Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 296

Chapter 283. Maria’s Call

SEDONA

Maria called on a Thursday afternoon, the middle of an ordinary week. It had

simply become my life somewhere along the way, to see Nick at school. The garden was bright with early summer. It was a very unremarkable period of days that no longer required bracing for the next crisis.

“I have actual good news,” she said, by way of greeting. It is the kind of good news I haven’t given, and I’m sure you will like it.”

“Go ahead and tell me, I’m listening,” I said.

“Your ranking’s climbing,” she said. “Fast. The last two tournaments, your results, combined with the fact that you’re playing healthier and more consistently than you have in years, the circuit’s taking notice. I’ve had three different tournament directors reach out this week alone, all wanting to extend invitations for the fall season. One of them is the Western Classic. That’s not a minor stop, Sedona. That’s a major event.”

I sat down slowly at the kitchen table, taking this information in.

“They want me,” I said.

“They want you,” Maria confirmed. And I want to be honest about it. Because I think you deserve to hear the full story. The narrative around you has shifted completely. Now, after everything came out. This is because of the custody ruling, Logan’s plea, and the full picture of what actually happened; the comeback story people once tried to weaponize against you is now being told accurately. Sympathetically. There’s real public goodwill toward you right now, Sedona, the kind that doesn’t come along often in this sport.”

I thought about the article Catherine had orchestrated, the carefully damaging framing, the specific violence of having my own survival narrated as calculation. I thought about the five-word statement Dante had helped me write, the smallest possible door, open just wide enough.

“What does that goodwill actually mean?” I said. “Practically.”

“It means sponsors are interested again, properly this time, not the cautious distancing from before,” Maria said. “It means outlets want the real story, told with your cooperation, rather than speculation built around a photograph nobody asked permission to take. It means, if you wanted it, you could have significant control over how your own narrative gets told from here forward, instead of having it constructed without you.”

I sat with this for a long moment.

“Do I have to decide right now?” I said.

“No,” Maria said. “But I wanted you to know the landscape’s changed. You have options now that you didn’t have a year ago. That feels worth knowing, even if you’re not ready to act on any of it yet.”

I thought about it for several days before I brought it to the family, not because I needed permission, but because this decision, unlike so many of the ones I’d made across this past year, was actually a choice rather than a necessity, and I wanted to make it deliberately, with the people it would affect most.

1 raised it at dinner, the whole sprawling assembly of us gathered around my parents’ table the way we were most evenings now.

“Maria called,” I said. “Tournament invitations. A major one, the Western Classic. And interest in telling the real story now, properly, with my cooperation.”

Nick looked up from his plate. “Would you be on TV more?”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said.

Dante reached for my hand under the table. “Whatever you decide, I’m behind it. The tournament, the story, all of it. You don’t have to carry any part of this alone.”

I called Maria back two days later.

“I want to do it. The Western Classic. And I’m open to telling the story. On my terms. With real boundaries around Nick’s privacy built in from the start.”

That’s wonderful,” Maria said. The warmest I’d ever heard her.

“I want to say something, María. And I want you to actually listen well. A year ago, I could have done any of this. I was fighting for survival. For custody. For the simple right to exist in my own life without it being used against me. This time, I get to choose. I want you to know how much that matters to mm,” I said, before she could move on to logistics.”

She listened calmly and never said anything. Maria looked up and down, her eyes glittering like a torch. She breathed in heavily and remarked. “I know”

I looked at her, smiled, and clenched my fingers. Again, I looked up at her and sprang up. I walked to the garden. I sat in the garden that evening. Nick and Drew were finishing their bird-watching ritual. The late June light was gold and was flashing across the lawn. I let myself feel the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of a choice that was finally, entirely mine to make.

Tennis again. A major tournament. A story told accurately, on my бwn terms, with the people I loved fully consulted and fully protected.

As fighting for my life a year ago. Now I have to choose what comes next.