THE WOLFE LEGACY: HEIRESS OF THE EMPIRE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 40

~SIENNA~The moment the name flashed across my screen, my fingers turned cold.Celeste.Not “Aunt Celeste.” Not anymore.The phone vibrated once more in my hand, the screen still lit with her number, a sharp contrast against the soft, dim room I’d hidden myself in for weeks. I stood there barefoot, my heartbeat climbing my throat, my palms damp. Every instinct told me to let it ring out - to ignore it, toss the phone across the room, and pretend this call, this world, had never existed, but I knew better.You didn’t ignore Celeste. Not if you wanted to stay breathing.With a breath that felt more like surrender than strength, I slid my thumb across the screen.“…Hello.”There was silence for a heartbeat.Then her voice. Cool, clipped, calm. Always calm.“Now is the time for you to come out again.”I didn’t speak right away. I was still sitting frozen, like if I stayed still enough I could disappear.“What?!” I said, my voice tensed.Silence.“But that would mean me dying,” I said quie

~ARIA~The candidate sitting across from me had a résumé padded with buzzwords and a cologne that arrived three seconds before he did. He was halfway through explaining how he’d “streamlined several client-facing pivots” when my phone lit up beside the laptop.I ignored it.“For example,” he continued, “in my last role, I implemented a workflow that increased engagement by over thirty percent in the first quarter alone.”I gave a small nod, not because I was impressed, but because I wanted him to stop talking long enough for me to evaluate whether he was actually saying anything useful. He wasn’t.The phone lit up again.I glanced down this time, just for a second.SiennaThe name hit harder than I expected.I tapped the screen open briefly. Just a single message.[Hey… I know this is sudden. And long overdue. But I’d really like to meet. Just to talk. Please. I’m sorry it’s taken this long]I stared at it longer than I should’ve.“Ms. Aria?”I looked up.The candidate was watching me

~ARIA~I didn’t hear the elevator, or the door, or even the footsteps.But I felt him.Before I turned around. Before I even knew it for certain, something in the air shifted. A subtle charge. A quiet pull. The kind of awareness that bloomed under my skin like something primal, something undeniable. And then… his coat was around my shoulders.I flinched, just slightly.Not from fear.From heat.From the sudden, overwhelming awareness of him standing behind me.When I turned and saw him—tall, silent, composed in that maddening way only he could manage—something in my chest jolted. My heart, my breath, my control. All of it stuttered like I hadn’t spent the last week building walls just to keep things like this out. Like my body had recognized him before my mind caught up.Cassian.The name echoed through me, unspoken. My mouth went dry.When I finally said it, it came out wrong. I meant to sound indifferent. Even. Maybe cold. But it caught on a breath I didn’t know I was holding—quiet,

~ARIA~It had been two days since that night and I hadn’t let myself think about it too much. I buried myself in fabric swatches and sketch revisions, meetings and back-to-back calls. Just anything to avoid the sting of his silence or the shame that kept creeping back in when I remembered how I’d wanted him. How I’d needed him, just for a moment and how he’d walked away without a word.~The design room was quiet, lit by the soft gray light spilling in through the windows. I was sorting through a pile of muslin test drapes when my phone buzzed on the edge of the table.I glanced at it and stilled.Sienna.A small preview hovered beneath her name.[Hey… I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but I miss you. I’d love to see you, even just for a little while.]I stared at the screen.I wasn’t angry, but not untouched either.I hadn’t forgotten how she didn’t call back. How I’d reached out, shaky, vulnerable, more lost than I’d ever been, and how she’d promised to get back to me, o

~ARIA~Sienna sat across from me, her fingers curled tightly around the napkin like it was the only thing anchoring her. Her smile was there, but it didn’t feel like hers anymore, not like the one I remember. It was stretched, uneasy, a little too forced to be real.I told myself it was because of me. Because I’d called, texted, begged for her when I needed her the most and she never came. Maybe the guilt was eating her alive now, making her fidget and avoid my eyes. That had to be it, but even as I tried to convince myself, there was still something else that felt strange, like a prickling wrongness in the air. It was something I couldn’t quite name and maybe… just maybe, I would’ve brushed it off if Cassian hadn’t insisted on coming. The first thing he’d said to me since that night at the office - after the kiss, the heat, and then the wall he’d thrown up between us - was that he wasn’t letting me meet Sienna alone. ‘Not risking a repeat of the past,’ he’d said, and that had been th