Lahat ng Kabanata ng My One-Night Mistake Is My Billionaire Boss: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 120

The letters had been in the legacy box for years, waiting.Aria had known for a long time that she would give them to Hope and D.J. someday. She had known it when she wrote the first one. She had known it even more when she wrote the second. But knowing and doing were different things, and she had kept finding reasons to wait. Hope was busy with her career. D.J. was away at school. The timing never felt right. There was always something else going on, some other conversation that needed to happen first.Then the weekend after the homecoming visit, Hope called and said she wanted to come over alone. Just her, not D.J. She had something she wanted to talk about. Aria knew immediately what it was. She had seen the way Hope had looked when the letters were mentioned. She had noticed the questions Hope had never asked.So Aria called D.J. and asked if he could come too. He hesitated for a moment, then said yes.They came on a Sunday afternoon.The house was quiet when they arrived. Hope ca

The call came on a Thursday evening, and Aria almost missed it.She had been in the kitchen finishing the dishes when her phone buzzed on the counter. She dried her hands and picked it up. D.J. 's name was on the screen. That was unusual. He usually called on Sundays, and he usually texted before he called, so a Thursday evening call meant something had happened."Hey," she said. "Everything okay?""Yeah. Everything's fine. Actually, everything's better than fine."She leaned against the counter. "What's going on?""I got in.""Got in where?""The program. In Copenhagen. The one I applied to months ago. I didn't think I had a chance."Aria felt her chest tighten. She had heard about the program. D.J. had mentioned it once, casually, as if it were a long shot he didn't want anyone to get excited about. He had sent in the application without telling her when. He had not wanted to make a big deal out of it in case nothing came of it."You got in," she repeated."I got in.""That's incred

Elena died on a Tuesday morning in early spring.Aria had been there. She had spent the night in the chair beside her mother's bed, the way she had done many times over the past few months. She had woken at dawn to the sound of birds outside the window, and when she looked over at the bed, she saw that Elena's chest was no longer moving.There was no struggle. No last words. No final moment of clarity. Just the quiet absence of breath. Just the stillness that comes when a long life finally ends.Aria sat with her for a while before calling anyone. She held her mother's hand and looked at the face she had known her entire life. She did not cry. Not yet. She just sat there and let the truth settle into her bones.After a while, she called Damien.He arrived within the hour. He did not say anything when he walked in. He just sat down beside her and took her hand. They stayed in that room together until the people from the funeral home arrived.---The news spread the way news always does

D.J. came home from Europe in the middle of August, three years after he had left.After three years of study, he had finally completed the architecture program in Copenhagen. Aria had been counting the months without meaning to. She had never been the kind of mother who marked every anniversary of her children's departures, but D.J. 's time away had coincided with some of the hardest years of her life, and she had measured them in his absence the way you measure time during a long winter. She had flown out to visit him twice. He had come home for three Christmases and one summer. The rest of the time, he had been a voice on the phone and a face on a screen.Now he was coming home for good.She and Damien drove to the airport together. The morning was warm and clear, and the roads were quiet. Aria watched the city give way to the highway and then to the long flat stretch of road that led to the airport. She had been excited for weeks. She had cleaned his room three times and bought gr

Hope had her first child on a Thursday in late spring.Aria got the call at two in the morning. She had been expecting it for weeks, but when her phone rang and she saw Hope's name on the screen, her heart jumped anyway. She answered on the first ring."Mom?""I'm here.""It's time.""I'm on my way."She woke Damien, threw on clothes, and drove to the city. The roads were empty at that hour. She kept both hands on the wheel and tried not to think about anything except getting there. She thought about the night Hope was born — the rainy Tuesday, the way Damien had held her hand and told her everything would be okay. She had been younger then, still learning how to trust her own body. Now her daughter was in a hospital room doing the same thing.She arrived an hour later. Hope was already deep into the process, her partner beside her holding her hand. Aria walked in and stopped for a moment in the doorway. Hope was pale and sweating, her hair pulled back, her face tight with concentrati