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Chapter Six:
publish date:
2026-06-17 03:09:54
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OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Twenty-Four:
I stand in the closet looking at the dresses Alexander has chosen for events like this. The gala. The one that is happening tonight. The one he lied about the timing of because he thought I needed protecting from my own anxiety.He was right. I would have spent two days bracing for this if I had known. Instead I spent last night sleeping next to him and this morning drinking coffee and telling him it does not matter how we got here. It only matters what we do now.I believe that. I have to believe that. Because if I start questioning whether the bar was planned or whether someone decided I was going to matter to Alexander before I decided it myself, I will spiral into a version of myself I do not want to be anymore. The version that second-guesses everything. That assumes every good thing is a trick waiting to fall apart.I pull a dress from the rack. Dark green. Simple lines. The kind of thing that will photograph well but will not make me feel like I am wearing a costume. I have bee
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Twenty-Three:
I wake before Sophia. The room is still dark, but the city outside is beginning to lighten at the edges. Dawn is an hour away. I have been awake for longer than that. Lying still so I do not wake her. Thinking about the letter in my desk drawer and the man who wrote the final page.James Carver. I have not thought about that name in thirty years. My father mentioned him exactly three times that I can remember. Once when I was eight and asked why we never had visitors. Once when I was ten, I found a photograph in my father's desk of two men standing in front of a building I did not recognize. Once when I was twelve and my father told me that if anything ever happened to him, if he ever had to leave and could not come back, I should remember that some people disappear because staying would hurt the people they love more than leaving ever could.I did not understand what he meant at the time. I thought he was being dramatic. Parents did not just disappear. They stayed. They worked. They
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Twenty-Two:
I am still holding the letter when I ask the question that has been forming since Alexander handed it to me."If James Carver has been watching me for two years," I say slowly, "and your father has been aware of me before the contract, then what does that mean about the contract itself?"Alexander does not answer immediately. I watch him turn the question over the way he turns everything over. Precisely. Carefully. Looking for the edges that might cut if handled wrong. He is sitting across from me in his office chair, still in the suit he wore to my gallery show. My gallery show was interrupted by a ghost from his past who has apparently been watching me longer than Alexander has known me."It means," he says finally, "that someone knew we were going to meet before either of us did."I set the letter down on the desk between us. My hands are steady, but it takes effort to keep them that way. I am processing. Not panicking. Just taking in information and filing it the way I have always
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Twenty-One:
Alexander scans the room again. Slowly. The way he learned to scan rooms thirty years ago when he was building the first version of himself that mattered. Not looking for a face. Looking for the absence of one. The negative space where someone should be but has deliberately made themselves not be.The man is gone. Of course he is. Men like that do not stay in rooms longer than necessary. They deliver messages and disappear before anyone can ask the questions that matter.Sophia is still beside him. Waiting. She has learned not to push when he goes still like this. But this stillness is different from the ones she has cataloged, and she knows it. He can see her noticing. The fourth register. The one he thought he had buried so deep it would never surface in front of anyone again."We need to leave," Alexander says."Now?""Yes."He does not explain. He takes her hand and moves toward the exit. Not running. That would draw attention. But deliberate. Fast enough that people step aside wi
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Twenty:
"Miss Bennett? There's someone here asking for you specifically. He says he knows your work."The gallery is bright. White walls. Track lighting angled precisely to illuminate without glare. The kind of clean, open space that makes art feel like it belongs there, like it was always meant to be seen this way. Sophia is standing near the entrance talking to a woman who just bought a print of the third piece when the gallery assistant approaches with the line. It is partway through the evening. The show has been open for two hours. Sophia has been talking to strangers about her work for two hours and has not once felt like she was performing. The assistant's question reads as ordinary. Artists get approached by strangers at shows. It does not signal danger yet."Of course," Sophia says. "Where is he?""Near the back. By the sixth piece."Sophia excuses herself from the conversation and moves through the room. The gallery is fuller than she expected. Maybe forty people. Some she recognize
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Nineteen:
"You do not have to finish it tonight. But I think you already know you are not going to stop."Sophia says this, picking up immediately after the first line of the letter from the previous chapter. They are still sitting at the table in the smaller library. The letter is still in Alexander's hands, mostly unread. Just the first line hanging in the air between them like something that changed the shape of the room. He looks at her. Then he looks back down at the yellowed paper in his hands."No," he says quietly. "I am not going to stop."He reads it slowly. In pieces. Over the course of the evening. Not the whole thing at once. Sophia does not ask him to read it aloud, but he does anyway, paraphrasing some parts and reading others word for word, his voice low and steady in a way that costs him more than he is showing. She listens without interrupting. She does not try to fill the silences between the fragments. She just sits with him while he works through it.The letter reveals, gra
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Five:
The cedar and sharp, expensive cologne that has become one of the most familiar things about this penthouse hits her first when she walks into the living room. Tom Ford Oud Wood. He is standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows with his back to her, looking out at the city. When he turns and sees the
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Four:
I cannot sleep. Again. It is becoming a pattern, and I do not know how to break it. Midnight comes, and I am wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Derek and the gallery and the way Alexander held his hand at my back like he was holding me in place. Like he wanted me there. Not because
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Three:
I wake to sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and have no idea what time it is. I reach for my phone. Ten thirty. I have not slept past eight in years. I sit up and look around the room. My room. In Alexander Kane's penthouse. This is real. This is actually happening.I get out of be
OWNED BY MY EX'S GODFATHER Chapter Two:
The penthouse is silent. I stand in the entrance hall with my suitcase at my feet and Alexander three steps behind me, and I try to catalogue what I am seeing. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Grey walls. Charcoal furniture. Everything clean and expensive and impersonal except for a single photograph on t
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