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CHAPTER 30: Closer
Data de publicação:
2026-03-10 06:53:01
Último capítulo
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 51: Collision
DOMINIC'S POV“Hello Dominic,” Isabella said with a smile. Aria turned to look at Isabella with the bright, uncomplicated expression of someone who had just heard something interesting."You know him?"The question landed in the gallery like a stone into still water.Isabella looked at me.I looked at Isabella."No," I said."Yes," Isabella said.Same breath. Exact same moment.Aria blinked. She looked at me, then at Isabella, then back at me with the particular expression of someone waiting for the adults in the room to sort out whatever was happening."Okayyyy," she said slowly. The word stretched just enough to ask the question without asking it.Isabella recovered the way she always recovered. Smooth, immediate, the surface closing over without a ripple."From the media, I mean." She gave a small easy laugh and shifted her weight, the body language of someone clarifying a minor confusion. "I've seen him on headlines a few times. Portland business news, Tech investment pieces." Sh
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 50: What she Doesn't Know About Him
DOMINIC'S POVI read her text four times before I put my phone face down on the nightstand.Her name's Isabella Moreno. She bought the large Elena piece, full price, no hesitation. Real eye for the work.Then I lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling for two hours while the city did its quiet nighttime thing outside my windows and my brain did the opposite of quiet.I arrived at the office at seven fifteen. My assistant Priya was already at her desk, which meant nothing except that she was always early, but she looked up when I walked in and then looked at her watch and then back at me with careful neutrality."Board meeting's confirmed for nine," she said. "Coffee's in.""Thank you."I went into my office and closed the door and stood at the window with my coffee. The board meeting at nine was the Meridian infrastructure contract. Six months of building, three rounds of negotiation, a competing bid from a firm that had been in this space fifteen years longer than I had. My team an
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 49: The Woman With the Card
ARIA'S POV The gallery was mine on Thursday afternoons. Vincent had standing meetings from two to five, the administrative machinery of running a serious gallery, and I'd learned to protect that window fiercely. No appointments, no calls I didn't have to take. Just me, the work and the particular quality of silence that lived in a gallery between events, when the pieces on the walls settled back into themselves and stopped performing for anyone. I was doing final placement checks for the show. Four weeks out now. Clara had approved the sequence two days ago and I'd spent this afternoon measuring sight lines, checking the spacing between pieces, making sure the conversation between them worked in the actual physical space the way it had in my head. The large canvas was going on the north wall. I'd known that from the beginning. Everything else arranged itself in relation to it. I heard the door. I didn't look up immediately. Walk ins on Thursday afternoons were usually brows
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 48: Sienna
SIENNA'S POVCatherine had been screaming for forty minutes before Flynn arrived and she stopped the moment he picked her up.I stood in the kitchen doorway with pasta going cold in a bowl and watched my brother pace the length of my living room with my daughter pressed against his chest and felt, not for the first time, the specific gratitude of someone who had not expected to have backup."She's been like this all day," I said.Flynn adjusted his hold without looking up. Catherine gripped his finger with her whole fist and went quiet with the decisiveness of a four month old who had made her point and was satisfied. He walked slowly, the particular rhythm he'd discovered in the second month that worked on her when nothing else did.I ate my pasta standing at the counter.Flynn came twice a week now. I'd noticed the shift in it. The early visits had something careful in them, something that felt like penance wearing the shape of presence. These didn't. He came because he wanted to be
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 47: Sienna's Letter
ARIA'S POVThe knock came while I was still in bed. I wasn't expecting anyone. I opened the door to find the building's mail carrier holding a stack of envelopes and a small package, apologizing for the late delivery, something about the route running long. I took everything, thanked him, and closed the door with my hip.Bills, A gallery catalogue, A reminder about renewing my renter's insurance.And then, at the bottom of the stack, a cream envelope with my name written in careful, deliberate cursive. No return address. Just a Portland postmark.I stood at my kitchen counter and opened it.Three pages. It was handwritten throughout. The same careful script on every line, unhurried, like the person writing it had sat down and taken all the time they needed.The name at the bottom of the third page was Sienna Thornfield.I put the letter down on the counter but then I picked it up and read it from the beginning.She wrote about coming to Portland. How she'd waited until her mother wa
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 46: Back
ARIA'S POVThe coast stayed with me in a good way.Not loudly only present, the way a good weekend should be, sitting in the background of a regular Monday like something warm you could reach back and touch when the day got long. I went to work, I painted, I bought groceries, cleaned the studio and had dinner with Dominic on Wednesday at his place and again on Friday at mine. All of it felt easy good and real.The something I'd noticed on the drive home was still there.I couldn't name it. I'd tried a few times in the quiet of the studio when my hands were busy and my brain was looser and things sometimes surfaced on their own. Nothing came up clean. Just the awareness of it, sitting somewhere below the easy and the good, patient, not demanding anything yet.I trusted the nothing. That was new, actually. A year ago I would have pulled at it, tried to excavate it, called Jordan and spent an hour trying to turn it into a sentence. Now I knew some things had their own timing and pulling
SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 13: Thirty-Three Days
ARIA'S POVThirty three days.I wasn't trying to count. It just happened the way breathing happens, automatic, underneath everything else. I used to track other things. The days until our anniversary. How long between Flynn's work trips. Gallery opening countdowns marked in my planner with small st
Última atualização : 2026-03-20SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 11: Learning Alone
ARIA'S POVThe bed frame had been there for two weeks and I still woke up surprised by it.Not the frame itself. Just the solidness of it. The way it didn't shift under me like the air mattress did. I'd gotten used to sleeping slightly deflated, slightly tilted, the plastic sighing every time I mov
Última atualização : 2026-03-19SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 7: The Divorce Papers
ARIA'S POVSarah Mendoza's office smelled like coffee and lavender. The kind of scent meant to calm people down before their lives got torn apart on paper.I sat in the chair across from her desk and tried not to pick at my cuticles but I failed."Thanks for seeing me so quickly," I said.Sarah smi
Última atualização : 2026-03-17SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS CHAPTER 21: The art gala
ARIA'S POVThe first painting sold at 7:23 PM, fifty-three minutes after we opened the doors.I know the exact time because I was standing near the back watching the room when Vincent found me with that specific walk of his, the one that meant something worth saying had happened. He leaned close so
Última atualização : 2026-03-24
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