Lahat ng Kabanata ng UNTIL YOU REMEMBER ME: Kabanata 211 - Kabanata 220


 ( Alessa) I didn’t go back to the penthouse. Four days had passed since I arrived at my father’s estate, and with every sunrise my suspicions grew sharper, heavier, like rust eating through steel. Adrian’s confession about kissing Kathryn should have been the end of it — a painful honesty that proved his love for me. Instead, it became the final crack. He had kissed her. In public. Outside the courthouse annex where court employees, clerks, and even the prosecutor could have seen them. The image burned behind my eyelids every time I closed my eyes: his mouth on hers, testing feelings he claimed were dead. I couldn’t forgive that. Not the act. Not the visibility. Not the way it made me feel like the fool who had believed every whispered promise. I made my decision on the fifth morning. No more calls. No more visits. No more chances for him to sugar-coat the past with that steady voice and those reverent hands. I was done letting him rewrite our story while pieces of Kathryn sti


 (Adrian) The next day I buried myself in work like it was oxygen. Meetings back-to-back. Strategy sessions. Contract reviews. Anything to keep my hands and mind occupied so I wouldn’t think about Alessa’s voice in that restaurant declaring Marcus her fiancé. Or the way she had looked straight through me like I was already a ghost in her life. Kathryn showed up at the office unannounced around noon. She didn’t ask questions. She simply rolled up her sleeves, sat across from me, and started going through the regulatory filings with the same sharp precision I remembered from law school. By late afternoon, for the first time in days, I caught myself smiling — a real smile — at something she said about an old moot court debate we had once destroyed together. It felt… easy. When the last meeting ended, we walked to the small park near the office. The autumn air was crisp. Kathryn slipped her arm through mine out of old habit, and I didn’t pull away. We walked slowly, reminiscing lik


 (Adrian) I was in the middle of reviewing the latest filings when the call connected. Alessa had demanded a three-way virtual meeting. Kathryn, her, and me. No lawyers. No buffers. Just the three of us. I accepted because I was tired of shadows. The screen split. Alessa appeared first — eyes red-rimmed, chin high, looking every bit like the woman who had once designed skyscrapers and now looked ready to burn them down. Kathryn joined a second later, calm and composed in her AG suit, the picture of professional power. Alessa didn’t waste time. “You kissed her in public,” she said, voice shaking with fury as she stared straight at Kathryn. “Court employees saw it. The prosecutor saw it. Do something about it, Attorney General. Since you’re so powerful.” I expected many things. Tears. More accusations. Even silence. I didn’t expect Kathryn to smile — small, pitying, almost amused. “Oh, Alessandra,” Kathryn said softly, leaning forward. “You’ve wasted your time. This kind of a


 (First Person – Adrian) They all said the same thing. Three senior partners and two board members sat across from me that morning and delivered the same verdict with careful, professional sympathy: “File for dissolution. Cite her post-traumatic condition, the memory loss, the documented sleepwalking episodes. It’ll be clean. Fast. She’s already severed the Valez contracts. She’s made her relationship with Marcus public on social media. You’re only making yourself look desperate by holding on.” I listened without interrupting. As a lawyer, I didn’t need anyone to spell it out for me. The words landed like truth I had been avoiding. What was the point of staying married when she was actively destroying me? Alessa had gone nuclear. Not just the adultery filing. She had posted photos with Marcus — arms around each other, captions that read like love letters from their college days. “Second chances with the right person.” The internet ate it up. My phone had been blowing up with p


 (Adrian) I sat alone on the couch in the dim living room, the city lights bleeding through the glass like distant stars. Kathryn had gone to take a call in the guest room, leaving me with nothing but silence and the weight of everything unraveling. And in that silence, the realization hit me like a wave I had been holding back for years. Kathryn was my first love. Not the childish kind. The real one. The one that painted the world in color for the first time. She was the girl who made me feel love not as something soft and safe, but as something fierce and hungry. The first girl I ever touched. The first girl I ever made love to. I closed my eyes and let the memories come. That tiny dorm room. The rain tapping against the window. The way her hands trembled when she pulled my shirt over my head. We were both inexperienced, clumsy, desperate — discovering each other after weeks of tension and late-night debates. I remember how she gasped when I first entered her, how her nails