Alle Kapitel von Mira Regret's Her Heartless Billionaire Ex: Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

MIRAMy father told me the truth two days before the gala, sitting at the small kitchen table in the rented apartment, and it altered something in me that I would spend the following days trying to understand.I had come for an ordinary visit; groceries, a check on his blood pressure, the small domestic rituals that had become our version of normal since the bankruptcy. He had seemed distracted all evening, answering questions a beat too late, his eyes drifting toward the window more often than the conversation warranted."There's something I should have told you," he said, finally, once my mother had gone to bed and the apartment had settled into its evening quiet.I set down my tea. "What is it?"He was quiet for a long moment, turning his own cup slowly on the table, the particular stalling motion of a man preparing to say something he had rehearsed many times and still couldn't make easy."I knew," he said. "About Rupert Corporation. About Damien being behind it. I knew months be

MIRAThe car stopped at the foot of the stone staircase at six fifty-two, and I sat for exactly three seconds reminding myself that I was a grown woman and a physician and perfectly capable of walking up a flight of stairs without falling apart.Then Reyes opened the door, and the evening air came in, carrying the sounds of the city and the low murmur of arriving guests, and I stepped out.Damien was at the top of the staircase.He had not been there a moment ago, or perhaps he had been and I simply hadn't processed the fact of him until I was standing on the pavement and there was nowhere else for my attention to go. He was in black tie, completely still, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read from this distance. Not the cold composure of the early weeks. Not the careful professional regard he'd adopted somewhere in the middle. Something else. Something less managed.I climbed the stairs.He didn't move to meet me, didn't descend, he waited, which I had noticed was a

MIRAThe article appeared on a Wednesday morning, which was the worst possible day for bad news because Wednesdays were already the longest of the week and I had a full clinic schedule and precisely zero emotional reserves available to manage a crisis.Petra sent me the link at seven forty-five, before I had even reached the hospital, with a message that said only: Brace yourself.I read it in my car in the hospital car park, engine still running, phone held in both hands.The headline was not subtle. FALLEN LANDON HEIRESS: INSIDE THE BILLIONAIRE'S HOUSE. Beneath it was a photograph of me, entering the mansion's front gates, caught at an angle that made the gesture look furtive even though it was simply how I walked when I was thinking about something else. The article itself was three hundred words of implication dressed as fact, the kind of writing that never quite makes a direct accusation and therefore can never quite be confronted directly. It mentioned the Landon bankruptcy. I

MIRAI went to the garden at dusk.Not because I had a reason. Not because Mr Davis required anything; he had been settled for hours, vitals steady, the housekeeper confirmed for the evening, no medical need remaining that could justify my continued presence. By rights I should have been in my car twenty minutes ago, heading back to my apartment and the hairline crack in the ceiling and the letter that was still, still, sitting in the pocket of my winter coat.But I went to the garden instead.It was the light that made it unbearable, or perhaps bearable. I was no longer certain which. The specific quality of early evening light on this particular garden, the way it caught the old oak at a low angle and turned the grass a deep, aching gold. I had grown up watching this light from an upstairs window. It had looked different from up there; wider, more assured, the light of a child who understood her place in the world to be fixed and permanent.From down here, it looked the same. Tha

MIRAMr Davis took a turn for the worse on a Thursday night, and I learned about it at eleven forty-five in the evening from a call that pulled me out of the first deep sleep I'd managed in a week.The housekeeper's voice was controlled but strained in the way of someone performing calm they did not entirely feel. Mr Davis had complained of chest tightness after dinner. He had waved off concern for two hours, had gone to his room, and at eleven-thirty had pressed the call button installed at his bedside for emergencies.By the time I arrived; twenty-two minutes later, I had pushed the speed limit more than I would have liked to admit, the housekeeper had him sitting upright in bed, pillows stacked behind him, his colour poor and his breathing shallow. He looked at me when I came through the door with the particular expression of a man who wants very badly to say he's fine and has enough remaining sense to understand this would not be convincing."Don't," I said, before he could speak