Lahat ng Kabanata ng DIVORCED, BUT SPOILED BY MY FIVE BROTHERS : Kabanata 191 - Kabanata 200

Chapter 191Janet's point of View Adrian looked at Flora as He smiled. It was perfectly polite. "I'll look into it and get back to you."That was all.Flora beamed. "Thank you so much."I watched Adrian's face, and I noticed what nobody else in the circle seemed to. The lightness was gone. The interest. The questions. With me, he'd argued about ceiling heights. With Flora, he'd offered a sentence and closed the door behind it.I hadn't asked him for anything. He'd handed me his card because of what I'd said.Flora had been asked for, like a favour.The difference sat in my chest like something warm.A man in a grey suit touched Adrian's elbow. The auction was starting. A voice came over the speakers inviting everyone into the hall.We moved with the crowd.And at the entrance to the auction hall, I found Caroline's next trick waiting.The seats were marked. Small cream cards on small gold stands, one per chair. Rowan's name on one.And beside it, Flora's.I stopped walking.Caroline ca

Chapter 193Janet's Point of ViewI leaned forward, and the details I'd been trying to ignore suddenly refused to be ignored. The border pattern along the left side. The repeat was off. The wear on the enamel was too even, as if someone had aged it with a soft cloth instead of three hundred years of real life, and the soldering on the back corner made my stomach tighten. My hand moved before I could think, and I grabbed Peter's wrist just as the paddle began to rise."Stop," I whispered.He turned to me, startled. "Why?""That's not the original."His face changed instantly. I leaned in close, my heart thudding, and kept my voice low enough that no one else could hear. "The border breaks on the third repeat. The aging is too consistent. Real enamel wears unevenly, the way anything does when it's been held and touched and lived with. And look at the join on the back corner. That technique didn't exist until a hundred years after the date they're claiming." I shook my head slowly. "It's

Chapter 195 Janet's Point of View My whole body went still. The noise of the room faded until I could hear only my own heartbeat. I knew that dent. I knew it the way you know your own handwriting. I was seven years old again, sitting on the kitchen floor and watching my father clean that watch with a soft cloth and a toothpick, his big hands so careful, his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. I had asked him why the dent was there, and he had smiled and said, "That's the day I met your mother." Then he had laughed and never explained. I had spent years wondering what that story was, and now I would never get to hear it. He had sold it, along with half of what we owned, the winter the restaurant nearly closed. I never asked where it went. I never let myself. Some losses are easier to carry if you never look at them directly, and I had carried that one folded small and tucked away for so long that I had almost forgotten the weight of it. Now it sat under the spotlight

Chapter 197Janet's Point of ViewShe waited. She watched my face for it, for the flinch, for the shine in my eyes, for any crack she could slip her fingers into and pry wide open. I felt her looking, and I let the silence sit between us for a long moment, because I had learned the hard way that silence could be a weapon too.Then I said, quite calmly, "Then why are you so worried about me?"She paused, and her lips parted slightly. "What?" she said, as if she hadn't heard me right."If I'm just a replacement," I said, keeping my voice soft and even, "if I'm nothing, if you're so certain of that, you shouldn't need to follow me into bathrooms to announce it. People who are winning don't usually do that.""I'm not worried," she snapped.I smiled at her. "Of course not. That's why you're here."Her face tightened like a drawstring being pulled shut. I watched her chest rise and fall, and I felt something steady and strange settle inside me, a calm I had never been able to find when I st

Chapter 199Janet's Point of ViewIf he had known, the question would have been hilarious. If he had known what Peter truly was to me, he would have heard his own words and wanted to disappear into the floor. But he didn't know, and I couldn't tell him. The secret sat in my mouth like a stone, heavy and smooth, and I swallowed it down."You don't get to interrogate me about other men," I said."He seems awfully interested in you," Rowan shot back."You don't have to assume that everyone who shows a person a bit of care is in love with them." Rowan added as I looked straight into his eyes and didn't let myself blink. "At least Peter cared a little. Did you care at all?"It shut him up completely. His mouth closed, and his eyes dropped to the floor between us, and for a moment the corridor was so quiet I could hear the faint hum of the lights overhead.Then I heard it in my own voice, the thing I had let slip. The small crack. The old pain underneath the words, still there after everyth