All Chapters of He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The silence in the car stretched long after the engine started. We weren’t avoiding words. We were holding them. Letting them settle between us like dust after a storm.Julian kept his gaze ahead, one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly on his thigh. The city blurred around us, streaks of soft light and movement, but inside the car, it felt still.“I keep thinking about how it used to feel,” I said quietly. “Walking into that building. Like I didn’t exist until someone else acknowledged me.”He glanced at me, just once. “And now?”“I think I exist either way.”A small smile tugged at his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.I looked down at my hands in my lap, fingers lightly curled. “I didn’t expect today to feel like… this.”“Like what?”“Like the beginning of something I don’t fully understand yet.”Julian’s voice was soft. “That’s how most real things start.”We drove in silence for a while. Not heavy. Just quiet. I watched his hands on the steering wheel

Simone stood just inside the office when I walked in, the leather folder already in her hands. She didn’t say anything right away. Just offered it to me, her eyes steady. I took it, opened it, and let the pages speak for themselves. There were emails. Time-stamped call logs. Memos with deliberate omissions. Financial reports with discreet reallocations. Alessia’s fingerprints were everywhere, but so were Roman’s. The paper trail wasn’t just messy. It was deliberate. Calculated. One email caught my eye. It was dated two weeks after I was forced out. Roman had signed off on the reassignment of my direct reports. Staff who had been loyal. Silenced. Removed. It wasn’t just about me anymore. They had dismantled the team. The structure. The legacy I had built from the inside out. I closed the folder slowly. “They didn’t even try to cover it,” I said, my voice low. Simone nodded once. “They assumed you’d never get this far.” “And if I had?” “They assumed you’d be too afraid to act.”

I arrived at the loft’s conference room a few minutes early. The folder in my hands felt heavier than its physical weight, loaded with more than pages and signatures. It was full of reckoning. Simone sat at the round table, leather tablet open in front of her. She looked up from her work and met my gaze with steadiness that anchored me.“You’re right on time,” she said, voice quiet but steady.I took a seat, hands folding around the folder. Marcus stood on the edge of the room, watching us, his posture calm yet anticipatory. Claudia, the boutique owner who had believed in me before this storm began, stood by the window, arms folded lightly across her chest. The morning light fell on her face in a way that made her look steady, hopeful.Moments later Julian entered, sliding into the chair opposite me. His presence felt like calm water in a turbulent sea. He lifted his coffee cup in greeting.“I have the notes from last night,” he said softly as he slid a stack of papers across the tabl

The rain hadn’t started yet, but the air outside the boutique smelled like it would. That sharp, metallic scent clung to the pavement and the windows, thickening the stillness. I stood in the upstairs studio, staring out across the skyline. The city lights flickered in the distance, dull behind the clouds, like even they were unsure whether to shine or wait.Behind me, the low murmur of voices filtered in from the design floor. The staff was finishing final adjustments for Capsule Eight’s media trial. Every stitch, every texture, every campaign shot had been tailored to reclaim something. Not just elegance, but truth.Julian’s voice came softly from the doorway. “They’re ready when you are.”I turned to face him. He hadn’t changed out of the charcoal button-down he wore during the internal alignment meeting. The sleeves were still rolled up, his collar open just enough to reveal the bare line of his throat. There was something grounded in the way he stood now. Not the sharp edge of te

I stood in front of the boutique’s mirror, my reflection softer than I expected it to be. The silk blouse I wore clung to my shoulders like a second skin, cream with a faint sheen that caught the morning light. Underneath, the bones of me still burned. Everything about today had been rehearsed in my mind for weeks, yet my chest was tight with a different kind of pressure.The press preview would begin in an hour.I adjusted the collar, watching the quiet movements of my fingers. Every detail of my outfit had been chosen not just to impress, but to disarm. To suggest warmth and power. Mercy and consequence. I looked like a woman ready to explain her rebirth to the world, and maybe I was. But beneath the silk and soft palette, I felt something sharper gathering at the base of my throat.Julian entered without knocking, his presence calm but alert. He looked at me through the mirror first, and for a moment, neither of us spoke.“You’re too quiet,” I said, smoothing down the front of my b