The Billionaire’s Notorious Villainess Stepmother Chapter 12
Leaving the East Coast
We left Manhattan on a Tuesday.
No announcement. No farewell party. No warning to the relatives who had lived off Blackwood money for years.
The private jet waited at Teterboro. Black, clean, and marked with the Blackwood crest.
Los Angeles. That was where we were going. New territory. New empire. No old rules.
Before we left, I had one last thing to do.
Lady Margaret was in the east wing parlor. She sat in her usual chair, wearing her usual pearls, with her cane across her knees. She watched me come in without a word.
I pulled a ring off my finger.
The black diamond caught the light one last time.
I set it on the table in front of her.
“Keep it,” I said. “Or sell it. I don’t care.”
Lady Margaret stared at the ring. Then at me.
“You’re leaving.”
“We’re leaving. All four of us.”
Her mouth tightened. For a second, she looked almost sorry.
“I was hard on you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Cassandra poisoned this house long before you arrived. I should have seen it sooner.”
“Yes.”
She let out a slow breath. “The children. Will they be alright?”
I looked at her. Past the cruelty, the charity humiliations, and every rule she had used against me.
She was an old woman who had lost control of her family.
“They’ll be better than alright,” I said. “They’ll be untouchable.”
She nodded once. Then she reached for the ring, closed her fist around it, and turned her face to the window.
I left without looking back.
Outside, the car was running. Alistair leaned against the SUV in a black coat, phone pressed to his ear, already managing whatever came next. He hung up when he saw me.
“Done?”
“Done.”
He opened the door for me. It was the first time.
Sebastian and Clara were already inside.
Sebastian had a book open on his lap—something about business strategy.
Clara was drawing in a sketchbook, completely focused.
I slid in beside them.
Clara immediately abandoned her drawing and crawled into my lap.
“Mom, will there be a pool?”
“There’ll be three pools.”
“Three?!”
Sebastian didn’t look up from his book. But the corner of his mouth lifted.
The SUV pulled away from the estate. I watched the iron gates shrink in the rearview mirror.
The stone walls. The dead gardens. The windows I had passed every day.
Gone.
At the airport, Alistair took my hand as we walked to the jet. His grip was warm and steady.
“No more Manhattan,” he said.
“No more Manhattan.”
We climbed the stairs. Sebastian went first, helping Clara up each step.
She turned at the top and waved back at the city.
I sat by the window. Alistair beside me. The children across the aisle, already arguing about who got the window seat.
The engines started, and the jet lifted.
Manhattan shrank below us, street by street, light by light.
I watched it go.
Three months ago, my family had sold me to a stranger.
They expected me to suffer. To fail. To crawl back and beg.
Instead, I took a dead woman’s place and made it mine.
I raised her children until no one could scare them again. I took control of a house that wanted me gone.
And I married the Diamond King.
Not with a white dress and sweet promises, but by standing my ground when everyone expected me to kneel.
Clara’s voice drifted from across the aisle: “Mom, when we get there, can we get a dog?”
“We’ll get two,” I said.
“Can I name them?”
“You can name everything.”
Alistair took my hand on the armrest. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
I closed my eyes. Listened to the engine.
I did not come into this family to be a quiet wife. I did not come to obey or suffer.
I came to change everything.
And from that day on, no one ever called the Blackwood family weak again.
THE END.