Lahat ng Kabanata ng He Chose my Cousin, so I Chose Revenge: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

The envelope came in the middle of a slow afternoon, buried under courier receipts and folded sketches. Claudia had opened it first, scanning the embossed seal with practiced suspicion before setting it beside my tea without a word. I finished signing the vendor contracts before I touched it. I had learned, by now, to be careful with the things that arrived quietly. The invitation was printed on heavy cream stock, the kind that felt more ceremonial than warm. The words had been chosen with precision, probably by someone who had not thought twice about the weight they might carry. You are cordially invited to speak at the Annual Legacy in Design Forum. Honoring the work of emerging voices shaped by those who came before. Featuring remarks by industry pioneer Noelle Vale. At first, I stared at the name in silence. Not because I had forgotten it, but because it landed like a stone in the center of my chest. My mother’s name. The one she had stitched into the lining of her first jacket

The boutique stayed open late that night, though we had no customers and no new collection to display. The team moved quietly, not because of exhaustion, but because there was something sacred about the quiet. Claudia had made tea and left it warming in the corner. Helena stood by the drafting table, slowly aligning fabric swatches in small rows of color. One of the interns was stitching by hand, her needle moving in gentle arcs as if trying to match the rhythm of the room. Julian had not said much since we returned. He stayed nearby, close enough that I could feel his presence even when my back was turned. He was reorganizing some of the archived sketches, pulling the early ones into a new folder marked with both my name and my mother’s. The care he took with each page reminded me of someone tending to something already loved. I had gone upstairs to the storage loft and pulled out a small box I had not opened in years. It had been tucked beneath bolts of old fabric and forgotten pa

By the time we returned to New York, the air had sharpened. It was not the weather. It was not the time of year. The skies were still overcast, the traffic still moved in the same determined rhythms, and the buildings still stood with their usual cold certainty. But something in the atmosphere had changed. There was an edge beneath the ordinary—a current of something shifting. The city was no longer just moving fast. It was watching.Julian and I landed just after midnight. The flight from Milan had been quiet, neither of us speaking much beyond the essentials. Not because we were distant, but because there was a kind of reverence in what we had just lived through. Milan had been a turning point. The crowd. The clothes. The confrontation. And now, in the lull that always followed something momentous, we were coming home not to rest, but to face the next wave.Claudia had arranged a car, even though I had told her not to. She was waiting outside the terminal when we stepped through the

Three weeks had passed since I stood in front of the mirror wearing the coat my mother had once only imagined. The boutique had reopened quietly, with no announcement, no campaign, no curated story. There were no cameras waiting. No velvet rope at the door. Just a slow return to rhythm. The windows were updated. The mannequins wore pieces I had touched myself. The fabric was simpler now. Intentional. The kind that did not shout, but endured. Inside, the space felt different. The walls carried less tension. The silence was no longer defensive. The air did not hold its breath the way it used to. There was room again. Not the kind that came from emptiness, but from something hard-earned. A steadiness that came only after the dust had begun to settle. Most days began the same way. I arrived before the others. I walked the perimeter of the studio like I always had, fingers brushing the edge of the table, eyes checking the light. It was habit, but also something deeper. A way of making su

Three days had passed since the final article about Alessia’s collapse. The press had moved on. Investors had moved on. The world, always hungry for its next public reckoning, had already begun digesting someone else’s downfall.I had not moved on.The boutique had settled into a quiet rhythm again. Orders were steady. Staff returned to their tasks with a kind of reverent concentration, as if honoring the silence that followed the storm. I had been sketching less and walking more, often without destination, just letting the city meet me in fragments. There was something calming about anonymity after exposure. Something anchoring about being no one in a crowd again.On a Friday afternoon, I returned early to the studio, hoping to sort through an older collection I had been meaning to revisit. I had left the lights dim, the curtains half drawn. The scent of cedar oil and faint lavender lingered from the morning cleaning, and I sank into the armchair near the far wall with a bundle of fa