Lahat ng Kabanata ng Reborn to Ruin Him: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

“Is she okay?”Brittany’s voice, from somewhere above me, sounded more bored than worried.“She’s fine,” Jeremy said. “She does this.”I had never done this. Not once. But the room was already sliding sideways, the chandelier above me smearing into a streak of gold, and my knees gave out before I could tell anyone that.My chest burned like something inside it had cracked wide open. I tried to reach for the nearest chair and missed it completely.“Isn’t that his secretary? From the scandal?”Voices gathered over me, whispering fast, the way people whisper when something bad is happening to someone else and they don’t want to miss it. I found Xavier’s face pushing through the crowd right before everything went dark. And just before it did, I saw Victoria’s face clearly.She wasn’t scared for me.She was watching like she’d been waiting years to see me hit the floor.I woke up to beeping. My eyes opened to a white ceiling and a room that smelled like antiseptic. Xavier sat in the chair

“He can see me later.”I muttered it under my breath, slipping out of the hospital before Xavier came back with food. Whatever he needed to tell me could wait. I had questions only Jeremy could answer, and I was done letting another hour pass without asking them.The penthouse looked different the second I walked in. New furniture. New art on the walls where our photographs used to hang, replaced now by a woman’s smiling face in frames that used to hold mine. Even the air smelled different, some new perfume layered over the space I used to call home.“Oh. You’re here.”Brittany’s voice, behind me, way too comfortable in a home that wasn’t hers yet.“I see you’ve moved in,” I said, keeping my voice flat even though my chest had gone tight and wouldn’t let go.“Where I belong.” She stepped closer, studying me like she was deciding how much I already knew, and how much fun it might be to make me find out the rest myself.Her eyes moved over my dress, my hair, my face, cataloguing every p

“Mr. Ashford has been waiting for this call for a very long time.”The words sat in my ear long after the woman said them. I gripped the phone tighter, my knuckles going white against the plastic.“Waiting for what, exactly?”“He’ll explain everything. Can you come in this afternoon? Three o’clock?”I looked at the drawer where I’d hidden a photograph of a man who’d been planning my death for years. Three o’clock. I had time before Jeremy expected me home.“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up before my voice could shake.My hands were steady. That surprised me more than anything else that morning had.I spent the rest of the shift pretending to work, answering emails I’d already answered in another life, smiling at coworkers who had no idea the woman across the desk from them had died and come back different. Nobody noticed. Why would they? I looked exactly the same on the outside.At two forty, I grabbed my coat and told Jeremy’s assistant I had a doctor’s appointment. She didn’t eve

“We need to talk about your father.”I stared at the text until the letters blurred, standing in the middle of the coffee shop with Xavier still watching me from across the table, his hand still half raised from where he’d been reaching for his cup.“Kara.” His voice cut through the ringing in my ears. “What is it?”“Jeremy.” I turned the phone so he could see it, my hand not quite steady anymore. “He knows something.”Xavier read it twice. Something shifted behind his eyes, quick and sharp, gone before I could name it.“Don’t go,” he said.“I have to.”“You don’t have to do anything.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping low, urgent, the same voice from the ballroom three days ago that still lived somewhere under my skin. “Not tonight. Not until we know what he’s planning.”“He’s my husband, Xavier. If I don’t go home, he’ll wonder why.”“Let him wonder.”I almost laughed, except nothing about this felt funny. “You don’t understand. Everything I’ve built today, the trust, Ashford, a

“Ask him,” Jeremy said again, still facing the window. “And watch his face very carefully when he answers.”I bent down and picked the letter up off the floor, my hands trembling now for a different reason than before. Everything in the room felt sharper suddenly, the whiskey smell, the cold glass of the window, the distance between me and a man I used to think I understood. My father’s handwriting sat folded against my palm, proof of a life I never got to have, and some part of me wanted to scream at Jeremy for making me carry it alone.“You’re trying to turn me against him.” My voice came out harder than I expected. “Why?”“I’m trying to keep you alive.” Jeremy finally turned around, and the exhaustion on his face looked real in a way nothing about him had looked real in longer than I could remember. “I don’t care if you believe me. I just need you to ask the question.”“Fine. I’ll ask him.” I folded the letter carefully and slid it into my pocket, my father’s warning pressed agains