I Remember the Wedding That Killed Me のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 40

The waiting room erupts into motion within minutes.My phone won't stop buzzing — notifications stacking on top of each other faster than I can read them, the story spreading outward in real time, outlets picking it up one after another, Julian's name trending somewhere I don't let myself look at directly because I don't have the capacity right now to absorb how many strangers are already forming opinions about all of us."They're going to come after him," Damian says, already on his feet, already scanning the corridor the way he's scanned every room since the moment I met him. "Marcus isn't going to let his own son's statement stand unanswered. Not for long."He's right. Within eight minutes, Ashford Biotech's official account posts a statement of its own, and I read it over Julian's shoulder with a cold, familiar dread settling into my chest.The company categorically denies the baseless allegations made by Julian Ashford, who has been under significant personal strain following the

"Stay low," I type back, hands shaking. "We're coming. Fifteen minutes. Do not open the door for anyone."Damian's already moving toward the parking garage, Julian close behind, and I call Celeste as we go, needing to hear her voice instead of just her words on a screen."It hasn't moved," she says, quiet, controlled in a way that surprises me, the particular steadiness of someone forcing calm onto a situation that doesn't deserve it. "Sedan, parked across the lot, engine's been running the whole time. I've been watching through the gap in the curtains.""Can you see who's inside?""No. Tinted glass." A pause, and I hear her shift, hear fabric rustle. "Ivy, I'm not just going to sit here and wait to find out.""Celeste, don't—""There's a service corridor behind the ice machine, I noticed it when we checked in. I can be out the back and three blocks away before whoever's in that car even realizes the room's empty." Her voice has gone sharp now, focused, nothing like the fragile, tear-

"Who," I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I mean it to, some old instinct bracing for a name that's going to rearrange everything I thought I understood about the last week.Damian hesitates, turning his coffee cup slowly between his hands. "Your grandmother."Whatever I expected, it isn't that. "My grandmother doesn't know anything about Ashford Biotech. She barely leaves her garden most days.""She reached out to me eight months ago," Damian says carefully. "Before Tobias ever did. A letter, handwritten, no return address, asking me to look into a contamination incident she'd heard about secondhand from an old acquaintance who still worked in pharmaceutical compliance. I almost dismissed it. Most tips like that turn out to be nothing.""But this one didn't.""No. It's what sent me looking in the first place. Tobias came later, once my inquiries started making noise in the right places." He meets my eyes, something careful and apologetic in his expression. "I never confirmed

It isn't the knowing that saves anyone, the entry continues, the handwriting growing steadier as it goes, like a man finding his footing the longer he wrote. I spent that whole winter so certain that foresight alone would be enough. I watched the dates, I moved the money, I did everything I thought a careful man should do, and I still lost him, because I spent so much of my strength protecting the shape of a future I'd already decided on that I stopped noticing the people standing right in front of me who needed something from me in the present.I read the words twice, something tightening slow and cold in my chest.If it happens to her too, he'd written, tell her this. The second chance isn't a map. It's only more time. What she does with the people around her in that time is the only part that was ever actually hers to change.The entry ends there, mid-thought almost, the final line trailing slightly lower on the page than the rest, like his hand had grown unsteady, or like somethin

Holt's ICU room is dim and quiet, monitors tracking vitals that look fragile even to my untrained eye, and Reyna meets me at the door with a grim, exhausted expression that tells me she's already said goodbye to him once in her head."He's lucid," she says quietly. "But it won't last. Whatever they gave him is still working through his system. The doctors are calling it a small miracle he woke up at all."I step inside, and Holt's eyes find mine immediately, sharp despite the gray pallor of his skin, the particular clarity of a man who knows exactly how little time he has left and has decided to spend it carefully."Ivy Sterling." His voice comes out thin, rasping. "I wondered if you'd come.""You asked for me.""I did." He gestures weakly toward the chair beside his bed, and I sit, Damian taking up position near the door, watchful as ever. "I owe you an explanation. Not about Marcus. You already understand him well enough. About why your family, specifically, mattered so much to this