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Chapter 111 Layla’s POV “Mom, please, just let me say it once, and then you can shout at me for as long as you want,” I said, and my voice cracked so badly that the last word barely came out. She didn't look at me. She was looking at Mateo, who stood by the bed with his hands open at his sides, and her mouth kept moving around words she couldn't seem to start. “Get out,” she said to him. “Sandra, I” “Get out of this room, I don't want you standing there while she talks.” He looked at me once, and I gave him the smallest nod, and he went into the corridor and pulled the door almost shut behind him. Sandra turned to the window and wrapped both arms around her ribs. “I bought you a scarf,” she said. “I know, Mom.” “I stood in that shop in Lisbon for twenty minutes picking the right green, because I wanted it to match your eyes, and you wore it to breakfast every morning and let me tell you how good it looked on you.” She laughed, one short breath with nothing in i

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Chapter 112 Sandra’s POV “I want to start the divorce, today if that's possible,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. Ms. Brandt didn't look surprised. She sat across from me in an office on the fourth floor with a legal pad in front of her and a box of tissues that she'd pushed halfway across the desk without saying a word. I'd spent two nights in a hotel near the river with a suitcase I packed in eleven minutes, and I hadn't slept in either of them. I'd walked out of the house on Wednesday morning without looking at the stairs, because Layla was up there packing and I knew that if I saw her I would stay. “Can I ask what happened, Mrs. Reyes?” “My husband has been involved with my daughter.” She put her pen down. “Before the wedding and after it,” I said. “He told me himself, and he didn't try to make it sound like anything else.” “I'm very sorry.” “I keep waiting to feel angry enough to be sure,” I said. “But I just feel tired, and I still love him a

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Chapter 113 Layla’s POV “You've eaten half a piece of toast in three days, and that's not an exaggeration,” Audrey said, setting a bowl of soup in front of me on her small kitchen table. I'd been staying in her spare room for eleven days. I woke every morning and checked my phone for a message from my mother, and every morning there wasn't one, so I put it face down and went to work somewhere else, because I'd started going to Calloway and Reed for interviews. Mateo had sent me one line the first night, saying he hoped I was safe, and I hadn't answered it. I'd typed a reply four times and deleted it every time, because anything I wrote would have been a way back to him, and I wasn't ready to find out whether I'd take it. “Loving him doesn't cancel what you did to her,” Audrey said, sitting opposite me. “You know that.” “I know.” “So stop punishing yourself in this kitchen and eat the soup.” “I'm not punishing myself.” “You're sitting there like a woman waiting for a verdict

114.

Chapter 114 Layla’s POV “Everyone starts the first week feeling like a fraud,” Adrian Cole said, setting a stack of contracts on the desk of my new office. “You'll stop in about a month, and I'd like you to know that I'm usually right.” “You said that about the lift in this building as well.” “It broke down once, and the point stands.” The office had a door. It had a window, a plant someone had left, and a nameplate that read *Layla Thompson, Head of Commercial Contracts* in small black letters that I touched with one finger when nobody was looking. I hadn't planned to take the offer. I'd decided on a Thursday in the shower at Audrey's, with the water running over my face, that I couldn't build anything honest while I walked past Mateo's door every morning. I called Adrian from the hallway in my towel, and he said only that the job was still mine and that he was glad. I started work on Monday, and by Wednesday I'd stopped looking at the lift doors each time they op

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Chapter 115 Scarlett’s POV “The evidence is complete, sir,” I said, and I laid the final report in front of Mr. Reyes at the head of the table. The board sat in silence while I took them through the last two weeks. Mr. Wyatt had come to my office on a Tuesday evening, unasked, with a lawyer, and given a statement that matched every record I'd collected. Miss Zoe had refused to give one at first, and then she'd read the logs, and she'd given one too. “The payments were routed through three accounts and approved under Mr. Wyatt's login,” I said. “The photographs and the private lift footage were obtained by Miss Zoe, using the audit access of her department, and Mr. Wyatt agreed to send them.” Mr. Delacroix took off his glasses. “How much money is involved, Miss Scarlett?” “Four hundred and twelve thousand, sir, and I've traced every transfer back to its source.” “Has any of it been recovered?” “Mr. Wyatt has agreed to repay what he can, sir, and the rest will be pursued.” M

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Chapter 116 Final Layla’s POV “Stand still, I haven't done the last button, and you keep turning toward the window,” Audrey said, with a pin between her teeth. “I'm checking the garden.” “It's the same garden as ten minutes ago.” The dress was ivory, cut close at the waist and hip and left full through the skirt, and it held every curve of me the way I'd asked the dressmaker to. I looked in the mirror. Months ago I couldn't have stood in front of it without crossing my arms over my stomach, and now I turned from one side to the other and only thought that I looked like myself. “You're crying,” Audrey said. “I'm not.” “You are, and you'll ruin your face.” The knock came at half past three. My mother stood in the doorway in a pale blue dress with her hair pinned up, holding the green scarf folded over her arm. She looked well, better than she had in months, and there was a colour in her cheeks that I hadn't seen since before the wedding. “I wasn't sure you'

Alle Kapitel von HIS PLUS SIZE BAD GIRL: Kapitel 111 – Kapitel 116

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