Nobela ni Gabriella Stark

Anastasia’s POV:He kissed me on Tuesday and I did not tell anyone for three days.Not because I was hiding it. More because saying it out loud would make it real in a way I was not entirely ready for and I needed a few days inside the reality of it before I handed it to other people to have opinions about.Simone figured it out on Thursday anyway.She walked into my office, looked at my face, looked at the floor plan on the wall, looked back at my face.“Something happened,” she said.“I’m working,” I said.She sat down.“What happened?” she said.I put my pen down.“He kissed me,” I said.She did not react immediately which was worse than if she had because it meant she was managing her reaction and Simone only managed her reactions when they were significant.“Here?” she said.“We were arguing about the kitchen windows,” I said.She looked at the floor plan.“Of the house,” she said.“Yes,” I said.She was quiet for a moment.“How do you feel?” she said.“Good,” I said. “Scared. Bo

Anastasia’s POV:We had a second dinner the following Friday.His idea this time. He texted on Wednesday and said he knew a place and he took me to a Moroccan restaurant in the east side that had no sign outside and you had to know someone to get a table and the food arrived in waves without anyone asking what you wanted.I liked it immediately.We talked for three hours and split a dessert neither of us needed and walked to my building after and he said goodnight at the door without trying to come in and I went upstairs and stood in my kitchen for a few minutes doing nothing in particular.The week after that, he came to the firm.Not to see me. He had a meeting with Celeste about the Salvatore project which was still technically ongoing and I heard his voice in the corridor outside my office and kept my eyes on my screen and absolutely did not think about the fact that he was thirty feet away.He knocked on my open door on his way out.“Good drawing,” he said, looking at the mood bo

Anastasia’s POV:I changed my outfit three times.Simone would have had opinions about this if she had been there but she was at Dean’s and I was alone in my bedroom with two rejected dresses on the bed and a third one on that I kept looking at in the mirror and then looking away from.It was fine. The dress was fine. I was being ridiculous.I left at seven forty.The restaurant on Marsh Street was called Lola’s and it had twelve tables and candles on each one and a menu that changed every week and I had been going there alone since month two of building my new life because the food was good and nobody bothered you and the woman who ran it, a broad shouldered Ghanaian woman named Comfort, always remembered what you ordered last time.Lucas was already there when I arrived.He was sitting at the table by the far window, the one I always asked for, and he was in a dark jacket and no tie and he looked up when I walked in and stood up, which nobody did anymore, and I felt something move t

Anastasia’s POV:I slept for fourteen hours the first day.Simone let herself in at some point and left food on my counter and took the sketch notebook off my couch and put it on my desk without waking me and when I finally got up, the apartment smelled like the soup she made when she thought someone needed looking after whether they asked for it or not.I ate the soup standing at the counter and felt human for the first time in what seemed like a very long time.The next few days were quieter than I expected. The news was full of the Meridian Group story, names dropping into public record one by one, companies unraveling, the kind of systemic collapse that looked inevitable in hindsight and impossible in the moment before it happened. I watched it from my couch with my sketch notebook in my lap.Celeste called on the third day.“The Harmon project needs you back,” she said. “When you’re ready.”“Monday,” I said.“Good,” she said. “The clients have been asking.”She hung up before I c

Anastasia’s POV:The eggs were good.Lucas was insufferably pleased about this and did not say so out loud which somehow made it worse. I ate and he ate and we did not talk about Whitmore or the drives or the Meridian Group or any of the things that had occupied every waking hour of the past week. We talked about nothing. He told me about a restaurant in Rome he had eaten at alone on a business trip three years ago and spent the entire meal wishing he had someone to share it with. I told him about a design project I had abandoned halfway through during the marriage because I had run out of time and space to finish it and had found the sketches at the bottom of a drawer eight months ago and started again.“What was it?” he said.“A community center,” I said. “Pro bono. For a neighborhood that needed one.”“Did you finish it?”“Not yet,” I said. “But I will.”He looked at me across the table.“I believe that,” he said.We stayed for an hour longer than we needed to and I did not feel gu

Anastasia’s POV:Marcus hugged me before I left and I let him hold on longer than usual because he needed it and because I did not know when the next time would be that things were calm enough for a hug to just be a hug.“Be careful,” he said.“I will,” I said.He did not look convinced but I went anyway.The city was barely moving. Lucas drove and I sat with my bag in my lap and did not feel the need to say anything and neither did he and we just moved through the quiet streets toward the north end of the city where Senator Carl Whitmore lived in a brownstone that looked exactly like what it was, the home of a man who had been comfortable and powerful and untouchable for a very long time.Patricia was already there when we arrived. She got out of her car and came to Lucas’s window and held up a warrant.“Signed an hour ago,” she said. “We go in now before he comes downstairs.”We went in.The two agents Patricia had brought were already inside and positioned and said nothing when we