Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 296

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Evelina gripped the sheets so tightly her knuckles turned white, tears streaming down her cheeks as she looked up at her mother, desperate.

“Mom, please, you have to help me! The wedding with Dean can’t get called off. Tell him I’m innocent. Tell him I was set up…”

Her voice broke. “He was there, he saw everything at the party himself. He’s never going to believe anything I say now.”

All the color drained from Evelina’s face.

Claudia reached over and gently smoothed her daughter’s messy hair, her tone softening just a bit. “Don’t worry. I took all the blame for what happened. You’re in the clear, and Dean can’t touch me.”

But then her eyes flashed cold. “Still, looks like Emmy gets to walk away unscathed, again.”

At the mention of that name, Evelina’s whole face twisted with hate. She grabbed her mother’s arm, almost shaking.

“Mom, you have to get rid of her! Do it now! Why does she always get to be ahead of me? Why is it always her? If you get rid of her, Dean will only have eyes for me!”

Claudia’s face hardened, her voice sharp. “You think I don’t want to? But this isn’t some place where people just disappear. It’s not that simple.”

She let out a cold breath. “Besides, Emmy’s got insane self-preservation instincts. She never goes anywhere without her bodyguard.”

Claudia had thought about taking her out, but there was never a good chance. And then there was Emmy’s husband—James. The firefighter who was anything but simple.

Claudia forced herself to focus, looking her daughter right in the eyes. “Now’s not the time. If anything happens to her now, how are you going to win gold at the AI competition at the end of the year?”

That snapped Evelina back to herself. She took a shaky breath.

“Yeah… the gold medal…” she mumbled. “As long as I win, as long as I become Dr. Pepper’s top student, everyone will still think Emmy’s beneath me.”

Seeing Evelina finally calm down, Claudia’s eyes softened.

“That’s right. Focus on getting better, on getting back up. When you’re standing at the top one day, you’ll look back and realize this was barely even a bump in the road.”