All Chapters of Reborn Rich: My Fiancé and Step-Sister Killed Me Once.: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

​LUCAS​The real estate agent had deliberately excused herself to step out onto the manicured back patio under the guise of "letting the space speak to them," which Lucas thought was an utterly ridiculous, pretentious thing to say about a house.​Yet Rita had practically fallen in love with it the second they crossed the threshold. She walked through each sunlit room slowly, her fingers trailing delicately along the custom wainscoting and polished granite as if she were already deciding where their velvet sofa would go, where the art prints would hang, and how they would entertain guests during the holidays.​"This one," Rita said, coming to a stop in the center of the sprawling gourmet kitchen. She turned to face him, her eyes sparkling with pure, unadulterated triumph. "I know we only looked at three properties today, Lucas, but this one... I can genuinely feel it. This is our home."​Lucas looked at the soaring ceilings, the high-end brass fixtures, and the floor-to-ceiling window

​Rita drove to Diane and Ronald’s home alone, her brand-new leather handbag resting securely on the passenger seat beside her. Inside the interior zip pocket sat a check, already filled out in her neat, looping handwriting, signed, and folded carefully in half.​The entire twenty-minute drive through the suburban neighborhood, she had rehearsed the exact wording of her speech in her head. She didn't want it to sound like charity. She didn't want it to sound like she was buying them off, either. She wanted it to land as an offering—a grand, undeniable gesture of filial devotion that would permanently seal her position at the center of the family.​Diane opened the front door before Rita could even raise her hand to ring the bell, pulling her into a tight, scented hug like she’d been standing by the entryway waiting for her all morning.​"There's my future daughter-in-law!" Diane beamed, stepping back to smooth down the lapels of Rita’s cardigan so she could look at her properly. Her ey

ARDEN​The bridesmaids came down the stone aisle first, draped in matching sage green silk gowns, carrying modest nosegays of cream roses. Then, as the string quartet shifted into the grand opening chords of the bridal entrance, Rita appeared at the top of the garden path on her father's arm.​The entire outdoor audience turned in unison to look.​I had to admit, purely objectively, that she looked genuinely beautiful. She wore an intricately embellished fitted gown with a sweeping lace train, her dark hair swept up into an elaborate undo, her face lit with the distinct, radiant glow of a woman finally living out a dream she had desperately wanted for a very long time.​I watched her walk down the aisle, her eyes locked on Lucas. I watched Lucas’s face crack into a real, completely unguarded, emotional smile as she approached the floral altar. Sitting quietly in my tailored emerald dress, I felt no sudden pangs of jealousy or regret—only a cool, distant, almost professional curiosity

​​Lucas brought it up carefully over dinner at their dark mahogany dining table, pacing his words with the exact, measured precision he had been rehearsing in his head for days.​"I've been doing some serious research," he said, setting his fork down onto his plate with a light, deliberate sound. "On investing. Real, structured investing. Properly managed, not just following random hype online or taking reckless gambles."​"Yeah?" Rita looked up from her salad, her eyes flashing with instant interest.​"The crypto coin you hit on—that was incredible, obviously, but it was luck as much as anything, right? A tip from someone you don't even know, at the absolute right second." He kept his tone completely easy, reasonable, and disarmingly gentle. "I think if we actually study the broader market properly, put a real institutional strategy behind it instead of just praying another lucky tip comes along, we could turn what's left of the funds into something much bigger. We could set ourselv

​RITA​Rita stood at the sleek quartz kitchen island in her tailored loungewear, trying to authorize the catering company's final post-wedding invoice on her phone, when the digital transaction declined for the second consecutive time.​She frowned at the glowing screen, assuming it was a temporary glitch in the venue’s payment portal. She re-entered her card details with practiced, confident fingers, tapped Submit, and watched the screen flash a bright, humiliating red again: Transaction Declined: Insufficient Funds.​A sudden, unpleasant knot pulled tight in the center of her stomach. She exited the payment portal and opened her banking application directly, bypassing the third-party app to view the primary balance.​The number listed across the top line didn't make any sense.​Rita stared at it for a long, frozen moment, her eyes darting across the digits. She was certain she was misreading a decimal point somewhere, or that her bank had temporarily locked the account due to flagg