All Chapters of Thread of Glass: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Mei’s apartment looked like a toy store had exploded in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane. The suitcase lay wide open on the bed, looking less like luggage and more like a desperate cry for help. It had been open for three hours, and so far the only thing Mei had successfully packed was a rapidly escalating sense of dread. Dresses were folded with aggressive optimism, two identical sweaters she had forgotten she owned were fighting for space beside a pair of jeans, and a mountain of plush animals seemed to be actively multiplying every time she turned her back. In the center of the disaster, Mei sat cross-legged on the carpet, her hair clipped up with a single exhausted claw clip that looked one minor inconvenience away from giving up entirely. She held a stuffed rabbit in one hand and a plush bear in the other, studying their faces with the solemn gravity of an ambassador negotiating an international treaty. “This one is for Liyana baby,” she announced seriously, adjusting the ra

Zoya had been in the conference room since seven. The Whitmore acquisition dispute. New client, high-profile, the kind of case that came with its own PR team already assembled before the retainer was signed. Marcus Whitmore wanted to fight it to the last dollar and had said so four times in the last hour, each time slightly louder, as though volume were a legal strategy. She had given him precise answers. Clean risk assessments. She kept her voice level on the fourth repetition, the way she'd kept it level on the first three, and didn't let him see what that cost her. Alan set a coffee down beside her hand without being asked, her third refill, and said nothing about it. "You should eat something," he said, quiet, between clients, sliding a printout an inch closer to her hand. "I'm fine," she said, not looking up from the page. "You've said that four times today," he said, counting it off on his fingers, half a joke, watching her face for the real answer underneath it. She looke

His hand dropped. “Sorry,” he said, quiet. Zoya looked at him, and he looked almost as surprised at himself as she felt. “You don’t have to—” she started. “I know,” he said. Neither of them finished the sentence. Zoya turned back to Liyana, smoothing the blanket again even though it was already perfectly straight. Raiyan stepped back. Neither of them mentioned what had just happened. But Zoya could still feel the ghost of his fingers beside her ear, and Raiyan, looking down at his sleeping daughter, understood with a quiet kind of dread that he hadn’t touched her like a stranger. He’d touched her like a husband. For one small, unguarded second, he had forgotten they weren’t one anymore. And that, somehow, was far more dangerous than if he’d meant to. … The room had finally gone quiet. Zoya glanced at the clock, then eased herself back from the bed, checking the blanket one last time before she reached for her bag. “I’m going to pray,” she said, already reaching

Elena said nothing. “You had every opportunity to tell either of us the truth,” he said. “That night. That week. Any point in the last two and a half years. You let me carry that.” “Other woman?” Elena’s laugh came out sharp, wrong. “Raiyan, since when was I the other woman in your life?” “To me you were only a good friend, Elena,” he said, unmoving. “Nothing more.” “Right,” she said, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t have believed me anyway. You were already looking for reasons not to trust her. I just gave you one that worked.” “Don’t,” he said, his voice cutting through hers, sharp enough that Eliza flinched. “Don’t you dare say that makes what you did smaller.” Elena’s eyes went wet, and this time it didn’t look practiced. “I have loved you since we were children,” she said, her voice fraying at the edges. “You just walked away from that. You never told me why. And then I watched you choose her, again and again, even when she wasn’t in the room. Even after she’d left. Ev

Four days after the discharge, at the tail end of the week, he drove her to the follow-up appointment she'd sworn she'd skip, and won that argument the way he won most of them, by simply not discussing it as optional. She was steadier walking out than she'd been walking in, and spent the whole ride back complaining about the blood draw like it had been a personal insult. "Four vials." She examined the cotton ball taped in the crook of her elbow like it had wronged her personally. "What are they building with it." "A very small, very expensive Mona." Eyes on the road, mouth almost twitching. "Not funny." "A little funny." They were still mid-argument about her email access when the elevator opened onto the penthouse, and both of them stopped talking at once. Loujain stood near the windows, coat still on, holding a glass of his good scotch she hadn't touched. "Adam." Her eyes slid past him, slow and deliberate, to land on Mona. "You didn't tell me you had company. I find you play