Alle Kapitel von After You Broke My Heart: Kapitel 41 – Kapitel 50

She knows my passcode.Of course she did. I had typed it in front of her a thousand times, on the sofa, in the car, in the kitchen with a glass of wine in my other hand. I had never once thought to hide it.The blue light flickered across her face. She scrolled, stopped, scrolled again. I saw the exact moment she found his name.Her mouth went still.For a long, quiet second, nothing happened. Then I watched her read, slowly, from the beginning. I knew what she was looking at. The lunch text. Eat something. The line about owning the building. The messages from the night of the café, Yes. I was nearby.Her jaw tightened.She kept reading. Her face changed in small pieces, the way a sheet of ice cracks before it breaks. The smile was already gone. Now the softness drained out of her eyes, and what stayed was something I'd only glimpsed once before, in the café, when she'd dragged me out the door.She looked jealous.Not worried, not protective. Jealous, and hungry with it.She started t

The lamp hummed. A pipe ticked somewhere in the wall. Zara sat on my sofa with the blanket around her shoulders and her eyes fixed on the gold stitching inside my borrowed jacket, still smiling like she had just been handed a birthday gift.My mind went blank, and then my mouth moved before I could stop it."It's not what it looks like.""What does it look like?" she asked gently."Like I stole someone's jacket.""It looks like D.S."I swallowed. There was no point lying about something she could read with her own eyes. If I tried, I'd only look guilty, and I had spent two nights learning how to look calm."Nick came by," I said."Nick.""N. From my phone." I pulled the jacket tighter around me. "He's the one who texted. He wanted to make sure I was okay after everything with Dan.""At three in the morning?""He couldn't sleep.""And you went down to meet him.""I went down to tell him to go home.""In his jacket.""It was cold."Zara tilted her head, and her smile grew slowly, softly

"I have a friend with a stalker. I'll take a sick day.""Leah…""I'm not asking."I didn't argue.We took a taxi to Bellmont. Neither of us spoke. I watched the city go by in grey stripes and tried to think of a way the day could still be ordinary.It wasn't.The first thing I noticed in the lobby was the silence. Not an empty silence. A careful one. The receptionist glanced up at me, then down at her desk. Two housekeepers near the lifts stopped talking when I passed. A porter looked at my shoes and then at the ceiling.My skin prickled."Rita," Leah whispered. "Everyone's staring.""I know.""Do they know?""I don't know."The receptionist cleared her throat. "Miss Morgan?""Yes?""Mr. Briggs asked that you go straight to the boardroom when you arrive." She said it gently, without meeting my eyes. "He said immediately."My stomach dropped."I'll wait in the café," Leah said, squeezing my arm. "Go. Be brave."The elevator ride to the twentieth floor felt like a century. I watched the

"Zara." "Does she know about Catherine?" "Stop." "I did warn her. I told her to look into your past." She lifted a shoulder, almost sad. "But that's the thing about old news. You never know how much of it is actually old." "I said stop." "Who is Catherine?" I whispered. Neither of them looked at me. "Midnight," Zara said to Nick, pleasantly. "That's the deadline. You tell her, or I tell her. I'll even let you choose the setting. It's very generous of me, isn't it?" "This is blackmail." "This is honesty." She smiled at me over her shoulder, and her eyes were wet and shining. "I'm doing you a favour, Rita. I'd want to know, wouldn't you?" "Want to know what?" My voice cracked. "Nick, what is she talking about?" He didn't answer. I looked at him, and for the first time since I had met him, his face wasn't closed or controlled or unreadable. It was open, and what was in it made my stomach drop. He looked ashamed. "Rita." He swallowed. "Let me…" "Her name is Catherine Sterli

For a moment, nobody in that corridor breathed.Briggs stood with his hand still resting against his jacket, the cream envelope tucked out of sight against his chest. Zara stood beside him, bright-eyed and flushed like a girl who had just won a game nobody else knew they were playing.Catherine spoke first."Arthur."It was only his name, said quietly. But I saw the muscle in his jaw move."Catherine," he said. "I didn't realise you'd stepped out.""What did she give you?""Documents the board requested.""From a visitor?""From a concerned acquaintance of the company.""Since when does the board take documents from a girl with a ground-floor badge?""Since the board was informed this morning that the company was being threatened." He smiled slightly. "I'm simply doing my job.""Your job," Catherine repeated."Yes.""Is that what you're calling it?"I looked from one to the other. Something old and bitter lay under the polite words, the kind of thing two people only say when they've s