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بيت / Romance / His regret: Her revenge / Chapter 11 -الفصل 20

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Chapter 11

Krista POVI told Sophia at seven in the morning.She was still in her robe, holding a mug with both hands, and I walked into the kitchen and said, "My mother is arriving New York tonight at six fifteen," and Sophia set the mug down on the counter very carefully, like she needed her hands free for whatever came next.She came closer to me and asked again!"Your mother," she said. Like she didn't hear me the first time I said it."Elena Monroe. E.M. Laurent. Yes.""The woman who is literally one of the most influential anonymous designers in Europe.""She is also just my mother, Sophia."Sophia picked the mug back up. She took a long sip. Then she looked at me over the rim and said, "We are going to need to leave by four. Traffic on the expressway is going to be impossible if we leave any later than that."I laughed. It came out louder than I expected, surprised out of me, and Sophia grinned into her coffee, and for a moment the kitchen felt like something other than a temporary shelter
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Chapter 12

Krista POVThe hug happened properly in Sophia's living room.Not the airport version, which had been shock and relief colliding at full speed. This one was slower. Elena set her carry-on bag by the door and turned around, and I walked into her arms the way you walk into a room you thought you would never see again. We held each other for a full minute without moving. I could feel her breathing. I could feel her heart beating against my cheek.When we finally separated, Sophia was already in the kitchen making tea nobody asked for, which was exactly the right thing to do.Elena sat on the couch. I sat on the floor with my back against the coffee table and my knees pulled up to my chest, which was how I used to sit as a child when I was in a room I wanted to stay in forever. I did not realize I was doing it until Elena looked at me and said, very quietly, "You used to sit exactly like that. On the kitchen floor. When I was cooking."I did not know what to do with that, so I just said,
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Chapter 13

Elena POV (Limited Third)Elena had not planned to tell all of it that night.She had planned to give the outline, the broad strokes, the version of the story that covered the necessary ground without requiring her to stand inside every room of it again. She had told this story to therapists and to one or two close friends in Milan and each time she had managed it with a certain professional distance, the way you describe a difficult project rather than a wound.But Krista was sitting beside her on the couch at half past midnight with her knees pulled up and her green eyes fixed on Elena's face with the complete and unguarded attention of someone who had been waiting for this specific information for sixteen years, and professional distance was not going to be possible tonight.So Elena told it the real way."I had four hundred dollars," she said. "American, which was the only currency I had thought to take. I had a passport in my own name because he never thought to control that, whi
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Chapter 14

Krista POVElena did not speak for a long time.She turned the first page and I watched her face. I had handed people my portfolio before, professors at Parsons, visiting designers who came in for critiques, the recruiters from the three houses that had made offers in my final year. I knew what it looked like when someone was being polite and what it looked like when something was actually landing.This was different from both of those things.Elena moved through the pages the way you move through something you are taking seriously. Slowly. With full attention. She did not tilt her head or make small encouraging sounds. She just looked, turning each page with care, going back occasionally to compare one sketch to another two pages earlier. Her expression was completely still.I sat on the floor and let the silence be what it was.One minute passed. Then two. I stopped counting at some point because counting was making me more nervous and nervous was not useful. I looked at my hands in
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Chapter 15

Sophia POVI had been waiting for the right moment to bring up Rachel Kim for two weeks.The problem was that every time I thought the moment had arrived, something more urgent pushed through first. The burglary. The security footage. Alex's phone call. Elena's letters. Elena herself landing at JFK with one carry-on bag and sixteen years of accumulated guilt. There had not been a single morning since Krista walked out of that house where the most pressing thing was also the most strategic thing.But Elena was here now. Krista was sleeping more than four hours a night. The immediate crisis had settled into something that still required urgent attention but was no longer on fire in the acute way.So on a Thursday morning, while Elena was in the kitchen making coffee in the particular precise way she had that suggested she had strong opinions about extraction time, I sat down at the kitchen table across from Krista and said, "I need to talk to you about someone."Krista wrapped both hand
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Chapter 16

