Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Secret Billionaire Heiress Strikes Back : Kabanata 131 - Kabanata 140

Chapter 132They surrendered the car to the valet, which Rhysand watched with the careful attention of someone cataloging a new phenomenon, and made their way into the gardens through the main entrance.Rhysand's pace changed as soon as they were through the gate. He moved with the particular energy of a child encountering more stimulation than expected and trying to process it systematically—head moving in small deliberate arcs, eyes tracking from the fountain to the play structure to the rose garden to the group of children visible in the distance on the grass, running some internal priority algorithm.The play structure won."Can I?" he said, looking at Dante."Stay where I can see you," Dante said. "If you go into the tunnel section, come back out in three minutes. You know the rules.""I know the rules," Rhysand confirmed, with the gravity of someone acknowledging a serious compact, and then immediately navigated toward the play structure at a pace that was technically still walk

Chapter 134They'd been talking for approximately eight minutes—which was long by the standards of their ages, but the topic was sustaining—when they heard voices from the tunnel entrance. Other children, by the sound, arriving with the specific energy of a group that traveled together.Three children emerged around the turn behind Rhysian. They were slightly older—seven, maybe eight—and they moved with the easy authority of kids who knew this space well, who came here regularly enough that Meridian Gardens was their territory rather than new ground.They stopped when they saw Rhysian."Rhysian!" said the first one, a girl with elaborate braids and the confident energy of someone accustomed to being the social organizer of any group she was part of. "There you are. We were looking for you.""I was talking," Rhysian said, with the simple directness of someone who didn't feel the need to apologize for this.The girl looked at Rhysand with the frank assessment of a child who was evaluati

Chapter 136The Whitmore residence occupied the kind of house that had stopped being just a house several generations ago and had become instead a statement—three floors of considered architecture set back from the street behind ironwork gates and a gravel drive that crunched with the particular self-importance of gravel that knew its own value. The interior had been decorated and redecorated across decades by women with strong opinions and unlimited budgets, and the result was the specific aesthetic of a space that was simultaneously very beautiful and very aware of being very beautiful.Jayce had grown up in it. He knew every room, every creak of the staircase, every way that sound traveled through the walls in ways the architect hadn't intended. He knew which floorboards to avoid after midnight and exactly how much of the kitchen conversation was audible from the hallway outside the dining room.He'd been avoiding the dining room for approximately forty minutes, having arrived home

Chapter 138The clock in the hallway ticked. Once, twice, several times."How long?" she said finally."Have I known?" Jayce asked."Have you been managing this," she said. "Managing it as something you couldn't say."Jayce thought about the gallery opening eight months ago, and knew immediately that wasn't the beginning of the answer she was asking for. "A long time," he said. "Since middle school, maybe. I didn't have the language for it for a long time, and then when I did I also had the engagement, and it seemed—" He stopped. "It seemed easier to keep the compartments separate.""Nothing is easier in compartments," his mother said, with the tone of someone who had personal experience with this. "It feels easier at the start and then you spend all your energy maintaining the walls instead of living."Jayce said nothing."I would have liked to have known," she said. "Not so I could fix it or manage it. Just—so I knew. So you didn't carry it alone.""I didn't know how you'd react," h

Chapter 140And in parallel, he was going to be exactly what he'd told himself he wouldn't be—adjacent to something he couldn't have, close to people who didn't know the half of it, managing information and compartments with the specific exhaustion of someone who'd understood, tonight, at his mother's dinner table, that compartments were not sustainable.His phone rang.He looked at the screen.Alyssa.He looked at the ceiling briefly, performed a rapid inventory of his available energy, and answered."Alyssa," he said, which was one word carrying several tons of implication."Four years, Jayce." Her voice was controlled in the specific way of someone who had been angry all afternoon and had decided that controlled was the version of angry that was most effective. "Four years, and you can't manage to show up to lunch. I had to sit in that restaurant for an hour. I called you eleven times.""I know," he said. "I'm sorry. Something came up