Semua Bab A Kiss For Every Bruise : Bab 101 - Bab 110

GwenThere’s a moment when truth stops being an idea and becomes an object. Something you can hold, turn, place on a table and say...Look. This was that moment.My phone felt heavier than it should have. Not because of the device but because of what it carried. Sebastian didn’t rush me. That, more than anything, told me he had changed. Before, he would have controlled the pace. Directed the conversation. Managed the room. Now? He waited.I unlocked the screen, opened the folder and turned the phone so everyone could see. “This,” I said, my voice steady, “is a transfer agreement dated six months after I disappeared.” My father leaned forward, Matteo shifted closer and my mother hesitated but she looked.Sebastian didn’t move. “Read the signature,” I said. Silence. Then, “That’s yours,” Matteo said. No. “It looks like mine,” I corrected. I zoomed in and held it steady. “I didn’t sign it.” My father’s brow furrowed. “Gwen....” “I couldn’t have,” I said calmly. “I wasn’t here.”The words

Author's POV Camilla DiCarpo did not panic publicly. She perfected herself too carefully for that. By the time her car pulled into the underground garage of her penthouse, her expression had already smoothed back into elegance. Her breathing remained even and her posture was relaxed. Anyone watching would have seen nothing unusual. However, the moment the elevator doors closed, her smile vanished. The silence inside the mirrored lift felt sterile, sharp and wrong. Gwen Cruz had looked her in the eyes tonight. Not like prey, not like someone recovering either. And certainly not like someone ashamed. But like an equal.Camilla hated that most of all. Not the accusations or the documents. Not even Sebastian’s shift in allegiance. The certainty. Gwen had sounded certain and certainty spread.Camilla stepped into her penthouse without removing her heels, crossing the marble floors in long measured strides. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city, glittering beneath the night like a

GwenTrust did not return dramatically. It came in fragments, instead. A pause before suspicion. A question asked instead of dismissed. A door left open. Tiny things. But after years of manipulation, tiny things mattered.Sebastian began knocking before entering my room. The first time he did it, I nearly laughed from shock. Not because he had ever been cruel before all of this. He hadn’t. But grief had changed everyone after my disappearance. The house became suffocating in ways nobody noticed while they were inside it. Privacy dissolved into concern. Independence became fragility. Every emotion I expressed after returning was treated like something unstable that needed management. Now...He knocked and waited.That morning, I opened the door cautiously. Sebastian stood there holding two coffees. “I wasn’t sure if you still took sugar,” he admitted. Something twisted painfully in my chest. Because six years ago, he would have known.“Two sugars,” I said quietly. Relief flickered bri

GwenThe house changed after Matteo spoke. Not visibly, though. The chandeliers still glowed warm against polished marble. The staff still moved through the corridors with practiced silence. Dinner still arrived precisely on time. Camilla still visited with elegant composure and measured concern.But something underneath the Cruz villa had shifted. I felt it in the pauses. In the way conversations stopped too quickly when I entered a room. In the way Sebastian’s eyes lingered now, thoughtful instead of dismissive. In the way my father had begun watching Camilla when she spoke.They were hairline cracks. Tiny but still dangerous and Camilla had noticed. The realization settled in my chest like cold metal as I stood near the library window late Thursday afternoon, watching rain gather against the glass in silver streaks.She had not built this level of control by being careless. If Sebastian awakening was a crack… then Camilla would try to seal it. Or widen the rest of us until we shat

Author's POV Camilla DiCarpo disliked uncertainty, not fear. For her, fear was useful because it made people predictable. Desperate people clung. Guilty people obeyed. Lonely people attached themselves to whatever offered warmth. Camilla had built entire relationships on understanding that simple truth. However, uncertainty? Uncertainty meant variables and variables ruined careful work.The Cruz villa gates opened slowly before her car, wrought iron parting beneath the gray drizzle coating the afternoon in silver haze. Camilla sat in the backseat with one leg crossed elegantly over the other, gloved fingers resting against a leather folder on her lap.She watched the estate approach through tinted glass. Something felt different, though not visibly. The gardeners still worked the east hedges. The staff still moved efficiently. The fountains still ran. But instinct was a language she trusted more than facts. And her instincts had not stopped whispering since Gwen Cruize calmly announc