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Fifty nine

Author: Ranya Vale
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-07-28 14:05:16

I had always believed there was a limit to how much truth a person could carry in silence, but standing in the marble foyer of Howard Blackwell’s estate, I felt the weight of a history that had been written behind closed doors, beneath polished floors, and inside ledgers no one was meant to read. The place smelled like money that had aged too long—cold, pristine, with nothing human left in its corners. The butler who opened the door barely looked at me. He had been told I was coming.

Howard stood waiting in the drawing room. His back was turned to the fireplace, arms folded, one ankle casually hooked over the other like this was a social call. He wore a suit that looked expensive but careless. His salt-and-pepper hair had been combed back, but I could still see the edges where the dye no longer touched. I had never met him like this before, not as the man behind Julian’s silence, not as the figure who had shaped so many of the betrayals still rippling through my life. Only in photogra
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  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty seven

    The room shimmered with curated beauty, the kind that was deliberate, polished, almost theatrical in its perfection. It was all champagne haze and silk-lined chatter, where everyone floated from one polite exchange to the next, pretending not to see the tension sewn into the hems of designer gowns. These were the kinds of nights where the lighting was too flattering, the music was soft enough to mask discomfort, and everyone’s smiles were rehearsed just enough to keep the truth from breaking the surface.I had walked into rooms like this before. I had smiled beneath chandeliers, worn heels that ached by the second hour, and shook hands with people who whispered one thing and meant another. But tonight felt different. It wasn’t just the way people looked at me. It was the way the air itself carried something more volatile. There was a current moving just beneath the luxury, something waiting to unfold.I had just stepped away from an editor from Milan who had rushed across the floor to

  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty six

    It began quietly, the way most things that matter do. There was no press release. No bold campaign rollout. No carefully worded email from the PR team. Just Claudia. Just one photo. She had posted it early in the morning, the kind of hour when the world is still shaking off sleep, and the feed is usually filled with soft lighting and coffee cups. But hers was different. It was from six years ago, taken in the back room of our original studio, before the walls had been painted over and the lighting fixed. We were both younger in it, with dark circles under our eyes and fabric dust on our clothes, surrounded by bolts of unfinished textiles and mismatched mugs. We were laughing in that picture, shoulders slightly leaned into each other, the kind of laugh that came not from something particularly funny, but from exhaustion and shared absurdity. Her caption was brief, but it cut deeper than any trending headline had managed to.“She gave me a place when no one else would. I’ll never forget

  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty five

    The green room was colder than it needed to be. I could feel it in my arms even though I wore long sleeves, and I kept trying not to pull at the cuffs. The sleeves were slightly too long, by design—meant to brush the wrist and cover the part of the hand that always felt exposed in front of cameras. Someone had handed me a bottle of water earlier, the kind with a twist cap and a silent label, and I’d opened it and then forgotten it on the side table. I hadn’t touched it since.My makeup was already done, soft tones under the lights but defined enough to hold the frame. My hair was pulled back the way Julian said looked strongest on me. I hadn’t asked him to clarify what he meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I didn’t feel strong, not the way people meant when they used that word. My strength didn’t feel physical. It didn’t feel like posture or clothing or the steadiness of my voice. It felt like something bruised but refusing to stay down. It felt like something buried that ke

  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty four

    I woke to the sound of my phone buzzing across the marble countertop, the vibration sharp and insistent, dragging me out of a sleep that had barely held me through the night. My limbs were heavy. My mind was still lodged in the scattered thoughts that had kept circling long after midnight—meetings postponed, contracts still unsigned, and the slow unraveling of certainty I had tried so hard to hold onto.I didn’t rush to grab the phone. I lay still for a moment, trying to pull my thoughts into order. The apartment was silent except for the dull hum of the city beyond the windows. The air felt tense, like it was bracing for something I had yet to name.When I finally reached for the phone, my breath caught before I even saw the full content of the alerts. The headlines lit up my lock screen, one after another, in that tone of detached precision that always felt more dangerous than something openly cruel. They were brief, cutting, curated to destabilize without appear

  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty three

    It was a quiet evening, the kind that settled gently into your skin without asking permission. There were no calls scheduled, no press requests hanging in the air, and no boardroom strategies waiting behind half-closed doors. The boutique was closed, the inbox ignored, and the house was still, save for the occasional hush of distant traffic weaving through the city below. For once, I wasn’t expected to deliver a plan, hold a meeting, or explain away a disaster. And for once, I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with anything. It was the kind of silence that didn’t ask to be broken.The hallway light cast a soft glow across the polished wood floors as I passed through the living room and pushed open the door to the rooftop terrace. The air was cooler up there, clean and dry, the kind of air that carried nothing but the scent of late summer—brick, distant rain, and a trace of honeysuckle from the garden two terraces over.I found Julian standing near the edge, his back to me, hand

  • He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge   Sixty two

    The café was hidden down a narrow lane off West 31st. It had no signboard, only a small brass plate on the door and the scent of warm cardamom bread spilling out through the seams of its old wood frame. I arrived fifteen minutes early. I could not help it. My nerves had been sharpened all morning, wound tight from the moment the encrypted message confirmed the meeting time. Eleanor Chen had given no explanation, only a date, a location, and one line: You’ll want to hear this in person. I stepped inside and let the door shut behind me. The noise of the city faded like it had been swallowed whole. The place was quiet, lit with soft amber lights and lined with worn shelves full of mismatched porcelain cups. A man behind the counter offered a polite smile, but I only nodded and moved to a corner table near the window. I didn’t order anything. I couldn’t have kept anything down. I watched the steam rise from someone else’s teacup and pressed my palm against the cool marble table. When E

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