Lahat ng Kabanata ng REJECTED ME BUT KARMA CAME FOR YOU : Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Samantha met Chloe at a quiet corner table in a restaurant far from anywhere either of them was known, tucked into a strip mall on the outskirts of the city, the kind of place chosen specifically because no one who mattered would ever walk through its doors. The lighting was dim, the booths high-backed and private, the low murmur of an unfamiliar radio station drifting from speakers somewhere near the kitchen."You said you had something," Samantha said, without preamble, sliding into the seat across from her, setting her handbag down with the same unhurried precision she brought to everything.Chloe didn't answer right away. She turned her water glass slowly on the table, watching the condensation gather beneath her fingers, and let her mind drift back — further than she usually allowed herself to go.She remembered arriving in Miami two years ago with nothing but two suitcases and a past she was still learning to outrun, remembered the humid air hitting her the moment she stepped of

Richard Walker's flight touched down in Miami just after ten in the morning, nearly a full day ahead of the thirty-six hours he'd promised his son. He hadn't told anyone the exact time — some old instinct, honed over decades of business dealings, insisted that arriving unannounced revealed far more than arriving expected ever could. People behaved differently when they thought they had time to prepare. He came straight from the airport without stopping at the office, his driver navigating the familiar palm-lined streets toward the Walker estate while Richard sat in the back of the car reviewing emails he had no real intention of answering, his mind circling instead around the phone call that had cut short two weeks of careful negotiation in London. The car had barely turned onto the private road leading up to the mansion's gates when Richard spotted a young woman walking near the entrance, a light cardigan draped over her shoulders despite the heat, moving slowly along the garden p

Chloe met Samantha at the same quiet corner table as before, though this time she arrived first, unable to sit still in her apartment a moment longer after the morning she'd had — Richard's easy warmth curdling so quickly into something colder the moment Olivia appeared, the strange, unsettled feeling that had followed her home and refused to leave.Samantha slid into the booth across from her, studying Chloe's face with the sharp, immediate read of someone who made a living noticing what people tried to hide. "You look rattled.""I met Richard Walker this morning," Chloe said. "He mistook me for Ryan's wife. Complimented me, was warm, easy — and then the moment Olivia actually appeared, something in his face just... changed. Like she was a problem to be managed rather than his son's wife.""That sounds like Richard." Samantha's mouth curved, though there was nothing warm in it. "He's spent his whole life treating people like line items. Assets or liabilities. Nothing in between.""Yo

Emma noticed the car on her third trip to the mailbox that week, parked in almost the exact same spot each time, close enough to the house that she'd started to wonder if it belonged to a neighbor she simply hadn't met yet. But neighbors didn't sit inside their cars with the engine off for hours at a stretch, angled so deliberately toward a single house on an otherwise unremarkable street.She mentioned it to Olivia that morning, half-joking, though something in her voice carried a thread of real unease. "There's a guy who's been parked outside for like two days. Should I be worried, or is this just a very committed Uber driver?"Olivia, distracted by paperwork spread across the kitchen table, barely looked up. "Probably nothing."But it nagged at Emma all afternoon, until finally she walked straight down the driveway toward the car. The driver noticed her before she'd made it halfway, his posture stiffening even through the tinted glass.Nathan Brooks lowered the window slowly, arran

Ryan sat in his car outside Walker Group's parking garage for nearly twenty minutes before he finally dialed Nathan Parker's number, his conscience gnawing at him in a way he hadn't let it since the dinner that started all of this. He'd signed nothing yet — Aldrich's draft statement still sat unopened in his email — but he knew, the longer he waited, the harder it would become to stop what his father had already set in motion. The call connected, but the line crackled badly, Nathan Parker's voice breaking apart into fragments through the static. "Ryan? You're — barely — hear you—" "I need to tell you something," Ryan said, gripping the phone tighter, glancing instinctively toward the garage entrance. "About the divorce filing. My father's planning to—" The call dropped entirely, the screen flashing *Call Failed* in stark white letters. Ryan cursed under his breath and hit redial, the phone ringing once, twice, before it dropped again, the garage's thick concrete walls apparently sw