in her eyes, before her gaze dropped. “You know everything?” she asked softly.

“I also know you wanted to help Loretta get out of that engagement. With a scandal this public, there’s no way the Rayburn patriarch would let Loretta marry into the Lowe family. Even if he didn’t say anything, the Lowes would have come to call it off themselves.”

“Nothing gets past you,” she said with a wry smile.

He sighed. “And yet you hide everything from me. That’s what really hurts.”

“I didn’t want to hide it, I just…”

“You were afraid I’d blame you for seeing him?”

“…”

Charlotte paused for a long time before finally confessing, “There’s just so much between us that’s a tangled mess. I thought I hated him, but it seems like that hate was wiped away in the explosion. I used to be the one chasing him, and now he’s acting like I used to. I know he’s changed a lot, and I want to give him a chance, but I also know that giving in too easily would be unfair to everything I went through in the past. So I haven’t said yes, but I haven’t said no either. I guess you could say it’s a probationary period.”