All Chapters of Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

200 Chapters

The company seed

Kara’s POV. “She was sent to find out if you know about the baby,” Xavier said again, slower this time, like he wanted to make sure every word landed. “Which means someone told them you’re pregnant. Someone with access to your medical records.” “Dr. Reeves,” I said immediately. “Maybe. Or someone who got to Dr. Reeves.” A pause. “I need you to come here now, Kara. I don’t want you alone right now.” I was already moving. “Send me the address.” His place was a twenty minute cab ride across the city. I spent those twenty minutes very still and very quiet in the back seat with my hands flat on my knees and my mind running hard through every single person who had been in that hospital when I checked in. The receptionist who processed my paperwork. The nurse who took my blood. Dr. Reeves himself. The lab technician whose name I never caught. Any one of them could have been approached. Any one of them could have been paid. That was the thing about people with money and no conscience.

Jeremy reconsiders

Kara’s POV. “Who filed it?” Xavier asked the moment I called him back. I hadn’t even made it out of the building yet. “My attorney doesn’t know yet. The complaint was filed anonymously through a third party legal service.” I pushed through the lobby doors and stepped outside. “But it was filed two hours and forty-seven minutes after my company was registered. Xavier, that’s not a coincidence. Someone was watching the state registry in real time.” A short silence. “Come back upstairs.” “I’m fine.” “I know you are. Come back upstairs anyway.” I stood on the pavement for a second. The city moved around me the way it always did, indifferent and loud and completely unbothered by the fact that someone had just confirmed they had eyes on every move I made. I went back upstairs. Xavier was already on his phone when I walked in, speaking quietly to someone I didn’t know, using the kind of clipped efficient language that meant he was talking to someone who worked for him. He held up one

The investigator

Kara’s POV. “He said what?” Xavier’s voice was sharp on the other end of the line. “Move up the timeline.” I was already in a cab heading home, phone pressed to my ear, replaying those four words on a loop. “He didn’t know I could hear him. He was already on his phone before I reached the door.” “Which means the meeting wasn’t about getting you back.” “It was never about getting me back.” I watched the city blur past the window. “It was about finding out how much I know. And now he knows I know enough to scare him.” A pause. Then Xavier said quietly, “He’s going to do something fast and something stupid. Those are the most dangerous combinations.” “I know.” I tightened my hand around the phone. “Which is why I need to stay three steps ahead of whatever he’s planning next. Can your PI pull Jeremy’s recent communications? Calls, meetings, anything in the last seventy-two hours?” “Already running,” Xavier said. “I’ll have something by tonight.” I hung up and sat back and pressed m

What the file says

Kara’s POV. “His name is Conrad Slate,” Xavier said. “Fifty-three years old. Private equity. Sits on four corporate boards, two of which have direct financial ties to Devonte Holdings.” I was sitting at Xavier’s desk again. It was becoming a familiar place, this chair, this lamp, this view of his organized files and the city beyond his window. I wasn’t sure when that had happened but I wasn’t going to examine it too closely right now. “How long have you known about him?” I asked. “I confirmed the name two hours ago.” Xavier set a thick folder on the desk in front of me. “But I’ve been tracking the money trail that leads to him for three weeks.” I opened the folder. Conrad Slate. The face from the photograph. In person, according to the surveillance images Marcus had pulled, he looked exactly like what he was. The kind of man who wore his wealth like a second skin, easy and unthinking, the kind of man rooms rearranged themselves around without anyone deciding to do it. “He’s been

The confession

Kara’s POV. “Two weeks before I woke up,” I said slowly. “He positioned himself inside Jeremy’s building two weeks before I was reborn.” “Yes.” “Which means he knew. Somehow, he knew the timeline was resetting.” I set the phone down and turned to face Xavier fully. “Xavier, that’s not possible unless—” “Unless someone told him.” Xavier’s voice was completely level. “Or unless he has access to something neither of us understands yet.” The room felt different suddenly. Smaller. The comfortable familiarity of this apartment, the desk and the lamp and the files, all of it still there but with something new sitting underneath it now. Something that made the whole picture slightly larger and slightly more frightening than it had been ten minutes ago. I sat back down. Not because my legs were weak. Because I needed to think and I thought better when I was still. “Tell me everything,” I said. “Not the strategic version. Not the version where you give me what I need to know and manage t

