LOGINHANNAH'S POV:The doctor arrived by eleven.The twins had gone to school. I had made breakfast normally and done the normal morning things and Andrew had told me something about how muscle memory worked while he was eating his toast and I had listened to all of it with ninety percent of my attention. Amelia had done her hair at the kitchen counter again and I had let it go because I was thinking about other things. Elijah had stood at the island with his coffee and watched me with the expression he was doing his best to keep neutral.After they left for school he said, "How long have you felt like this?""A few days," I said."A few days," he said."I wanted to be sure before I said anything," I said.He nodded. He understood that. He understood most things about me by now.The doctor was calm and careful and afterwards confirmed what I had been starting to know.And then she said the second part."There are three," she said.I looked at her."Three," I said."Three," she confirmed.I
HANNAH'S POV:The asset question was settled two weeks later.Seventy percent to Adele. My mother's sister. The woman who had held that folder for thirty years and had lost her sister and thought she lost me too until my husband had searched for her and brought us together.Thirty percent to me.My lawyer said I was entitled to the full amount. Elijah sat beside me and said carefully that he just wanted to make sure I had thought it through. I said I had thought about nothing else for two weeks. I said I have my company and my husband and my children and everything I built with my own hands. Adele spent thirty years as the guardian of everything my mother was owed. She deserves more than I do.Elijah looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "Okay." And that was the end of the conversation.When I told Adele she was quiet for a long time.Then she said, "Thank you much Hannah." A pause. "You are so like her."I pressed my hand over my mouth for a moment."She would have been prou
HANNAH'S POV:The verdict came six weeks later.Castellan called at nine in the morning on a Tuesday and I was in the design room at the new building working on the winter collection when my phone rang. I saw her name and sat down on the nearest stool before I answered it."We won," she said.Two words and it was so clean and final.I sat there with the phone pressed to my ear.She told me everything. The judge had found in favour of the plaintiff on all major counts. Aldric Voros had been found to have engaged in deliberate and systematic intellectual property theft, fraudulent misrepresentation of creative authorship, and the wilful destruction of evidence. The sentence was life imprisonment, which was not a typical sentence in civil intellectual property cases but which the judge had tied to the additional criminal charges that had accumulated across the eleven designer accounts and the decades of documented conduct.And then the second part. The judge had ordered the full transfer
HANNAH'S POV:Maya was already inside when we arrived, which nobody was surprised by. She had been there since before seven, clipboard in hand, headset in place, everything in order before a single guest walked through the door.The lobby looked exactly as I had imagined it. The flowers were right. The signage was right. The catering for the reception afterward was confirmed. And Kate had done something particular with the hospitality table that Maya had tried to adjust twice and then left alone because it was honestly better than what she had planned, which Maya had informed me of in advance so I would not be caught off guard."Go and be present," Maya said when I found her. "I have everything."She did. She always had everything.Jacob and Cherry came with their little daughter Mirada, who was four months old and already conducting a very thorough ongoing assessment of the world around her with the focused attention of someone who had somewhere to be and was not going to miss anyth
HANNAH'S POV:They didn't talk on their way back home.I was already in bed in the evening with Elijah reading beside me, when we heard the knock."Come in," I said.Andrew stood in the doorway in his planet pyjamas, they were slightly too short at the ankles now but he refused to stop wearing them because they were comfortable and Andrew had a very practical philosophy about clothing. He looked at me and then at Elijah and then back at me."I need to talk to Amelia," he said. "But I wanted to tell you first."I sat up properly. "What happened?"He came in and sat on the end of the bed and folded his hands in his lap and he looked at the duvet rather than at me."I was jealous," he said.Just like that. Clean and plain and with no attempt to soften it."Is about today," I said since I already knew."Yes. When they announced the results. I was proud of her and I was also jealous and I did not like feeling both things at the same time because they seemed like they should not be able to
ANDREW'S POV: Dad said: "Best team argument award. That was yours. That is not a small thing." I had been going over the parts of my case that had not been strong enough. The places where Amelia had reached something I had not fully anticipated. I was in the middle of this review when Dad said it and I stopped. "The debate format is a simplification," I said. "Amelia and I agreed on that afterward. The real answer is that the two things are interdependent." "I know," Dad said. "But within the format you were given, your team's argument was awarded best structural argument by the judges. Which means you argued your case excellently." I thought about this. "Amelia was better," I said. "Amelia was different," he said. "She argued a different kind of case in a different way. That is not the same as better." I recognized this phrasing. It was almost exactly what Amelia had said to me. I wondered if they had discussed it. I decided it did not matter. "She won," I said. "The negati
HANNAH’S POV:A WEEK LATER:After agreeing to dinner with Elijah’s parents and preparing for it, even hinting the twins on meeting at least one set of grandparents, it only ended up being a huge disappointment as they neither showed up nor called nor did they even offer any apology. Elijah was so
HANNAH’S POV:THAT WEEKEND:“The kids and I are headed to the amusement park and we will be back later.” I informed Elijah stepping into his home office and he quickly darted his eyes to me.We were already dressed and ready to explore the city. The twins were both in denim pants and short handed j
HANNAH’S POV:I nodded slowly and found myself saying even though I didn’t seem to care about Elijah. “Flora, you can’t keep something like that from him. He deserves to know.”She smiled sadly. “Maybe. But for now, I want to keep it between us. Please.”There was something so fragile about her the
HANNAH’S POV:Her words struck deep, not just at Jacob but at all of us. At me.Because a part of me, somewhere deep down, understood her pain—the humiliation, the heartbreak, the helplessness of giving yourself to someone only to be left broken and blamed.Cherry suddenly turned and stormed toward







