The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 250

Chapter 224: Bella winning

Bella pov

On Wednesday morning, a firm knock sounded at my office door. I glanced up from my laptop as Lena walked inside. She did not say a word. She just marched straight to my desk and laid a printed summary down in front of me.

“What do we have here?” I asked, pulling the papers closer.

“Our media monitoring system flagged something once again an hour ago,” Lena said, crossing her arms. “A freelance business writer based in Germany has been digging around: He is circling the Marchetti Group, Hart Industries, and he specifically searched the name Elaine Voss within a forty-eight-hour window.”

My chest tightened at the sound of my mother’s name. I read through the flagged materials twice. It took me less than two minutes to understand exactly what Richard and Margret were attempting.

“They are trying to claim your birth background makes the Hart Industries takeover illegal,” Lena explained, pointing at a highlighted paragraph. “He wants to publish a story saying you were never a real Hart, so you have no right to the company assets.”

“The legal architecture of this is completely groundless,” I said, my voice cold and steady. “My biological parentage has no bearing on a corporate acquisition conducted under my registered business identity. A first-year law student could dismantle this in court.”

“I know,” Lena agreed, nodding grimly. “His intent isn’t to win a lawsuit. The intent is just to make noise. They wants to cause a massive disruption right now, while you are managing your new relationship with Sebastien and keeping your public profile clean.”

“He wants to place a giant question mark in a major business column,” I murmured, setting the papers down. “This seems like a classic Richard move. He is financially desperate and his ego is wounded, so he grabbed the nearest weapon he could find.”

“Your legal team is already copied on the file,” Lena said, leaning against my desk. “Do you want to block it?”

“Send it to them immediately,” I told her. “I want a cease and desist filed within the next four hours.”

“On it,” Lena replied, turning to leave.

“Lena, wait,” I called out, stopping her at the door. “How did this writer get these specific details? The Geneva fellowship, the heart defect, the estate trustees? None of that is in a public file or a discoverable document.”

Lena looked back at me, her expression softening with genuine sympathy. “Those details only live in family memory, Bella. The kind of memory carried by someone who was actually there.”

The realization hit me like a punch, I was sure Richard didn’t know those things.

“Margaret,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, Bella,” Lena said quietly. “It looks like she made the call to the journalist herself.”

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Chapter 224 Celle-winning

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“She used my dead mother to wound me,” I said, staring blankly at my desk. “She handed a stranger the private grief of a woman who died before she was thirty. And she did it knowing I only just learned my mother’s name. She knew the wound was completely new, and she chose to pour salt right into it.”

Lena gave me a quiet nod, leaving the room so I could process the pain alone. I sat in silence for a long time, staring at the papers. Then, I picked up my phone and called Sebastien.

He answered immediately, the way he always answered my calls now, and I said: “Margaret my mothers sister tried to use her name to hurt me. She gave a journalist enough detail to make a story. My legal team is on it, but I wanted you to hear it from me, just in case.”

There was silence on his end. Then, very quietly and very coldly, he said: “She will not do that again.”

“Sebastien”

“No,” he said, and there was something in the single word that closed the subject entirely. “No. She will

not.”

“Are you going to contact them?” I asked, gripping the phone a little tighter.

“I will handle it, Bella,” Sebastien said. His tone was smooth, but it had a dangerous edge to it. “Richard and Margaret need to learn their place. They are a part of your past, not your present.”

“I don’t want a massive public war, Sebastien,” I told him, looking out my office window. “They want the attention. They want the noise to disrupt the Marchetti Group deal.”

“There will be no war, and there will be no noise,” he replied, and I could practically hear his cold smile through the line. “I have ways of making people like them disappear from the news entirely,they have no real power left.”.

“I know,” I said, exhaling slowly. “But Margaret knowing those intimate details about my mother… it just proved she never saw me as a daughter. I was just a tool to them.”

“You are my daughter, Bella,” Sebastien said firmly. “And no one will use Elaine’s name to hurt you again. Now, tell me, how is my grandchildren doing, what of my grandson how is he doing today? I received a very long voice message from him earlier.”

I smiled, glad to change the subject. “Oh, did he lecture you again?”

“He did,” Sebastien laughed softly, the coldness vanishing from his voice. “He spent four minutes explaining that I must use the correct names for the Cretaceous period. He told me I have a lot of homework to do.”

“He takes his dinosaurs very seriously,” I said. “Thank you for listening to him, Sebastien.”

“It is my absolute pleasure,” he said. “Thank you for calling me, Bella.”

By the time I went to bed, I had not heard anything further.

By the time I woke up, the journalist had withdrawn the piece.

No explanation offered. No new contact attempts from Richard. No text from Margaret, which was its own

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Chapter 224 fella winning

kind of message.

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