All Chapters of No Apologies, No Regrets: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The sun was barely up when Fedora’s phone lit up with a call. She blinked at the screen: Jason. She hadn’t expected him to actually follow through—not so soon, not after the year she’d had with people saying one thing and doing another. But there he was. Calling. On a Saturday morning.She picked up.“Good morning,” she said, stepping out onto the patio in her robe.“Morning,” came the familiar voice, warm and steady. “Hope I’m not calling too early?”“Not at all. We’re already up. The girls are doing their homework, or pretending to.”He chuckled. “Think they’d be up for a quick hello?”Fedora smiled softly. “They’d kill me if I didn’t let them. Hold on.”She opened the sliding door and called into the house, “Zariah, Eliana! Someone wants to say hi.”Within seconds, the girls were rushing outside, barefoot and wide-eyed.“JASON!” Eliana screamed, grabbing the phone from her mother.“Is it really you?” Zariah added breathlessly, crowding in.“Hey, hey—easy!” Jason laughed, his voice

Fedora stood in her Dallas kitchen as the morning sun streamed through the blinds. Her mother, Elizabeth, sat at the table, nursing a steaming mug of coffee while her twin girls, Zariah and Eliana, joined in with their cereal.“Mom,” Fedora began softly, “I need to go to Dubai for Beauty’s wedding.” She paused, guilt tightening her chest. “It’s... it’s her own wedding, a smaller event, just final touches, logistics.”Elizabeth looked up, warm concern in her eyes. “I know. And the girls?”Fedora gently adjusted Zariah’s hair before answering. “They’ll stay with you until I get back. Just this once—when I get there, I’ll call every evening.” She looked down at her daughter. “Mom, do you think you can help us?”Elizabeth smiled and waved her hand. “You’ve done enough, Fed. You need this trip, to finish the job and then come home. I’ll take care of them—and you know I will.”Fedora’s eyes glistened with relief. “Thank you.” She leaned in and hugged her mother tightly. “Really, thank you.”

Fedora had spent years locking away the ache Judah left behind—tidying grief into clean corners of her life, folding his memory into bedtime stories for Zariah and Eliana. She had loved him. Not instantly, not even willingly. But wholly. And when death took him—fast, brutal, final—she didn’t just lose a husband. She lost clarity. A sense of what was real.And then came Jason.Same face. Same eyes. Same haunted silences.From the moment she met him—weeks ago in that Dubai suite—her heart had pulsed with disbelief. Denial. Fury. But also… longing. Because what do you do when the ghost you buried walks into your life wearing someone else's name and calling another woman his fiancée?You don’t fall.You can’t fall.And so, Fedora didn’t.She ran.***Dallas, two days before her flight to DubaiThe sky outside her apartment was soaked in late evening gold. Daniel sat across from her at the dining table, a glass of merlot in his hand, his expression soft but unreadable.“I don’t want to com

The call came at 2:06 a.m.Judah sat upright in bed, already dressed, the hotel sheets untouched beside him. Sleep was a luxury he hadn’t allowed himself in days. His phone buzzed again. The name flashed:TRENHOLM.He answered immediately.“What did you find?” he asked, voice low and razor-sharp.“Got a hit on the IP address,” Trenholm said. “The location pinged from a private Wi-Fi network inside a compound registered under an alias—Yasir Delgado.”“Delgado?” Judah repeated.“It’s a shell name. But the lease is connected to someone who showed up on our radar a few years ago. Cross-referencing facial scans, we believe it’s Eric Hernández.”Judah’s blood chilled.Eric. The man Beauty said was her brother. The man who hovered in her shadows like an afterthought—but never left her side. The man who always seemed a little too close… a little too comfortable.“And the address?” Judah asked.Trenholm read it out. A private villa, nestled in one of Dubai’s high-security residential islands—a

The air in the Burj al-Qasr ballroom was laced with floral jasmine, chilled champagne, and thick tension disguised as excitement. Crystal chandeliers glimmered overhead like a thousand stars, reflecting against the ivory and gold interior. Staff moved in synchronized rhythm, draping tables, aligning chairs, and checking sound systems.Fedora stood at the center of it all, her clipboard trembling slightly in her hand.She wore a fitted rose-gold blazer over silk pants, her hair pulled into a flawless knot, her professionalism stitched tight across her face. No one could see the war behind her eyes, no one but herself.Guests were arriving by the hour. International elites. CEOs. Politicians. A few faces she knew from tabloids, and more from classified briefings years ago when she still walked in shadows beside Judah - her late husband.JasonHer chest constricted at the sound of his name, which filtered into her thoughts.She hadn’t seen him since their confrontation two nights ago. An