My Ex Is My Boss and He Wants Me Back Chapter 21

My Ex Is My Boss and He Wants Me Back Chapter 21

Brian swayed, like he might pass out.

“N… no way… I paid twenty grand for the down payment. That was my money…”

“Twenty grand?” I let out a soft laugh. “You forgot? That twenty grand was a loan from your uncle. He still has the IOU.”

“And I heard the moment he found out you’d offended the Hart family, he filed in court yesterday.”

Brian’s vision seemed to go dark. His legs buckled, and he crumpled to the ground.

Job gone. Home gone. Facing jail time. And now, a debt he could never hope to repay.

Margaret dropped onto the pavement and wailed, slapping her thighs, “Such misfortune! What sin did I

commit to bring such a jinx into our family!”

“A jinx?” I stepped closer and looked down at the old woman who used to order me around like I was nothing. “If you weren’t so greedy, if you hadn’t pushed people too far, you could’ve lived just fine.”

“I gave you chances. You threw them away with your own hands.”

“Did you enjoy your feast?” I glanced at the gutted house, the empty rooms, and smiled with quiet contempt.

“Compared to the fish and shrimp you demanded for a hundred dollars, this multi-million-dollar lesson

should stick with you for the rest of your lives.”

Brian’s eyes turned bloodshot. He sprang up with a roar and lunged at me. “I’ll kill you, you vicious bitch!”

He didn’t get within arm’s reach.

One of the bodyguards kicked him hard, sending him flying.

He hit the ground, spat blood, and lay there like a dead dog, unable to get up.

I brushed at my sleeve contemptuously. “Let’s go. The air here is filthy.”

Once the house was dealt with, the rest was a long legal grind.

The Cole family tried to sell their sob story to the media, crying about how the powerful bullied ordinary people.

But with Hartwell Group’s PR machine and ironclad evidence, they couldn’t stir up anything.

If anything, the internet dug up their own filth and dragged it into the light.

Brian had withheld employees’ wages at work and harassed a female intern.

Margaret had hogged public parking spaces and even stolen neighbors’ packages.

Ashley had abused children at the preschool.

The whole family was rotten to the core.

They didn’t get sympathy. They became pariahs, shouted down wherever they went.

On the day of the trial, I didn’t attend.

Jonathan handled everything on my behalf.

The outcome was exactly what anyone would expect.

Brian was sentenced to five years for deliberate destruction of property, with the amount deemed

exceptionally large.

Margaret, as an accomplice and for causing disturbances, received two years.

As for Ashley, her online defamation was severe enough that she was sentenced to six months in custody.

On the civil side, the court ordered them to pay over six million dollars in damages to the company and to

me personally.

Every asset under their names was forcibly executed. It still wasn’t enough. They were listed as judgment

defaulters.

They would not climb out of this in this lifetime.

The day the judgment arrived, I was in my new office, reviewing documents.

Daniel, my partner now, knocked and walked in.

“Congratulations. It’s finally over.” He handed me a coffee. “No sugar this time. Bitter first, then sweet.”

I took it and gave him a small smile. “Thanks.”

“There’s one more thing,” Daniel said, pulling out an itemized statement. “The full breakdown you asked me

to calculate. Every expense you covered during those three years with Coles.”

I took it and looked at the dense lines of numbers.

From mortgage payments and renovations down to groceries and utilities.

Even the money Margaret spent on toilet paper at the supermarket was recorded, line by line.

Total: $1,435,800.

That didn’t even count what it had cost me mentally, or what it had cost me to waste my youth.

“Send that statement to Brian,” I said evenly. “He can’t pay it back anymore, but I want him to see exactly how long the ‘wife who only spent money’ kept him alive.”

“And,” I pulled out a one-hundred-dollar bill and slid it into the papers. “Add a message. This hundred is the last meal I’m ever buying him. And that bowl of plain pasta? He doesn’t have to pay me back for it.”

Daniel looked at me, amusement in his eyes. “That’s ruthless. But I like it.”

I turned toward the floor-to-ceiling window, the city glittering beyond it.

Ruthless?

Compared to what they had done to me, this was nothing.

If I hadn’t lived through it, I might still be stuck in that mud, swallowing my pride for the illusion of stability.

Now, I finally had myself back.