Lahat ng Kabanata ng My Sister’s Substitute : Kabanata 61 - Kabanata 70

Margaret found out about the investigation on a Saturday morning.Not from Neo — he hadn't told her, had been deliberately not telling her, which Irina had noticed and not commented on because she'd learned to trust Neo's instincts about his own mother the way you learned to trust a weather app that had been right seventeen days in a row.She found out from Sasha.Who found out from overhearing a phone call she hadn't meant to overhear, which was the McKinney Mansion's preferred method of information distribution apparently. Irina was starting to think the architect had designed the acoustics specifically for drama.Sasha came to find her in the east wing — the piano room, her spot, where she'd been sitting at the bench pressing keys and thinking about Anna and creditors and fish tacos and the general insanity of her life — and stood in the doorway with an expression that was doing several things simultaneously."I heard Neo on the phone with Gerald," she said.Irina's hands stilled o

Dr. Osei made them leave after twenty minutes.Not because Anna wasn't stable — she was, her vitals were good, coherence improving by the minute — but because twenty minutes was what he had said and Dr. Osei always keeps to his word.He came in, checked everything with quiet efficiency, told Anna she'd done remarkably well which was an interesting thing to say to someone who had spent six weeks unconscious but Anna received it with a small nod like she'd been personally responsible for the coma recovery and intended to take credit accordingly.Then he looked at Neo and Irina and said "She needs rest now" in a tone that didn't invite negotiation.Irina squeezed Anna's hand."We'll be back in the morning," she said.Anna looked at her. At the ring again — briefly and then back at her face. "Irina." "Yeah.""You said some of it would take a while.""It will.""How long is a while."Irina thought about six weeks of contract marriage and Miami waterfronts and library nights and Margaret's

She talked for two hours.Anna listened for all of it — the contract, the mansion, Margaret's sitting room, the gala, the library nights, Miami, the waterfront, the fish tacos which Anna made her describe in specific detail for reasons that weren't entirely clear, Zachary and Allison and the side exit and the cream jacket, the investigation, the tampered brakes, the creditors, all of it — without interrupting except for three times. Once when Irina got to the part about Margaret leaking to the gossip blog, when Anna said "that woman" with a flatness that contained an entire essay.Once when Irina described the almost-kiss in the library after the gala, when Anna said "finally" with the energy of someone who had apparently seen this coming from significantly further away than Irina had.And once when Irina got to the part about Allison, when Anna said absolutely nothing but reached out and held her hand and kept holding it and didn't let go until Irina had finished that part of the st

Neo took the phone from her hand.Not aggressively — just reached over, calm and deliberate, and took it and put it to his ear and said "Who is this" in the specific register that made boardrooms go quiet and apparently had a similar effect on anonymous callers because there was a pause on the other end before the voice continued.Whatever was said in the next thirty seconds Irina couldn't hear from her side but she watched Neo's face do the thing — the controlled cold stillness, the jaw, the eyes going focused and precise — and by the time he said "don't call this number again" and hung up she already knew it was bad.Curtis, to his eternal credit, said nothing and kept driving. "Talk," Irina said."They know Anna woke up," Neo said. He was already on another call — Gerald, she recognized the speed with which he dialed. "They were reminding us that her waking up doesn't change what she owes them.""They called my phone," Irina said."They called your phone," Neo confirmed, with a fl

She stayed at the kitchen island for exactly seven minutes. She counted.Then she got up, put her ginger tea in the sink, and walked down the hall toward the sound of the conversation because she was Irina Sabalenka and she had never been the kind of person who sat in a kitchen while important things happened in other rooms and she wasn't starting now regardless of what Neo had said about staying where he could see her.She could see him from the hallway. Close enough. The study door was open.Neo was standing behind his desk — not sitting, standing, which with Neo meant something. Sasha was near the window with her arms crossed in the specific posture she had when she'd made a decision and was standing behind it. Margaret was in the chair in her silk blouse and pearls looking at her son with the composed, careful expression of a woman who had been caught in something and was deciding how to handle being caught.Irina stood in the passage. She didn't go in.She just — listened."The l