Semua Bab Fallon’s Reid: An Arranged Contract: Bab 211 - Bab 220

~Reid~The line went dead.She hung up.I sat there, the phone still pressed to my ear, long after the silence had settled in. It wasn’t just the end of the call. It was the end of whatever thread we’d still been clinging to — thin, frayed, maybe already severed before either of us admitted it.But now it was real.Fallon was gone.Really gone.The contract was terminated. The paper that had once tied us together — for business, for family, for protection — shredded in a quiet email no one else would ever care about.I’d signed her freedom.And somehow, in doing it, I’d made sure I lost her.I told myself it was the right thing. That she needed to be unbound. That removing my name from her life would let her rebuild without my shadow darkening her light.But sitting here now, in this too-quiet house with her voice echoing in my head, I knew the truth.I didn’t do it for her.I did it because I was a coward.Because facing her would mean facing myself.Because saying the words out loud

~Reid~The envelope looked harmless.Just a plain beige rectangle. Heavy stock paper. Crisp at the edges, not a wrinkle in sight. A courier handed it to me like he was delivering dry cleaning, nodded, and turned back down the driveway without a word.No eye contact. No clipboard. No sympathy.Maybe that was mercy.I stood in the foyer for a full minute before I looked down at it. I knew. Before I opened it. Before I turned it over and saw the embossed return address from Fallon’s attorney, I already knew.But I still walked to the entry table and opened it like a man who thought maybe it was something else.The tear of paper echoed in the hall.The pages slipped out in one solid stack. Unfolded themselves across the marble like they’d been waiting to breathe. The header hit first: Petition for Divorce. Filed under her name. Clean font. Sharp ink. I could see where she’d signed, her signature neat and elegant at the bottom of the final page.That was it. The last word.She’d followed t

~Reid~The Callahan estate had never felt this silent. Not even during funerals.Even the staff walked softer, like they didn’t want to wake whatever part of me had died since the press statement dropped. Maybe it was respect. Or fear. Or just good training. Either way, I could feel the shift—the tension folded neatly into every hallway, every polished surface, every closed door.I stood in the center of the formal lounge, staring out the tall windows. Everything looked the same. The hedges were trimmed. The marble shined. The silence was expensive.But the house felt gutted.I didn’t belong here anymore. Maybe I never did.Behind me, footsteps clicked sharply across the floor. Then a familiar voice, sharp as glass:“So it’s done, then.”My father. Charles Callahan.He didn’t wait for me to answer. Just stepped into the room with his usual tailored precision and a scotch already in hand, like this was just another meeting. Another misstep. Another liability to clean up.I didn’t turn

~Fallon~It came through at 2:14 a.m.I was lying in bed, the covers tangled around my legs, phone screen dimmed but still lighting my face in that soft, blue glow. I wasn’t really reading anything—just scrolling, absently. Old emails. Forgotten texts. Headlines I’d stopped clicking on weeks ago.Then the alert lit up at the top of my screen.“Credit alert: $2,000,000.00 USD from Reid Callahan.”At first, I thought it was a glitch. A scam. Some bizarre mistake.But when I logged in to the account, the number was there.Clean. Cold. Real.Two million dollars.No memo. No subject line. No message trailing behind it.Just the wire transfer and his name, stamped in sharp digital font.I sat up, every part of me suddenly awake. My hands were cold, my pulse loud in my ears. I reread the alert three times, then set my phone down and just… stared at the ceiling.Was this his way of saying sorry?Was it closure?Was it a peace offering wrapped in currency because words were still too hard for

~Fallon~There was something strangely sacred about being invisible.In Los Angeles, invisibility was a luxury you couldn’t afford—not when your face was plastered across digital billboards, when your smile could be dissected for signs of trouble, when strangers thought your heartbreak was public property. But here, in this quiet coastal city with its cracked sidewalks and crooked bookstore signs, I was just another woman wearing sunglasses and ordering oat milk lattes.No one here knew me as Fallon Prescott-Callahan.And for the first time in years, I wasn’t trying to be her either.The apartment was a second-floor walk-up tucked between a florist and a bakery that opened at six every morning. The space itself was small—maybe 800 square feet—but it had soul. The kind of charm that came from chipped cabinets and crooked light switches. The kind of place where you could leave the dishes in the sink and not feel like the walls were judging you.It was mine.Signed under a different name