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Lahat ng Kabanata ng CHASING THE REBORN HEIRESS: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

58 Kabanata

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE ALEXANDER

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE**ALEXANDER**She texted me the next morning.Not about business. Not about the trial or the gallery or anything that required a practical response. Just: “I make good coffee. If you want some before the Tokyo call at nine.”I stared at it for a moment.She was inviting me to her apartment. Casually, like it was nothing, which meant she'd thought about it carefully before sending it, which I was learning was how Sophia operated. Nothing casual was actually casual.“Address?” I wrote back.She sent it.I arrived at eight fifteen with pastries from the bakery two blocks from my apartment because showing up empty handed felt wrong and flowers felt like too much. She opened the door in a grey sweater and bare feet, hair down, and for a moment I forgot how to form sentences."Pastries," she said, looking at the bag."Seemed right."She took them and let me in.Her apartment was exactly what I should have expected and somehow still surprised me. Clean lines, good light, a

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO**SOPHIA**I didn't tell Isabelle immediately.That lasted exactly forty-eight hours before she showed up at the gallery with lunch and looked at my face and said, "Something happened.""Nothing happened.""Sophia.""We had coffee at my apartment."She set the lunch down slowly. "And?""And I kissed him."The sound she made brought Yuna out from the back room. Yuna took one look at Isabelle's expression, turned around, and went back without a word. I was going to give her a raise."Tell me everything," Isabelle said."There's not much to tell. It was one kiss. We talked. He left.""How was it?"I picked up my coffee. "Real."She looked at me with an expression I recognized, the specific Isabelle Laurent combination of delight and protectiveness that she'd been deploying since we were seventeen. "Are you scared?""Completely.""Good." She unwrapped her lunch. "Scared means it matters. You spent five years not letting anything matter.""Things mattered.""The gallery

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE ALEXANDER

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE**ALEXANDER**Sunday arrived and I spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to bring.Not flowers, she'd find that performative. Not wine, too formal for her apartment on a Sunday. I settled on good coffee beans from the place near Pike Place she'd mentioned once in passing, because paying attention was the only currency she'd accept from me that actually meant anything.She opened the door in a dark green dress, simple, no effort performed, which meant she'd thought about it. Her apartment smelled like garlic and something warm."You remembered the roaster," she said, looking at the bag."You mentioned it once.""Three weeks ago.""I was listening."She stepped back to let me in and I followed her to the kitchen where something was simmering and the counter had the particular organized chaos of someone who actually cooked rather than someone performing cooking."Sit," she said. "It's twenty minutes out."I sat at the counter and watched her work. She mo

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR**SOPHIA**March arrived and Catherine was sentenced to five years.I heard it from Rebecca at nine in the morning and said thank you and hung up and went back to the exhibition mock-up I'd been reviewing. Yuna looked at me across the table and didn't ask. I appreciated that.By noon I'd told Marcus, who went quiet in the way he did when he felt something too large for immediate words. By two I'd told Isabelle, who cried briefly and then apologized for crying, which made me almost cry, which I didn't let happen because I had a four o'clock artist meeting.Alexander texted at three. *Heard about the sentencing. Are you alright?*I thought about the question properly rather than giving him the automatic fine.*Yes,* I wrote back. *Genuinely. Come over tonight if you want.*He arrived at seven with the coffee beans again and takeout from a place in Capitol Hill I hadn't tried. He set everything on the counter and looked at me once, assessing without making it obvious,

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE ALEXANDER

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE**ALEXANDER**I woke up on her sofa at six to the smell of coffee.She was already in the kitchen, hair pulled up, moving through her morning routine like I wasn't there, which somehow felt more intimate than if she'd made a production of it. She set a cup on the coffee table without waking me and went back to whatever she was reading on her tablet.I sat up. "Morning.""Morning." She didn't look up. "There's eggs if you want them."Just that. No awkwardness about the night before, no careful management of what it meant that I'd stayed. Just coffee and eggs and her reading in the early morning light.I made eggs for both of us because she was absorbed in whatever she was reading and I'd learned her well enough to know she'd forget to eat if something held her attention.She looked up when I set the plate beside her. Something shifted in her expression."You cooked," she said."Basic self-preservation. You forget to eat when you're reading."She looked at the plate

