Alle Kapitel von Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex: Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

Kara’s POV. “It’s done,” Ashford said. “The divorce was finalized twenty minutes ago. Jeremy’s team withdrew the last contested point this morning. You are no longer married to Jeremy Devonte.” I was standing at Xavier’s kitchen window when the call came. The morning was pale and quiet and I had been awake for an hour already, drinking coffee I had made in his kitchen because he had the right kind and because making it had felt like a normal human thing to do after a night that had been anything but. “Thank you,” I said to Ashford. “For everything you did to move it cleanly.” “The documentation made it straightforward,” he said. “The poison records alone made contesting it untenable.” A pause. “How are you?” It was such a simple question. People kept asking it and it kept meaning something different every time. “I’m good,” I said. “I’m genuinely good.” I hung up and stood at the window and held my coffee with both hands and let it land. Two years of marriage, two lifetimes of co

Kara’s POV. “I think I know who was driving the other car,” I read the message out loud to Xavier. He was already reaching for his jacket. “Meet him tonight.” “No.” I set the phone down. “Not tonight. Not on his timeline and not before I talk to Elena.” I looked at Xavier steadily. “Jeremy has been useful. He has also been wrong about things he was certain of his entire life. Whatever he found in Irish’s files, I need the full picture from Elena first so I can verify it independently before I walk into a room with that information and react to it.” Xavier looked at me for a moment. Then he sat back down. “You’re right.” “I know.” I typed back to Jeremy: Tomorrow. I’ll contact you after my morning meetings. Don’t move anything from where you found it. His response came in seconds: Understood. Be careful, Kara. I stared at those two words for a moment. Be careful. From Jeremy Devonte. The man who had fed me poison with my morning coffee for months in a previous life. People conta

Kara’s POV. “I didn’t come to negotiate,” Slate said. “I want you to know that upfront.” “Then why are you here?” I asked. He was in the passenger seat and I was beside him and the driver was separated from us by a partition that was closed. The car was not moving. That was the first thing I had checked when I got in. Still at the curb. Engine running but going nowhere. Good. He looked older than he had at the restaurant. The composure was still there but it was thinner now, the way expensive fabric looks when it’s been worn too many times and is beginning to show the structure beneath it. “The story,” he said. “Elena Voss’s story. It’s live.” “I know,” I said. “I cleared it.” He absorbed that without reacting. “There are things in it that are accurate and things that will be very difficult to dispute in court.” He paused. “There are also things about the accident that I need you to understand came from a context you don’t have the full picture of.” I looked at him. “Then give

Kara’s POV. “Victoria was on the same flight,” I said out loud in the dark of my bedroom. I sat up. Irish and Victoria, together, on a plane that left two hours ago. While I was in Slate’s car. While we were building the case file. While the story was going live and spreading across every platform and making both of their names something the world was now actively searching. They ran together. That told me something I hadn’t fully understood until this moment. Victoria was not just a weapon Irish had aimed and fired. She was not an independent operative who had been hired and used and discarded. She was someone Irish trusted enough to run with when everything collapsed. That was a different kind of relationship entirely. I called Xavier. He picked up on the first ring which meant he hadn’t slept either. “I saw the message,” he said. “They’re together,” I said. “Not coincidentally on the same flight. Together. Irish took Victoria when she ran.” “Which means Victoria knows eve

Kara’s POV. “All parties present,” the clerk said. “The Honorable Judge Warren presiding.” The courtroom was small by courthouse standards. Eight rows of gallery seating, half of them filled. Elena Voss was in the third row with a notepad and the specific stillness of a journalist who had waited eighteen months for this room. Jeremy was near the back, alone, looking at his hands. I was at the plaintiff’s table with Ashford on my left and Xavier directly behind me in the first gallery row where I could feel his presence without turning around. The judge entered. He was in his sixties, silver-haired, deliberate in the way of a man who had spent decades measuring the weight of words before he said them. He settled into his chair and looked at the room and then he looked at me specifically and I held his gaze without flinching. Whatever call he had received this morning, whatever pressure had been applied, he had chosen to open these doors. That told me enough. “We’re here on the mat