Lahat ng Kabanata ng No Way to Win Me Back: Kabanata 391 - Kabanata 400

Celeste’s POVI didn’t sleep much that night.Not because of panic. It had already burned itself out, but because my mind refused to rest. Aurora sat there like an unanswered riddle, glowing too brightly in the dark.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that email again. The phrasing. The confidence. The timing.By morning, I had wrapped myself in professionalism like armor.The meeting was set for ten a.m., not at Rosemary, but at a private conference suite in a discreet business hotel across town. Neutral ground. That alone told me something. Brands with nothing to hide liked grand offices and glass walls. Brands that preferred control liked silence.Jenny insisted on coming with me, but I asked her to stay back. This felt… singular. Like something I needed to face alone.The suite was already occupied when I arrived.A woman stood by the window, back straight, posture immaculate. Mid-forties, perhaps. Hair pulled into a low, severe knot. Her suit was tailored within an inch of its lif

Ryan’s POVThe work doesn’t look heroic from the outside.There’s no shouting. No dramatic ultimatums. No slammed doors or raised voices, at least not where anyone can see.It’s phone calls taken in stairwells, messages sent through encrypted apps, meetings held under the guise of something else entirely. Its names are spoken carefully, leverage applied invisibly, pressure adjusted by millimeters rather than force.This is how wars are actually fought.Behind the scenes, I spend days untangling what has knotted so neatly.I don’t know who did this, but before I get to the end of it, I needed to make sure Rosemary was on its feet again.Someone had placed supplier blockades disguised as “compliance reviews.”Media narratives seeded through third-party firms that never officially touch her name. Delays blamed on weather, customs, ethics boards, sudden shifts in regulation.She’s good. I’ll give her that.But she’s also predictable.The first thing I do is remove fear. Not with threats, t

Ryan’s POVBy the time I clocked out of Rosemary, the sun was already slipping behind the buildings, turning the glass and steel of the city into a bruise-colored reflection of my own exhaustion.I didn’t go home.I went straight to Aurora.Their head office didn’t look like a newborn company. That was the first thing anyone would get wrong about them. There was no chaos, no scramble, no provisional energy. Aurora moved like an entity that had been breathing for years, quiet, controlled, deliberate. Jewelry cases lit with museum precision.Workbenches staffed by people whose hands didn’t shake, even under scrutiny. White-gloved assistants carrying trays of stones worth more than most people’s homes.Jewelry companies always tell you who they are by how they treat their materials. Aurora treated theirs like they were already legacy.I dropped my bag beside the conference table and immediately got pulled into it, numbers, supply routes, investor calls, sketches spread across polished sto

Celeste’s POVThe tablet rested against a stack of design books on my kitchen counter, propped at just the right angle so Molly could see the screen clearly.Vivian’s face flickered into focus a second later, Belgium light behind her, pale and elegant, her hair pulled back in that effortless way that always made me think she had been born knowing how to exist in rooms I still sometimes felt I had to earn.“Molly!” Vivian exclaimed.Molly squealed and climbed onto the stool, chin barely clearing the counter. “Mama Celeste! It’s Mommy!”Vivian laughed softly. “Hi, sweetheart. You look bigger every time I see you.”“I’m six and a half now,” Molly said very seriously. “And I lost two teeth.”Vivian leaned closer to the screen, delight warming her eyes. “Two? Already? I missed that.”Molly launched into an enthusiastic explanation involving apples, a playground bar, and a friend named Leo who apparently screamed louder than she did. I stayed just out of frame, wiping my hands on a towel, li

Ryan’s POVThere’s a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from lack of sleep, but from lack of presence.I’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline for weeks, Aurora timelines accelerating, Rosemary stabilizing but still fragile, investors circling like hawks who smelled blood and opportunity at the same time.My calendar looked full. My days were productive.And yet, when I lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling of an apartment that felt too quiet for a man who supposedly had everything he wanted, the only thing I could think about was how little time I was actually spending with Celeste.We worked in the same building. Sometimes even the same room.And still, I missed her.I’d catch glimpses of her in the corridor, hair pulled back, phone wedged between shoulder and ear, brow furrowed in that way that meant she was holding the weight of ten decisions at once.Or I’d see her from across the atelier floor, laughing softly with Grace or Jenny, and something in my chest