All Chapters of Too Late To Love: I'm Gone Alpha: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 32ANNALISA"Regardless of the goodwill gestures. Regardless of the blood donation and the signed papers and the four hours in the meeting room asking sensible questions. A man who, years ago, was begged to care about his own child and chose not to, because he had himself wrapped so thoroughly around Christiana that he couldn't see past her to a woman who was bleeding in front of him." He paused. "That does not disappear because he has decided to be better now."I said nothing for a moment. He was right and we both knew he was right and there was nothing useful to add to it."Christiana is going to make this difficult," I said instead, moving us forward because sitting in the truth of the past was something I could only do for so long before it started pulling at things I needed to keep intact. "Today was one round. We came out of it well and she did not expect that and it threw her. But she is not going to stop." I set the report down on the b

Chapter 34ANNALISAShe was dressed well, which she always was, and her expression was friendly, although i could see that she was attempting to keep it permenant on her face and wasn't quite succeeding."I hope I'm not interrupting," she said. Nobody answered that immediately."I just wanted to come and check how you were all settling in," she continued, moving into the room with the ease of someone in their own territory who understood that nobody was going to ask her to leave. She looked at the table, the files, the working documents, the four medical professionals who had been in the middle of something. "It looks like you've been busy.""We have," I said, and went back to the page I was reading. She moved further in. I kept my eyes on the document, refusing to look at her. Whatever she was here for, i wanted no part in it."I also wanted to mention," she said, settling into a chair at the table with the air of someone who had decided that she would be staying for a while and this

Chapter 36ANTONIOThere were two possible answers. The first was that he was genuinely here to congratulate me, in which case turning him away would be both rude and unnecessary.The second was that he was here because the elders had told him about the ultimatum and he wanted to see for himself whether the ceremony was real or whether the invitation was a performance designed to buy time, and the best way to assess that was to look at me directly and watch what my face did. Turning him away would confirm the second answer even if the first was true."Send him in," I said.Reyes nodded and went to the door. Marcus came in a minute later.He was built just like me, as he had the same greenwood bloodline in him, similar height to me, similar coloring, the kind of resemblance that made people do a double take when they saw us in the same room.He sat down in the chair across my desk without being invited to, which was also a thing he had always done."Congratulations," he said. He said

Chapter 38CHRISTIANA"What are you proposing," Miriam said. Her voice was more careful, the way it went when she was waiting for me to say what i actually wanted to say.I had been thinking about it since I had walked out of the medical wing.The slap had cleared something in me, paradoxically. And it made me ssee things clearer than before.She had something she cared about more than anything else.The child was everything.Eli was the thing she had built her entire new life around. The career and the research and the collaboration and Dominic Vael and all of it, when you traced it back far enough, all her reasons for working for this, trying to discover a cure was to save his life."There is something she loves," I said. "More than anything else. More than the career and the research and more than Dominic Vael, even. If that something were no longer in the picture, she would have no reason to be in Antonio's life. No coalition visits, none of it. She would take her work and go some

Chapter 40ANNALISA"Did you lie awake," I continued, "knowing that I was in the guest wing sharing a room with Dom? Knowing that when I needed to feel safe in this building. I reached for him." I watched his face do the thing I had known it would do, the tightening around the jaw, grinding his teeth and the flash of anger in his eyes as he clenched his fists tightly. "He is the one I seek out. He is the one who makes me feel like myself. He is the one I laugh with and work beside and bring my fear to when I am afraid, and he has been that person for years while you were here being whatever you were being." I let that sit for a moment. "And soon, I will be the one officially answering to the title of Luna. Not because anyone forced a timeline on us. Because it is what we want and choose on our own terms.""Annalisa—" His voice had gone rough at the edges."Go back to your room, Antonio," I said. I turned to step around him again.His hand came out and closed around my wrist.I went