All Chapters of My Sister’s Substitute : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

"What kind of development," she said.Neo was already looking at her face. He'd clocked the shift — she could feel it, that peripheral awareness he had of her that she'd stopped being surprised by — and was watching her with the focused attention of someone who had learned to read her expressions like a language he'd become fluent in."The arrests are confirmed," Gerald said. "All locations. The network is down, the federal team has everyone they need." A pause that did something specific. "But we found something at the north property when we went through it properly. Beyond the documents about you.""What kind of something," she said."Communications," Gerald said. "Between parties who weren't part of the creditor network. People who had a separate interest in the outcome of this situation." Another pause. "Mrs. McKinney, I need to speak with you and Mr. McKinney together. Tonight. In person."She looked at Neo. "Gerald wants to come here."Neo took the phone. "Gerald. How long." A p

She was on her feet before he finished the sentence."What do you mean they have Anna," she said. "Anna is in the hospital. Gerald's men are on her door. How is it possible that—""Gerald." Neo was already calling. "Gerald. Anna's room. Right now. Send someone right now." He was moving toward the hallway, keys, jacket, the focused urgent assembly of a man who had been here before — the crisis mode, the handling-it mode — but this time with something underneath it that the previous times hadn't had. Something personal and raw and not entirely contained.Irina grabbed her bag.Sasha was already at the front door.Mrs. Paulson appeared from the kitchen with the expression of a woman who understood that something serious was happening and whose contribution was to stay calm and stay out of the way and she did both immediately and completely.Curtis was pulling the car around before Neo had finished the call. The drive was eight minutes.Eight minutes of Neo on the phone with Gerald who wa

Gerald was out the door before anyone else had processed what they had heard.The sound from the corridor was voices — raised, urgent, the quality of people dealing with something unexpected — and then a thud and then the particular silence that came after a thud that was worse than the noise before it.Neo was moving."Stay here," he said. To Irina specifically. The way he said things that weren't negotiable. "Neo—" "Stay in this room." He looked at her once — the full, direct, I-mean-this look — and then he was through the door.Sasha was already at the window, pulling out her phone.Irina looked at Anna.Anna looked at her."Stay in the room," Anna said, with the specific tone of someone who knew exactly how much Irina was about to not stay in the room."I will stay," Irina said.She stayed in the room for approximately forty-five seconds. Then she went to the doorway.The corridor was controlled chaos.Gerald's two men were at the far end dealing with something Irina couldn't ful

Atlanta woke up to the headline.Not gradually — the way the city usually absorbed news, slowly, over morning coffee and traffic updates — but all at once, the way it absorbed things that were too large for gradual. By six in the morning it was on every local outlet. By seven it was national. By eight it was the kind of story that had people stopping mid-sentence in offices and coffee shops and gym parking lots to read their phones with the specific expression of people encountering something they hadn't seen coming.MCKINNEY INDUSTRIES MATRIARCH MARGARET MCKINNEY CHARGED WITH CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER.The subheadline was worse.Sources confirm charges related to the attempted killing of Neo McKinney's wife, Irina McKinney, formerly Irina Sabalenka.Irina read it at the kitchen island at six forty-five in the morning with her ginger tea and the particular exhaustion of someone who had been awake most of the night and had come home and slept for three hours and was now sitting with

She didn't fall apart at the hospital.She didn't fall apart in the car on the way home either, which surprised her, or in the mansion foyer when Mrs. Paulson saw their faces and went very still in the way she went still when something significant had happened and didn't ask because she already knew.She didn't fall apart at dinner that nobody ate.Or when Neo sat beside her on the library sofa for two hours saying very little and being very present and she held his hand and looked at the lamp and felt the specific hollowness of a person who has lost something and hasn't fully located the loss yet. She didn't fall apart.She just went quiet.The quiet was different from her other quiets.Neo knew this. She could tell by the way he watched her — not the reading expression, not the assessing one, something more careful than both of those. The watching of a person who loves someone and can see that something is wrong and is trying to figure out what kind of wrong it is before they do an