All Chapters of Reborn Rich: My Fiancé and Step-Sister Killed Me Once.: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

Rita noticed it first in small things. Lucas going quiet when she walked into rooms mid-conversation with Jessica. His phone turning face-down on the counter a beat too fast whenever she came near. The way he'd started watching her, careful, like he was measuring something."What's going on with you," she asked one evening, catching him staring at her across the kitchen."Nothing." He looked away too fast. "Just tired.""You've been tired and weird for a week now.""It's a lot, Rita. The trial, the house, everything." He rubbed his face. "I'm allowed to be tired.""You're allowed. You're not allowed to lie to me about what's actually going on in your head." Rita crossed her arms. "I've known you long enough to know when something's specifically bothering you, not just generally everything."Lucas didn't answer right away, and that silence told her more than any answer would have."Is this about Jessica," she asked. "Whatever you two talk about when I'm not here?""She's just checking

LUCAS​Lucas didn't sleep properly for three straight nights after his conversation with Jessica. He lay awake in the suffocating darkness next to Rita, listening to the rhythm of her breathing, turning over every terrifying permutation of what might actually be happening behind her exhausted, guarded composure.​He watched her with hyper-vigilance now, cataloguing small, everyday actions he had never paid attention to before. The way she took phone calls in the guest room, pulling the door almost shut behind her. The way she had gone evasive about her own defense lawyer's strategy, deftly deflecting every single time he asked what Grayson’s associate was actually advising her to do.​"How'd your legal meeting go today?" he asked one evening at the kitchen island, his tone deliberately casual, testing the waters.​"Fine. Same as always." Rita didn't look up from her plate, her fork pushing a piece of chicken across her dish. "Just going over the exact same evidentiary details, over an

​​The paramedics had called it on scene, and Lucas had played his part exactly the way he and Jessica had meticulously rehearsed in the fifteen frantically calculated minutes before anyone arrived.​He had spent those minutes kneeling beside Rita's cold body on the hardwood floor, his voice cracking with what looked—to the two uniformed officers who first responded—like absolute, heart-wrenching grief.​"I don't understand," he had sobbed over and over, burying his face in his hands. "She was completely fine at dinner! She just... she collapsed out of nowhere."​The lead homicide detective who caught the case—a woman named Ferris with tired, heavy eyes and a worn notepad she barely glanced at—had asked her preliminary questions carefully over the following forty-eight hours. Lucas answered every single query exactly as Jessica had coached him during their late-night drills.​"She'd been sick for weeks," he told Ferris, sitting on his living room couch, still wearing the wrinkled butt

​ARDEN​I was seven years old the night my father walked out, and for years afterward, my brain kept it locked away in fragmented pictures. They were like broken pieces of glass caught in sunlight—too sharp to touch, too bright to look at directly, but always sitting just beneath the surface of everything I did.​I remember the smell of the house first. It smelled like rain leaking into the window sills and the stale scent of dark roast coffee that had gone cold in the pot hours ago.​I was supposed to be asleep. My bedroom was at the far end of the hallway on the second floor, a tiny space with faded wallpaper depicting yellow wildflowers that had peeled near the radiator. But I had been awake for hours, lying on my side under a scratchy wool blanket, watching the shadow of the oak tree outside trace jagged patterns across my ceiling.​Then the raised voices started.​It wasn't the usual low rumble of my parents discussing bills or complaining about the landlord. This was sharp. It

​ARDEN​I was reviewing a complex branding proposal at my desk, deep in a color palette spreadsheet, when my phone buzzed across the polished wood. Riley’s name lit up the screen.​I almost let it go to voicemail. We had dinner plans scheduled for later that evening, and my eyes were burning from staring at pantone codes all morning. But something about the relentless, buzzing insistence of the second ring made me drop my pen and pick up anyway.​"Riley? What's going on?"​"You need to sit down for this, Arden," Riley said, her voice breathlessly fast, barely catching her wind. "Seriously. Sit down."​I leaned back in my office chair, my attention snapping into sharp focus. "What happened?"​"Jade's family," Riley blurted out, the words tumbling over each other. "Her dad just got arrested by federal agents two hours ago. Securities fraud, wire fraud, racketeering—some massive, elaborate scheme. Apparently, his entire real estate empire was built on lies stacked on top of dirty money