جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

Sophie’s POVI stood on the pavement and looked up at the building for a moment. It went up a long way. I took one breath, pulled my bag strap up onto my shoulder, and walked through the front doors.The lobby was wide and quiet and cool. Not the empty kind of quiet — the controlled kind, the kind that costs money to maintain. The floors were polished marble. The ceilings were very high. Two young women sat behind a long reception desk at the far end and people in expensive suits moved through the space in every direction, purposeful and fast, not looking up.Nobody looked up when I walked in either.I crossed to the reception desk. One of the women looked up as I got close — young, neat hair, the kind of automatic professional smile that goes on like a uniform in the morning. Her eyes did a quick sweep over me. Down and up in under two seconds, the way people do when they are deciding something. Her smile stayed on but something behind it shifted."Good afternoon," I said. "I'm here

Sophie’s POVShe was holding a coffee cup in one hand and her phone in the other, already smiling the warm open smile she saved exclusively for Derek. She opened her mouth to say something.Then she saw me.The smile stopped. Not faded — stopped. Like someone had switched it off at the source. Her eyes moved from my face to Derek's face and back to mine and the warmth drained out of her expression and left something colder and much sharper behind."What is she doing here?" Her voice came out low and pointed, aimed past me at Derek like I wasn't standing right there.Before Derek could reply, I said, "Derek and I are going to lunch."Rosa's eyes came to me slowly. Like she hadn't expected me to speak. Like she had forgotten for a moment that I was capable of it.She looked at Derek. "What is going on?" Her voice had changed slightly. Something underneath it now that was working hard to sound casual and not quite managing it. "Why are you going to lunch with her?"Derek opened his mouth

Sophie’s POVThey buried Grandpa Edward on a Thursday.The sky had been this heavy, low gray since dawn, the kind that makes the whole city feel smaller and quieter than it should.By the time we got to the cemetery, the clouds were even thicker, hanging there like they couldn’t decide whether to rain or just keep pressing down on everything. The headstones looked darker. The bare trees stood stiff.And the small group of us in black coats huddled around that raw rectangle cut into the ground.I stayed a little apart from everyone, hands folded tight in front of me, just watching.Lana was crying softly into a handkerchief, her shoulders jerking in these tiny, broken movements. Shirley had one arm around her, rubbing slow circles on her back like a good mother should. Her own face stayed perfectly controlled — dry eyes, straight mouth. She had clearly decided ahead of time exactly how she was going to look today, and she was sticking to the plan.I looked at Derek.He stood a few feet

Sophie’s POVThe words dropped like a stone into still water.For a second, nobody moved. Nobody breathed.Then the room exploded with shock.Shirley shot up from her chair so fast it scraped loudly against the floor. “What did you just say?” Her voice was sharp, almost shrill. “Edward’s son? That’s impossible. He only had one son — Derek’s father.”Lana’s mouth fell open. She looked from Ares to Derek and back again, her eyes wide with disbelief and something greedier underneath.Derek went completely rigid beside me. I felt the tension roll off him in waves. He didn’t speak right away, but I could see the muscle jumping in his jaw.Mr. Graves cleared his throat, the sound sharp in the heavy silence. “I believe everything will become clearer once we proceed with the reading of the will and testament.”Ares gave a small nod and took the last empty seat at the long table, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat. He moved with the kind of calm confidence that only made the rest of us look

Sophie's POVI hadn't meant to stop.I was so tired my bones ached with it, and my head had been building toward a real headache since the cemetery. All I wanted was my room, my shoes off, the dark. But Rosa's voice cut clean through the closed study door and my feet stopped moving before I could tell them not to.Her heels clicked fast across the floor on the other side. Back and forth. Back and forth. The sound of a woman too furious to stand still."You let that lawyer humiliate me!" The words came sharp and hot, like something she'd been holding in all day and could finally throw. "He stopped me at the door like I was nobody. Like I was some stranger off the street. And your wife — your wife — walked right past me like she owned the place. Do you have any idea how that felt?"I pressed my back flat against the wall. The plaster was cold even through my coat."You should have said something." Her voice cracked on the last word. "You just stood there, Derek. You did nothing."A shor