REBORN AND BECOME A BILLIONAIRE'S WIFE

Damien's POV"She said no." I set my phone down.Three years. Three years of Aurora Sinclair saying yes without me having to ask twice, and now she can't make it to my father's dinner on Friday because she hasn't decided yet.Hasn't decided.I pick the phone back up. Read it again. *I'll let you know, Damien.* Four words. No apology. No explanation. Just four flat words sitting on my screen like a door closing quietly in my face.My jaw tightens.Aurora doesn't do this. She has never done this. Not once in three years has she made me wait for something this simple. She says yes before I finish asking. She fills silences I didn't even know existed. She is the one person in my life I have never had to manage because she has always, always made it easy.Until today.I push back from my desk and stand up. Walk to the window. The city stretches out below me, forty floors of glass and movement, and I stare at it without seeing any of it.She has two original design concepts sitting in my co

Nadia's POV"Aurora Sinclair, what is going on with you?"She looks up from her sketchbook like I startled her. But I have been sitting across from her for twenty minutes watching her draw the same line over and over without finishing it, and I am done pretending not to notice."Nothing is going on with me," she says."You've redrawn that same sleeve four times."She looks down. Something moves across her face, not embarrassment, not the flustered Aurora energy I have known since we were teenagers. Something quieter. Something that looks like someone catching themselves."I'm just thinking," she says."About what?"She closes the sketchbook.I put both elbows on the table.Aurora does not close her sketchbook. She sleeps with it. She once refused to close it during a fire drill, and we stood outside in the cold for eighteen minutes while she finished a call detail. The sketchbook does not get closed for thinking."Talk to me," I say."There's nothing to talk about.""You're lying."Sh

Aurora's POV"You're wearing that?"Damien says it the moment I step out of the bedroom, not quite a question, not quite a complaint, sitting somewhere uncomfortably in between. I know that tone. I have heard it described as a concern for my entire first life.In my first life, those three words would have sent me straight back to change. I would have tried four other outfits, come out apologizing for the time, and spent the entire drive feeling like I had already failed before the night started.I look down at my dress. Deep green, simple, fitted elegantly without announcing itself. I chose it in twelve minutes this morning and felt completely settled the moment I put it on."Yes," I say. "I'm wearing this."Damien holds my gaze a second too long. "It's a formal dinner, Aurora.""I know what it is."That small, barely visible recalibration moves across his face, the one he has been doing every time I fail to respond the way he expects. He covers it quickly with a smile and holds out