Mrs. Devonte moves

Kara’s POV. “He made a reservation in my name,” I said. “He used my name, Xavier. Without asking, without any contact, without anything. He just put my name on a table like he already owns the next move.” Xavier was reading the message over my shoulder and I could feel the shift in him, the way his body went very still the way it did when something crossed a line he had already drawn quietly in his head. “He’s testing you,” Xavier said. “He wants to see if you show up. If you show up alone it means you’re curious and manageable. If you don’t show up it means you’re scared. Either way he gets information.” “And if I show up with someone?” “Then he knows you have backup and he recalibrates.” Xavier straightened up. “He’s been watching you long enough to think he understands how you move. He doesn’t know what you know about him yet and he’s using that gap.” I put the phone down on the desk and looked at the folder. Conrad Slate’s face looked back at me from the surveillance photo. C

Damian resurfaces

Kara’s POV. “She’s not alone,” I repeated under my breath, keeping my eyes on Slate’s face. “How many?” I typed back to Xavier under the table without looking down. Xavier: Two men with her. They’re not going inside. They’re positioned at the entrance and the side exit. Marcus is watching them. My heart rate did not change. That was the thing I had learned about myself in this second life. The fear still came but it no longer lived in my chest. It lived somewhere further back, somewhere manageable, and what sat in the front was just clarity. I looked up at Slate and smiled. “Forgive me,” I said. “My assistant. She worries.” He smiled back and the moment passed and we spent another twenty minutes talking about nothing that mattered, me giving him carefully constructed warmth and zero substance while he tried every subtle angle he had and found nothing to grip. By the time I stood to leave his confidence had developed its first real hairline fracture and he didn’t know it yet. Xa

The press event

Kara’s POV. “Victoria Rues,” Xavier said the moment I called him. “She fabricated disciplinary records for an eleven-year employee to keep her quiet and signed her own name to them.” “She signed her own name,” I repeated. “Xavier, that’s not just careless. That’s someone who has never once believed she would be caught.” “Which makes her dangerous in a specific way.” His voice was sharp and thinking at the same time. “Arrogant people leave clean evidence. They don’t bother hiding things properly because they genuinely believe no one is looking.” I was already at my laptop pulling up everything I had on Victoria. The payment records Arthur had given me. The lunch recording. The three admissions she had dropped without realizing it. And now Sandra Obi’s personnel file, fabricated and signed and sitting in a news outlet’s hands. “She’s exposing herself faster than I planned,” I said. “Do you want to use it now?” I thought for exactly five seconds. The Sandra Obi story was already ru

The parents’ shadow

Kara’s POV. “Check the corporate registration,” Xavier read the message over my shoulder. “Then call me.” “I heard you the first time,” I said. He was already on his laptop before I finished the sentence. We had gone straight from the elevator to his car and now we were parked outside the hotel with the engine running and Xavier’s fingers moving fast across his keyboard while I sat very still and watched his face. His face told me the answer before his mouth did. “Conrad Slate,” he said quietly. “The hotel is registered under a subsidiary that traces back to one of his shell companies.” I looked at the building behind us through the windshield. I had held my press event in a building Conrad Slate owned. Every journalist in that room had walked through a door that belonged to the man who had my parents killed. The security footage, the staff, the room itself, all of it under his umbrella. “He let it happen,” I said. “He could have flagged it, blocked the booking, done something

The letter

Kara’s POV. “You have your mother’s eyes,” Maren said again, softer this time, like she needed to say it twice to believe it herself. I stood at the elevator doors and looked at this woman I had never seen in either of my lives and felt something move through me that I could not immediately name. Not suspicion, though that was there underneath. Something older than suspicion. Something that recognized her before my mind had caught up. “How did you find me?” I asked. “I’ve been watching Ashford’s office for three weeks,” she said simply. “I knew if you were alive and looking, you would find him eventually.” Her eyes moved briefly to Xavier, then back to me. “I’ve been hiding for a long time, Miss Jones. I stopped hiding the day I saw your name in the inheritance case filing.” Xavier stepped forward slightly. Not aggressively. Just enough to be visible. “Who are you to Kara’s family?” “I was Lena’s closest friend,” Maren said. “For fourteen years. I was there when Kara was born.” H

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