All Chapters of No Way to Win Me Back: Chapter 401 - Chapter 410

Celeste’s POVI made the call from my studio with the door closed, blinds half-drawn against the late afternoon glare.Rosemary hummed outside, metal against metal, soft voices, the rhythm of work continuing despite everything that had been shaken loose. I let it ground me before Raymond answered.“Officer Raymond,” he said.“It’s Celeste Sinclair,” I replied. “I want to check in about Andre’s case. And… everything connected to it.”There was a pause, not hesitation, exactly, but recalibration.“I was hoping you’d call, Celeste,” he said, his tone notably warmer. “This conversation’s overdue, and honestly, I was worried you were trying to handle this massive headache alone.”Something in his tone shifted then, subtle but important. This wasn’t a courtesy update. This was the beginning of something more deliberate.“I don’t want partial answers anymore,” I told him. “I want to know what you can prove. And what you can’t—but suspect.”“Fair enough,” Raymond said. “In that case, let’s sto

Celeste’s POVThe conference room felt colder than usual, though the heating hummed softly behind the walls.I noticed it the moment the Beaumont representatives sat down across from me, two of them, immaculate, measured, dressed in that neutral luxury that cost more than it looked like it should. Concern wore a pleasant face.“Ms. Sinclar,” the woman said, smiling with her lips but not quite her eyes. “Thank you for making time on such short notice.”“As always,” I replied, folding my hands together on the table to keep them from fidgeting. Jenny sat to my right, her tablet already open. Rachel was on my left, arms crossed loosely, posture relaxed in that way that signaled quiet readiness. I was grateful for them more than I could articulate.The man cleared his throat. “We wanted to check in regarding… recent developments.”I nodded. “I assumed that’s why you’re here.”They exchanged a glance. A small one. Practiced.“We’ve been made aware,” the woman continued, “that Rosemary Atelie

Celeste’s POVI decided, somewhere between my third untouched cup of coffee and the fourth unanswered email from a European freight partner, that if Aurora was going to sit at the center of my survival, then it no longer got to be a shadow.For weeks, I had let myself treat Aurora like a miracle I wasn’t allowed to question. A solution that appeared when Rosemary was choking. A quiet hand that unlocked ports, rerouted shipments, made impossible calls disappear. I told myself secrecy was the cost of rescue.Now it felt like a risk I couldn’t afford.I closed the shipping dashboard on my screen and opened a fresh document instead. At the top, I typed one word.AURORA.“Okay,” I murmured to myself. “Who are you?”Jenny poked her head into my office a second later, her tablet hugged to her chest, hair pulled into a messy ponytail that was starting to become her default during crises.“Rachel’s free if you want her,” she said. “She’s pretending to reorganize the gemstone vault but she’s act

Vanessa’s POVThe phone rang for the fourth time in under an hour, and by then my nerves were so frayed I could feel them humming beneath my skin. I stared at the screen as if the name itself might combust if I looked too closely.Unknown Number. Correctional Facility.I let it ring out.Again.The silence that followed felt thinner than the ringing ever had. I poured myself a glass of water I didn’t drink and walked to the window instead.Everything out there was still moving while my world had narrowed to a single vibrating rectangle on my desk.The phone rang again.I answered it this time, my voice measured, calm, the way I had trained it to be.“What.”His breath hit the receiver first, sharp and uneven. Panic had a sound, and Andre wore it openly now.“Vanessa, thank God. You have to help me. You have to fix this.”I closed my eyes.“You shouldn’t be calling me,” I said. “I told you that already.”“They’re going to make me crack,” he rushed on, words tumbling over each other. “Th

Vanessa’s POVThe jail smelled like bleach and old metal, a cleanliness so aggressive it felt designed to erase humanity. I hated places like this, not because they frightened me, but because they stripped away illusion.Power didn’t mean much behind reinforced glass and a bored guard with a clipboard.Andre looked smaller than I remembered.Not physically, he was still broad-shouldered, still carrying that careless masculinity that had once drawn attention, but something essential had collapsed inward.His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw unshaven, his hands trembling as he sat across from me, shackled to the table like a warning.“Vanessa,” he breathed, relief flooding his face the moment he saw me. “You came.”Of course I did. I wanted to make sure with my own eyes just how much time I had left before he cracked under pressure.By the looks of it, time was running out quicker than I expected.These men were always disappointing me.The glass between us reflected my face back at me, comp