I Married My Ex's Billionaire Father-Chapter 285: Give The Order

It was a small, private affair, strictly curated by a woman who had long ago mastered the art of controlling optics. Ophelia Welhaven did not want to have to deal with the performative grief of a crowd, nor did she wish to endure the prying eyes of the socialites who would undoubtedly be looking for a crack in her composure. She had invited just their closest friends and family, the few who knew which secrets to keep and which questions never to ask.

A couple of hours later, the black veil had been tossed aside, and she was back at home. The silence of the Welhaven estate was deafening, yet oddly comforting. She was in her study, the room dim save for a single desk lamp, pouring herself a generous measure of expensive whiskey. The amber liquid swirled in the crystal glass, reflecting the cold light of her eyes. She had just lifted her head to take a sip when a sharp, rhythmic knock on the door broke the stillness.

A second later, the door creaked open, and Troy, her personal assistant and the man who handled her "unconventional" logistics, poked his head through the gap.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked, his voice hushed, as if he were still standing at the graveside.

"How can it be a bad day when I have just buried my worthless husband?" Ophelia said, her voice devoid of even a hint of mourning. She took a slow, deliberate sip, the burn of the alcohol matching the fire in her chest. "Come on in, Troy."

Troy stepped into the room and shut the door with a soft click, standing awkwardly near the heavy oak bookshelves. He watched as Ophelia finished her drink, her silhouette sharp against the high-backed leather seat. She didn’t offer him a chair; she wanted him to feel the urgency of the moment.

"So, what do you have for me?" she asked, setting the glass down with a definitive thud.

"Lyse has claimed Brooke Chadwick’s body," Troy began, checking his notes. "She went directly to the city morgue. She’s already had the girl cremated and held a very small, very private memorial. The coroner did not find anything suspicious during the initial intake, so there are no problems on that front. The records are closed."

Ophelia nodded slowly. The cremation was a stroke of luck, ash couldn’t be re-examined, and whatever secrets Brooke had carried to the grave were now literal dust. It was one less loose end to worry about.

Troy continued, his voice dropping an octave. "Lottie, on the other hand, is currently on life support. The doctors at the intensive care unit say she does not appear to be recovering. Her system is failing. In the event that anything changes, if she wakes or if she flatlines we will be informed immediately." He hesitated then, his eyes flickering toward the door.

"Is there anything else?" Ophelia asked sharply, detecting the shift in his demeanor.

"Mr. Van Doren... Levi. He has gone to visit Mr. Stuart in jail," Troy explained, his posture stiffening. "He was there for nearly an hour."

Ophelia took a big, reckless gulp of her drink, the ice clinking violently against the glass. She studied Troy for a long moment, her eyes narrowing into slits. Then, she let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. She hissed, the sound echoing off the wood-paneled walls.

"I should have killed him when I got the chance," she mused, her voice a chilling whisper.

The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow. Her feelings for Ken Stuart, the complicated, jagged remnants of an old obsession were clouding her reasoning. She should have been more clinical. She realized that she would have killed him the moment she found out that he and Maeve had made a baby. That would have been the easier way, the cleaner way to scrub the world of that inconvenient truth without things getting this messy.

Instead, Ken had survived long enough to involve Levi. And she knew Levi to be a tenacious man, a man who possessed both the resources and the intellect to dismantle her piece by piece if he found the right thread to pull. She id not want him involved in this.

That meant that tying up that loose end could be tricky, but Ophelia was a woman who prioritized survival over sentimentality. First, she had to deal with the immediate matters. She had to protect the empire she had secured through .

She realized now that she was going to have to get Ken out of the way for good. She had to put herself first; any sign of emotion, any lingering ghost of a past romance, would ruin everything she had done so much to secure.

"Give the order," Ophelia said at last, her voice as cold as the grave she had just stood over. "I want it done tonight. No more delays. No more ghosts and no excuses or i will have your head."

Across town, in the sterile, high-tech environment of his private office, Levi Van Doren was fighting a different kind of war. The air was thick with the hum of servers and the smell of cold coffee.

"These are all the information I could find on Maeve and Ophelia. That Ophelia chick has issues, man. Real, deep-seated issues," Chris said as he strode into the office, dropping a sleek black flash drive onto Levi’s mahogany desk.

Chris looked exhausted, his eyes were bloodshot, and his tie was loosened. He pulled up a chair and slumped into it, watching Levi with an expression of grim fascination.

"I vaguely remember them from when you would throw those summer parties in your family’s villa when we were all teenagers," Chris continued, rubbing his temples. "I always preferred Maeve to her. Maeve was... light. She was kind. Ophelia, even back then, was simply overbearing. She had this way of looking at people like they were objects she was deciding whether or not to break. Looking at this data, she hasn’t changed. She’s only grown to be a monster."

"Monster?" Levi asked, his eyebrows shooting up. He reached out, his fingers hovering over the USB drive for a split second before he pulled it toward his laptop.

"Yep," Chris said, leaning forward. "No one can escape her. Staff, friends, even her own mother, Faye, has gotten ’dealt with.’ The woman is a black hole. She consumes everything around her to maintain her position. It’s all there, the NDAs, the mysterious disappearances of disgruntled employees, the ’accidental’ falls. It’s chilling."

Levi nodded, his jaw set in a hard line. He slotted the USB into his laptop, the small blue light flickering as the drive mounted.

"This was a strange request, Levi," Chris said after staring at him for a long, quiet moment. "Why did you want to investigate the Welhavens out of nowhere? Are you planning a collaboration with their company? Or are you looking to buy them out now?"

"Maybe," Levi mumbled, his eyes already scanning the first few documents that popped up on his screen.

Chris waited for a while, hoping Levi would offer something more, a hint, a confession, a reason for the sudden obsession. When it became clear that Levi was already a thousand miles away, mentally digging through the Welhaven archives, Chris shrugged, stood up, and let himself out.

Levi didn’t even notice when the door closed. He was too engrossed in the horror unfolding on his screen. The file was a meticulously organized descent into madness. He scrolled through medical records, old social columns, and private investigator reports from decades ago.

But it was the photographs that stopped his heart.

He clicked on a high-resolution scan of a vintage photograph Maeve Welhaven at twenty. Then he looked at a photo the paparrazi had taken of Lyse just weeks ago. His face betrayed the absolute horror of the realization. The resemblance wasn’t just striking; it was undeniable. The shape of the jaw, the specific curve of the eyes, the way they held themselves, Lyse was the living image of Maeve.

He thought back to the very first time he had seen Lyse. He had felt a faint, nagging sense of recognition, a phantom memory that he hadn’t been able to place. He had chalked it up to her being "his type," or perhaps seeing her in a magazine. But now he knew. He wasn’t recognizing Lyse; he was recognizing the ghost of the girl from those long-ago summer parties.

He stood up abruptly, his chair slamming into the wall behind him. The pieces of the puzzle were clicking together with a terrifying mechanical precision. If Lyse was truly Maeve’s daughter and Ken’s daughter then she wasn’t just an innocent bystander in this corporate war. She was the rightful heir to a legacy Ophelia would kill to keep.

Realizing that Lyse was in immediate, mortal danger, Levi felt a cold sweat break out across his skin. Ophelia had already buried a husband and a sister-in-law. She wouldn’t hesitate to bury a long-lost niece to protect her throne.

He needed to find Lyse. He needed to find all he could to protect her before Ophelia’s order was carried out.