บททั้งหมดของ Redemption’s Sweet Surprise: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

The following week was a masterclass in emotional Siberia.Our interactions were stripped to the bare metal of instruction and confirmation. He spoke in bullet points. I replied in data. The library remained locked. He no longer worked there. He inhabited his sterile study like a CEO in a bunker, and I was his remote-operated drone, buzzing with efficiency in the corner."Audrey. The quarterly tax filings for the Vance Family Trust. Cross-reference all disbursements to the 'Eleanor Vance Care Fund' against invoices from 'Havenwood Residential.' Discrepancy threshold is two percent. Report anomalies by end of day.""Understood."It was the first time he'd given me a task directly linked to his private world. A test, I knew. To see if I could handle the information without the "ancillary" context. The trust was a labyrinth of careful, grief-structured finance. The care fund payments were massive, regular. The Havenwood invoices were pristine. There was no discrepancy.But as I traced th

He didn’t want to. I could see the resistance in the tight line of his jaw. But slowly, he turned his head. His eyes were shadowed, the usual icy clarity replaced by a deep, weary turbulence.“I’m not staying out of obligation to a contract,” I said, holding his gaze. “And I’m not staying because I think you can’t handle this. I think you could handle an asteroid impact if you had a spreadsheet for it.”A faint, almost imperceptible flicker in his eyes. Not a smile. An acknowledgment.“I’m staying because ‘purely contractual’ died the second you threw me your car keys. You don’t give your assets the controls to your half-million-dollar sedan when you’re coming undone.” My voice softened. “You asked a person. So a person is staying. Just for a little while.”He looked away, down into his coffee as if the dark liquid held the answer. He took a long, slow sip, winced at the taste, and then took another. “It’s a terrible investment of your time. No return.”“I’ll add it to my tab,” I said

RSS 30: The VigilHe came out of the ICU twenty minutes later, not five. His steps were slower, heavier, as if the air in the sterile room had been thick and he’d been wading through it. He didn’t return to the chairs. He walked to the large window at the end of the hallway that overlooked the city’s night-time glow, a dark silhouette against the glitter.I gave him a minute before I followed, stopping a few feet away. I didn’t ask. The answer was in the defeated slope of his shoulders.“She’s non-responsive,” he said to the glass, his voice hollow. “Not unconscious, but… absent. She opened her eyes when I spoke. But there was no recognition. Just… an empty room.” He pressed his forehead against the cool pane. “The one thread,” he whispered, the words barely audible. “The last one.”He wasn’t just talking about Eleanor’s consciousness. He was talking about his tether to Jacob, to the past where he was just an uncle, not a fortress. I understood then that his Sunday visits weren’t a ch

The small white pharmacy bag sat on my kitchen counter like a loaded question. I stared at it while I made Keila’s dinner, the mundane act of stirring pasta at odds with the static in my head.Clinically proven to be nineteen percent more effective.That was the sentence that kept echoing. He hadn’t just gotten pain cream. He’d gotten the optimal pain cream. He’d observed a problem—her chair-induced stiffness—diagnosed it, sourced the best solution, and delivered it. It was an act of pure, unadulterated Luther. It felt more intimate than if he’d written a sonnet.“Mummy, you’re thinking loud again,” Keila announced from the table, where she was diligently coloring a new picture. This one had two tall, black rectangles. One had a small, yellow circle at the top. The other had a frowny face in the middle.“Sorry, sweetie. What are you drawing?”“This is you at your work,” she said, pointing to the circle-topped rectangle. “That’s your sunshine head.” She pointed to the frowny rectangle.

The world did not stop for Eleanor Vance’s prognosis. Keila needed new shoes because her feet, incredibly, were growing. The supermarket had a sale on the cereal she liked. The sink developed a slow, nagging drip. Life, in its mundane, relentless way, demanded to be lived alongside the crisis.The "regimen," as Luther called it, became our new normal. My days were split. Mornings were for Keila—breakfast, lessons, the joyful, ordinary noise of her recovery. Afternoons were for the muted, beige world of the hospital waiting area. I was the filter, the translator, the steady pair of hands.Luther was a storm contained within a glass box. He would arrive, often in the middle of the day, a vortex of tense energy. He’d absorb updates, make decisions with terrifying speed, and issue a series of commands—to me, to nurses, to invisible assistants via his phone. Then he’d leave, off to the fortress of his office where he could wage the financial and legal war required to build Eleanor’s new, p