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX*SOPHIA*The opening was full by eight. London's art crowd moved differently from Seattle's. , more careful name-dropping, everyone watching everyone else's reactions before committing to their own. I'd navigated rooms like this in both lifetimes and knew how to read them.By nine the sculptor's bronze piece had three serious inquiries. The photographer's series had sold two prints. The painters were drawing the kind of sustained attention that meant reviews, not just purchases.I moved through the room doing what openings required, introductions and conversations and the particular performance of being present without being consumed by it. David had flown in from Chicago, which I hadn't expected, and seeing him across the room talking to one of the London gallery directors made something warm settle in my chest.Isabelle had come too. She was currently making a fashion designer she'd just met laugh loudly near the bronze figure, which was exactly where I needed som

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN**SOPHIA**We flew back to Seattle on separate flights.My idea still, but this time it felt different. Not protection. Just logistics. The distinction mattered.He texted me from his gate. *Next time we're on the same flight.*I looked at that for a moment. The casual assumption of next time, of shared plans, of a future that included both of us in the same direction.*Yes,* I wrote back. Just that.Yuna had held everything together in my absence with the quiet competence I'd come to rely on. I spent Monday back in the gallery going through what I'd missed, the Paris negotiations with the Fontaine space, three new artist submissions, a funding proposal for the foundation that needed my signature before Friday.Normal work. Solid ground.Alexander called that evening. Not a text. An actual call, which he'd started doing more since London."My mother called again," he said."I know. She called me directly this time."A pause. "She called you?""She got my number fr

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT**SOPHIA**Margaret Sterling was nothing like Eleanor.That should have been obvious going in but I'd spent enough time bracing for the worst that the reality of her took adjustment. She was small, quietly dressed, with Alexander's eyes and none of his early coldness. She'd chosen a restaurant in Capitol Hill, not the kind of place Eleanor would have selected, somewhere genuinely good without the performance of prestige.She stood when I arrived and extended her hand and then seemed to reconsider and offered a brief embrace instead, which I accepted.We sat."Thank you for coming," she said. "I know this is strange.""It's fine." I meant it. "Alexander speaks well of you.""He's generous." She looked at her menu without reading it. "I want to say something before we get into anything comfortable. I witnessed things during the period you were in Alexander's life in the other timeline. I didn't stop them. I told myself Eleanor was too powerful and it wasn't my place

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE SOPHIA

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE**SOPHIA**Paris in May was everything London had been and louder.The Fontaine space was larger, the press presence heavier, the crowd a specific mix of European collectors and international money that moved differently from anything I'd navigated before. Nina Volkov's half of the exhibition drew her established audience and mine drew the attention the London show had generated, and together the opening night felt like something that mattered beyond just the two of us.Nina found me at nine. "Sold out the Tanaka prints within the first hour.""I saw.""The sculptor has three institutional inquiries." She accepted a drink from a passing tray. "We should discuss Tokyo.""After Paris.""Obviously after Paris." She almost smiled. "You're good at this, Chen. I don't say that to many people.""I know. Thank you."She moved on. That was the thing about Nina. No lingering, no performance. Just clean exchanges and movement.Alexander was across the room talking to one of t

CHAPTER THIRTY ALEXANDER

CHAPTER THIRTY*ALEXANDER*She chose Iceland.Told me on a Tuesday with a map pulled up on her tablet, pointing out a small coastal town I'd never heard of three hours from Reykjavik. No gallery connection, no business history, no reason except that she'd found it while looking for places that existed in neither of her lifetimes."There's a hot spring forty minutes from the town," she said. "And a photographer's residency nearby that's been running for twenty years. I want to see it as a visitor, not a professional.""When?""End of June. Two weeks.""Done."She looked at me sideways. "You didn't check your calendar.""I don't need to. Two weeks in Iceland with you takes priority over anything in my calendar." I looked at the map. "Do we drive?""We drive. I already looked at the roads."She'd already looked at the roads. Of course she had.We landed in Reykjavik on a Saturday evening in late June. The light was strange and extraordinary, the sun not fully setting, everything golden a

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