Alex's third-person-POV The note arrived during the quarterly projections review.Alex was mid-sentence, pointing at the third slide on the screen, when his assistant Patricia appeared at the edge of the conference room door with the particular expression she reserved for interruptions that could not wait. She did not speak. She folded the note once and slid it along the table until it reached his hand.He looked down at it.Process server in the lobby. Says it's urgent. Won't leave without a signature.He set the note face down on the table. He finished his sentence. Then he said, "Give me ten minutes," to the room in general and walked out before anyone could respond.Patricia was waiting in the hallway. She said quietly, "I can have security escort him out if you want to deal with it later.""No," Alex said. "I'll go down."The process server was a small man in a grey jacket who did not look up from his phone until Alex said his name at the lobby desk. Then he looked up, confirmed
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Chapter 17

Krista POVThe roses arrived on a Tuesday morning while Elena and I were working at the kitchen table.I heard the buzzer and assumed it was the fabric samples Elena had ordered from a supplier in the Garment District. Sophia went to the door. I heard voices in the hallway, brief and transactional, and then Sophia came back into the kitchen carrying three dozen white roses wrapped in paper so expensive it had a texture you could hear when it moved.She set them on the counter and looked at me with a very specific expression."Alex," she said. It was not a question.I stood up from the table. The roses were perfect. Long stemmed, fully opened, the exact shade of cream white that sits just one degree warmer than pure white. My stomach turned over slowly and completely."How did he know?" Elena said from the table. She was looking at the roses the way she might look at something that had crawled in from outside."I never told him," I said. "White roses. I never told him they were my favo
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Chapter 18

Krista POVElena made the call on a Wednesday evening from Sophia's kitchen while I was in the next room pretending to read.I could hear one side of the conversation. French first, then English, then something that might have been Italian. Elena's voice stayed low and professional the entire time, the voice she used when she was conducting business rather than feeling things. After about fifteen minutes she came to the doorway and leaned against the frame with her arms crossed."Monday morning," she said. "Nine o'clock. Garment District, West Thirty Seventh. The boutique is called Maison Veil."I set the book down. "What did you tell them?""I told them I have a designer whose technical ability exceeds anything they have seen at this stage and whose current personal circumstances require discretion," Elena said. "They asked how good you were. I told them better than me." She paused. "That got their attention.""Elena.""It is the truth," she said simply. "I told the truth."I looked
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Chapter 19

Krista POVSophia set the envelope on the kitchen table without a word and stepped back like it was something that needed space around it.I was still in my coat from the studio. I had not even put my bag down. I looked at the Hayes Luxury Holdings return address in the top left corner and felt the specific quality of dread that came not from surprise but from recognition. I knew this stationery. I knew what lived inside it."Sit down," Sophia said."How bad?" I said."Read it first," she said. "Then we decide how bad."I sat. Elena was at the counter making tea she had not been asked to make, which was her way of doing something useful with her hands while she waited. I picked up the letter and read it.Two pages. Warren Pryce's letterhead. The language was formal in the particular way of documents that wanted to appear reasonable while accomplishing something else entirely. The substance was this: Tyler Hayes, age seven, had been experiencing fevers of unknown origin for eleven days
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Chapter 20

Krista POVThe silence on the line lasted long enough that I thought the call had dropped.Then I said, "What do you mean it is not possible?""The pediatrician flagged a blood type marker," Alex said. "In the routine work up. It does not match either of ours." His voice was doing something strange, controlled on the surface but with something moving underneath it that he was not fully managing. "They ordered a second test to confirm. The second test said the same thing."I was standing in Sophia's kitchen with my coat still on and the Hayes Luxury Holdings letter on the table in front of me and the phone pressed hard against my ear."Alex," I said carefully. "Are you telling me the blood tests are saying Tyler is not our biological child?""I am telling you what the doctors told me," he said. "I do not have an explanation. I do not understand how it is possible. But I need you to come to the house. I need you here so we can discuss this together and figure out what—""No," I said.A
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