The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 279

Chapter 246: Camille’s Curses-2

His breathing was heavy uneven, and completely different from his usual calm tone.

“Olivier, are you okay?” I asked, my grip tightening on the phone.

“I ended it with Camille,” he said. He did not say hello, and he did not make any small talk. He just blurted out the truth, rough and raw.

“Wow” I replied softly, leaning my head back against the cushion.

“She was trying to hurt you,” he said finally, his voice cracking slightly. “She wanted to use your mother’s memory as a weapon against you. I know what it is like to lose a mother, Bella. My own mother has not been gone that long. I will not let someone weaponize yours. Not while I have any say in it.”

Something tightened hard in my chest. It was a strange, sudden ache-the feeling of being protected by someone who had spent months deciding whether I even deserved to be part of his life.

“I know you understand that loss,” I said softly into the quiet room.

“I did not want to see it at first,” Olivier muttered, his voice sounding incredibly tired. “When you first arrived, I just saw a threat to everything my mother had built for me. I thought you came to take her place.”

“I never wanted to take her place, Olivier. I have my own mother, and I have my own life.”

“I see that now,” he said, and I heard him shift over the phone, a chair creaking in his apartment. “Camille said terrible things tonight. She called me a coward because I refused to fight you for the chairmanship.”

“Are you a coward, Olivier?”

“No,” he said, and his voice finally regained some of its old strength. “But I am not a fool either. You built Hart Worldwide from nothing. You do not need my charity, and you do not need to steal my crown. You just wanted her memory respected.”

“That is all I ever wanted.”

“She told me you would use me,” Olivier continued, his tone dropping low. “She said you would take the board seat, take the archive, and then throw me out of the company entirely.”

I let out a soft sigh. “And do you believe her?”

“No,” Olivier said firmly. “If you wanted to destroy me, you would have used her drama to your advantage. You would have pushed me out while I was distracted by her mess. That is what a real enemy would do.”

A small smile touched the corner of my lips. “You are learning.”

“It is hard not to,” he replied, and I could hear the faint sound of a lighter flicking on his end, then a deep exhale. “We are very alike, Bella. More than I expected to be, if I am honest.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It means we both see the moves ahead,” Olivier said, his rough voice dropping lower. “Which is exactly why I tapped her phone. After all her constant plotting and trying to smear your name, I knew she was a

Chapter 245 mille’s Curses 2

Claim

liability to everything we are building. I had to handle it before she could do real damage. Now that she is out of the way, we can finally focus on the future of the company. On that note, the lawyers are finalizing the board seat paperwork tomorrow morning. It will be exactly what you asked for.”

“Thank you, Olivier.”

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