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Chapter Thirty-Eight: Not Like That
publish date:
2026-05-02 21:09:32
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Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 141: Saturday
PENELOPE ***ON SATURDAY I opened the door and found Seraphina standing there with a bunch of wild flowers. It was obvious she chose them because she liked them even though they were inappropriate. "They are from the market," she said. "The man said they last two weeks.""Come in," I said.She came in, and met Nora sitting on the room floor, trying to force a wooden block into a shape sorter it didn't fit. She had been at it for four minutes with total commitment.Seraphina stopped when she saw her.Nora looked up, giving Seraphina the full-body assessment she reserved for things she hadn't decided about yet. Then she held out the block.Seraphina crouched and took it, turning it over, studying the shape sorter. "That's a square," she said. "And that's a circle hole. It won't fit."Nora's expression suggested she already knew this and found it beside the point."You're very determined," Seraphina said tapping gently at Nora's nose.Nora grabbed the block back and tried again.Serap
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 140: Seraphina's recovery
Seraphina's POV They discharged me on a Tuesday. A nurse handed me a pamphlet about nutrition and a letter for my GP, then told me to test and have a regular meal even when they knew I wouldn't comply. But I complied. I understood something about the shape of my own life that I had been avoiding for years...I had been so busy affecting other people's stories that I had completely neglected my own. I took a taxi home, watching the city through the window, making a list in my head of what I actually wanted. *** I arrived at my flat, and I stood in the hallway and looked at the sitting room I had designed to impress, the kitchen I used only for coffee, the bedroom I had redecorated twice that year because I kept hoping a different colour would make it feel like somewhere I actually wanted to be. I opened the fridge, and there was half a bottle of water, an expired yogurt. Something in a container I didn't remember buying. I closed it and sat down on the cold kitchen floor. I had
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 139: She finally reveals herself
Adrian's POVHer name was still her name when I asked her, but everything else had changed, but the name was the one thing she couldn't bring herself to give up.She talked for forty minutes straight.Penelope sat beside me, her hands in her lap, and I was grateful for it. I needed my own hands free to grip the edge of the table. My father had older debts even before Gerald which came from decisions made in the early years of building something, back when the building needed money no legitimate source would provide. He had borrowed from people who charged in loyalty instead of interest, and when it came time to repay, he found he had none left to give them.So they took something else instead...Or tried to.My mother was what they chose as leverage. Her existence became a pressure point against my father's choices. As long as she stayed reachable, he stayed manageable.So he made her unreachable.Gerald Harrow was back then a man my father trusted who could arrange things, and who ha
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 138: The Woman Across the Street
PENELOPE She didn't move. She just stood there outside the coffee shop, hand raised, eyes fixed on Adrian, with the exact stillness of someone who had decided to be found.Adrian crossed the road, and I crossed with him. There was no version of this where I stayed on the pavement.Up close, she was smaller than the distance had suggested. She had Adrian's eyes, the same shape, the same depth. She dressed well, and she had a bold fashion style, and she looked like a woman who had survived something significant and came out the other side not unscathed, but upright.She looked at Adrian. He looked at her. Neither spoke for five full seconds.Then she said his name. Just his name, the way mothers say names when they've been holding them a long time."Don't," he said."Adrian...""Don't." His voice came out completely flat.She looked at me. "You must be Penelope.""Yes." I nodded, extending my hand for a handshake."I've heard about you." She mentioned "But I thought you were dead," I
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 137: Monday Morning
PENELOPE *** The man's name was Gerald Harrow. I found that out on Sunday when Adrian's lawyers ran a background check and called him in the morning with the results. He is Sixty-one. A former property developer, with three civil suits in the last decade. I'm sure that he knows how to hover at the edge of legitimacy. I read the summary at my kitchen table while Adrian made coffee and Nora dismantled a tower of blocks she'd spent six minutes building. "He has done this before," I said. "He has claimed informal debts against estates." "The second civil suit," Adrian said. "He also made a private arrangement with a deceased business partner and he was paid out." "So it worked before." Penelope said "But not this time." *** Monday arrived with rain. It rained so lightly that it wasn't heard from inside. Adrian's lawyer's office sat on the eighth floor of a building that seemed to believe seriousness and comfort weren't mutually exclusive. Gerald Harrow had already arrived
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret 136: Meeting seraphina at the hospital
PENELOPE The hospital corridor was the same one I had been in. But this time around, we were on a different floor and a different ward. I walked fast enough that Jonathan struggled to keep up. Adrian had stayed in the car at my request. Not because I wanted to keep him out, but because this was a Westfield situation, and I needed my hands free to deal with it. Jonathan pushed open the ward door, and a nurse intercepted us immediately. "She's resting," she said. "She asked for me," I said. "I'm Penelope Westfield. I'm her sister." The nurse checked her clipboard, glanced at me, then stepped aside. We were in room seven, near the window which faced a wall. The light seemed to drain color from everything it touched. Seraphina lay in the bed. She looked smaller than I had ever seen her outside a hospital. The confidence she usually wore like armor, that posture of pride...all gone. She was just a woman in a bed with monitors, pale in the way that showed that her body had st
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Fourteen: I crossed the line
Penelope's POV The whispers began before Seraphina even stepped away.I heard them. Every single one of them. People lowered their voices but didn’t stop speaking. They pretended to focus on their screens while their eyes wandered.I kept my pen moving across the page. "Write. Just write. Don’t l
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Twelve: The First Day
Penelope's POV *** On Monday morning "You're early." Daniel looked up from his desk when I stepped out of the elevator at eight forty-five, his tie slightly disorganized, a half-eaten granola bar beside his keyboard. He seemed like the kind of person who arrived early every day and was al
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Eleven: The Contract.
Penelope's POV Clara called me at exactly four pm the next day."Mr. Blackwood wants to meet you tomorrow morning," she said. Her tone was professional, leaving no room for questions. "At nine o'clock on the fortieth floor." I stood in my small apartment, phone pressed to my ear, listening to th
Love, Lies, and a Billionaire's Regret Chapter Seven: The quietness feels so...wrong
Jonatha's POV "Is she really gone?" I uttered under my breath, staring deeply into the thin air.Mrs. Hale glanced at me from across the kitchen counter. She held a dish towel in her hand. "She left last night," she said. "With one suitcase and her travel bag."I glanced at the kitchen doorway, th
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