บททั้งหมดของ Brother's Best Friend Is My Child's Father : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

I saw them through the glass panel of the office door.Elena was standing near the window and Dominic was beside her, closer than I would have liked, speaking in that low, controlled way of his that made everything sound like a statement rather than a conversation. I could not hear the words through the door but I did not need to. I could read the shape of it clearly enough.And I could read Elena's face.She was looking away from him, her arms crossed, her jaw set in that particular way she had when she was trying to hold herself together. But underneath that, underneath the composure and the careful distance she was maintaining, there was something else. I had known Elena long enough to see it even through a pane of glass.She was affected.Whatever he was saying to her, it was landing. Getting past the walls she had spent weeks carefully rebuilding since coming back to this city. And Dominic knew it. That was the worst part. He was not oblivious to what he did to her. He was f

The photographs were still on my desk.I had put them face down after going through them the third time, but I had not thrown them away and I could not fully explain why. Maybe because turning them over did not make them disappear.Maybe because the questions they had dropped into my head were still sitting there regardless of whether I was looking at the images or not.Dominic and Adrian together with a documents between them that I did not recognize.I did not know what it meant. I did not even know if it meant anything. Sophia had handed me that envelope and disappeared before I could ask a single question, which was deliberate and I knew it was deliberate, but knowing that did not make the photographs easier to dismiss.I turned back to my screen.My inbox had seventeen unread messages and I had been staring at it for twenty minutes without opening a single one. My hands were not entirely steady and I pressed them flat on the desk for a moment, willing them to stop.This was my

I could not sit down.I had tried, twice. Once on the sofa and once on the edge of my bed, but neither lasted more than a minute before I was on my feet again, moving. My flat was not large and I had walked the length of it so many times in the last hour that I knew exactly how many steps it took to get from the kitchen to the window. Eleven. I had counted without meaning to.Outside, the evening had settled into a grey, quiet dark. The street below was ordinary. Normal things happening in a normal world, and none of it felt real because inside my head, Sophia's voice was still playing on a loop.The pieces are already moving. I hold the cards now.She had said it so calmly. That was what I could not shake. Not the words themselves but the way she had delivered them, as though she had already seen how everything was going to end and found it amusing. Sophia was not the kind of woman who made empty threats. I had known that from the beginning. What I had not known, what I was only be

I could not see anything.The darkness was complete, the kind that presses against your eyes and makes you uncertain whether they are open or closed.I blinked twice just to be sure. My hand was already out behind me, palm flat, keeping Elena and Maya where they were.My eyes moved across the room, adjusting slowly. The outline of the sofa. The window, faint grey from the street light outside. The doorway to the hall. I tracked each shape and held them in my mind like a map."Stay close to me," I ordered. "Both of you. Do not move."Elena's hand found the back of my arm. "What is happening?"I did not get the chance to answer.Footsteps. Soft and unhurried, somewhere to the left of us. Then silence. Then a laugh, low and easy, coming from the far corner of the room near the bookshelf."I am here."Sophia's voice. Calm as ever, like she had walked into a room she owned.I turned toward the sound. "Show yourself."A beat of silence. Then she stepped out of the shadow, just enough to

The smoke was gone but the smell of it was still in the room.I sat on the edge of Maya's bed with my arm around her, her head resting against my shoulder. She had stopped coughing but her breathing was still uneven, catching slightly every few seconds. I kept my arm firm around her and did not move."Nothing is going to happen to you," I told her. "I promise."Maya did not say anything for a moment. Then she turned her face slightly toward me. "You are shaking, mom l."I looked down at my hands. She was right. My fingers were trembling against her arm, a small, constant movement I had not been able to stop since the smoke cleared and I found myself standing in the middle of my own flat not knowing where Sophia had gone.I pressed my hand flat against Maya's arm and held it there. "Sweetheart, I'm fine."She did not argue with me. She just leaned in a little closer, and I kept my eyes on the doorway.In the sitting room, I could hear Dominic. The slow, measured sound of him moving, b