All Chapters of Entangled: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The morning after looked like a crime scene.Streamers dangled limply from the ceiling fan like defeated party flags. The smell of lechon grease still clung to the air, mixing with stale alcohol and the faint sweetness of melted birthday cake. Plastic cups and empty bottles littered every available surface, forming little islands of chaos across the living room. Someone’s shoe was in the sink. Someone else’s jacket hung from a lamp like a casualty of war. Their apartment had never looked so alive and so utterly destroyed at the same time.Sofia groaned as she sat up on the couch, her head pounding. A deep, unforgiving throb pulsed behind her eyes. She had no idea how she ended up there, only that her mouth was dry and her body ached like she had been hit by a jeepney. The blanket she wasn’t even sure belonged to the apartment slid to the floor. Her hair felt like it had been styled by electricity.“Good morning, sunshine.”Lani appeared from the kitchen wearing her sparkly Dirty Thirt

Tristan Jacinto was used to waking up viral. It had been the soundtrack of his twenties, boardroom by day, scandal by night, his name stitched into every gossip column like wallpaper.Usually, he scrolled through the noise with his morning coffee, entertained at best, indifferent at worst. But this time was different.On the screens, there it was: grainy shots of him leaving Sofia Reyes’s apartment at sunrise. His hair mussed, his jacket slung over his shoulder. Easy to twist, impossible to deny. The headlines had already christened her again: From Alley Girl to Apartment Girl. The old photos from Elysium resurfaced like ghosts, side by side with the new.And for the first time, the acid in his stomach was not about him.It was about her.He remembered her at Nova Technologies, standing in his glass office, trying so hard to armor herself with that ridiculous disguise. Soft brown curls, a fake mole, a look stolen from Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s playbook. He had teased her for it, but t

Sofia had stared at Margaux’s profile until her eyes blurred. The pieces clicked too neatly. The alley. The headlines. The silence. Her silence.She closed the tab, but her pulse kept racing. Before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed call.It rang once. Twice.Then his voice. “Sofia.”Her throat tightened. “We need to talk.”A pause. She could almost hear him thinking. Then, “Not over the phone.”“Where, then?”“My place,” he said. Calm, final. “It’s private.”She almost laughed. “You want me to walk into your tower in the middle of a scandal?”“I’ll arrange a car. Not one of mine. No plates anyone knows. It will bring you straight to the building’s private entrance. No one will see you.”She gripped the phone tighter. “You’ve done this before.”“Of course,” he said simply. “It’s the only way to keep this contained.”Her chest burned. Contained. Like she was a leak in his empire.Still, she agreed. Midnight.By eleven-thirty, she was pacing the apartment.“Come with me?” sh

“Sit,” Tristan said, motioning toward the couch.Sofia lowered herself onto the cool leather, her back stiff, her hands restless in her lap. The silence of the penthouse pressed down on her, every second stretching longer than it should.Tristan crossed to the kitchen and asked, “Do you want anything to eat or drink?” He pulled open the Sub-Zero fridge and bent down, his shoulders filling the frame. A pause, then a short laugh. “All I have is water.”Sofia let out a startled sound, half a laugh, half disbelief. “You? With a refrigerator the size of a taxi? And nothing but water?”He turned, two glass bottles in his hands. His face was unreadable and shrugged his shoulders. “Take it or leave it?”Their fingers brushed as he passed one to her. The bottle was slick with condensation, and when she twisted it open and drank, the water was cold and crisp. Yet her mouth stayed dry.Her gaze betrayed her, flicking to him. The rolled-up sleeves, the unhurried way he moved through this space, t

The Echelon newsroom buzzed like it had been electrified. Screens glowed, voices overlapped, and every few steps Sofia caught her name whispered like it was breaking news.Damien spotted her first, bounding across the bullpen like he was announcing a royal procession. “Reyes! Get in Carrie’s office, now. Your billionaire just made you international television.”Joan rolled her eyes but followed. “Subtlety is dead.”Carrie’s door swung open before Sofia could protest. “Inside. All of you.”On her desk, a laptop streamed the press conference live from Hong Kong. Behind the podium, Tristan Jacinto stood in a steel-gray suit, Nova Tech’s logo glowing behind him. Reporters shouted questions until one cut through the noise:“Mr. Jacinto, can you comment on the renewed scandal linking you once again to the editor Sofia Reyes?”The air seemed to stall.Tristan adjusted the mic, his voice calm, clipped, and deliberate.“My company stands on performance and innovation. I will not let personal n