All Chapters of Switched at the Mafia Auction: Chapter 281 - Chapter 289

— Xander —The letter had been opened hours ago, yet it was still in my hand, creased now, not from carelessness but from repetition. My thumb rested along the weakened fold, pressing slightly as if I could smooth it back into something untouched. I read it again anyway. Not from the beginning. Never from the beginning. My eyes dropped to the line that had refused to leave me since the first time.I don’t know what you’re planning.My jaw tightened, not visibly, just enough. The words sat wrong, not because they were inaccurate, but because they weren’t. Because that was exactly what I had made it look like.Silence. Distance. No explanation.From anyone else, it would have been strategy.From me—It became something else.If you want to take her, don’t do it like this.My fingers stilled slightly against the paper. There it was. The part that mattered. The part that had shifted something the moment I read it. She thought I was waiting, positioning and calculating my next move like I

— Xander —She was still here.I’d told her to wait for the rain. A practical reason. Temporary. The kind of thing that meant nothing and I needed it to mean nothing, so I stepped back from the door and from her and put the appropriate distance between us and became myself again.“Wait for it to pass.” I kept my back to her. Easier that way. “Then go.” A pause. “Don’t come back to the house. Don’t send letters to the gate. Don’t stop by the office.”Silence.I had expected argument. That was Avelyn’s native language with me, push, parry, challenge. What I hadn’t expected was the quality of the silence she gave me instead. Heavy and considering.“That’s it.” Her voice was quiet. Almost to herself.“Yes.”“A week.” I could hear her moving, not toward the door, toward me. “A whole week and that’s what you give me. A list of instructions and a wait for the rain.”“It’s straightforward enough.”“It’s nothing.” The word came out with more force than the ones before it. “You know what you

~ Avelyn ~Shopping with Xander was an experience I was wholly unprepared for.It wasn’t that he was difficult. It was that he was thorough. Every aisle, every option, considered with the same focused attention he’d given Ciara an hour ago. He picked things up, examined them, made decisions with the quiet efficiency of a man who was accustomed to being right.He also kept putting things in the cart that I hadn’t asked for and then moving on before I could object, which was a technique I recognised and deeply resented.“She doesn’t need that,” I said, for approximately the fifth time.“She might.”“She’s not going to need a cashmere blanket, Xander.”“You don’t know that.” He defended“She’s going to spit up on it within forty minutes of—”“Then we’ll get another one.” He placed it in the cart and moved on and I stood there for a second before following, because that was the only available option.But there were also moments, small ones — where he’d stop and hold something up and lo

~ Avelyn ~I stared at the sky. At the ring. At him. Xander Sterling on one knee with an expression that had shed every layer of composure and was simply, entirely open in a way I had never seen from him before and might never see again.“I know what we’ve been,” he said, quietly. “I know what I was. What I put you through.” His eyes didn’t leave mine. “I’m not asking you to forget it. I’m asking you to let me spend the rest of my life making it right.” A breath. “You and Ciara. That’s all I want. That’s everything.”The city hummed below us. The drones held their formation. The candles moved in some invisible current of air.I nodded.I was aware I was nodding with a frequency and enthusiasm that was not entirely dignified but I could not locate my words so nodding was what was available to me and I committed to it fully.Something moved across his face. Relief, maybe, or the particular expression of a man who’d been holding his breath for longer than he’d admitted to himself. He too