All Chapters of Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

200 Chapters

Victoria unravels

Kara’s POV. “Her name is Amara and she grew up in an orphanage,” I said out loud. “The same way I did.” Xavier read the message over my shoulder and went very still. The elevator doors had opened but neither of us had moved. We stood there in the lobby of Ashford’s building with the message on my screen and the city visible through the glass entrance and I felt something shift in the center of me that was different from everything else that had shifted in the last several days. This was not about my case anymore. My case was closed. My inheritance was confirmed. The people who had hurt me were accounted for. This was about a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had been growing up in the same darkness I had grown up in for the same reasons I had grown up in it, and who didn’t know yet that someone had found her. “She doesn’t know,” I said. “Not yet,” Xavier said. I typed back to Park: Does she know we found her? His response came quickly: No. We found the family through the financi

What Victoria is planning

Kara’s POV. “She’s been waiting,” I said. “Amara has been waiting.” Xavier read the message again. “She asked if you were the same person from the news. She already knew about you.” “She’s been watching,” I said. “The same way Eleanor has been watching. The same way I watched this case in the first life, feeling the shape of something wrong and not having a name for it.” I put my phone down on the cushion. “She found it in a news article and started following and by the time Park found the financial trail she already knew what it meant.” I stood up and walked to the window. Outside the city was settling into evening. The specific blue-grey light that comes between afternoon and dark when everything looks a little more honest than it does at noon. I thought about being twenty-seven. Not my twenty-seven, not this life or the first one. Just the age itself. The specific position of someone who has grown up enough to understand that the story they were given about their own life does

The thank you

Kara’s POV. “Leonard Graves,” Xavier said quietly. He had read the message over my shoulder and his hand was still in mine but his whole body had gone to that specific stillness it got when something required immediate and careful thought. “He’s contacting you directly.” “From a foreign number,” I said. “Which means he’s not in Connecticut anymore.” “He moved when Irish was arrested,” Xavier said. “He would have known immediately. The structures he built would have flagged it.” He looked at the message. “He’s been watching too. Same as everyone else. He’s been watching this case unfold and now he’s reached out because he’s made a calculation.” “What calculation?” I asked. Xavier set his phone down on the coffee table. “He’s eighty-one years old. The machine he built is being dismantled by federal investigators who now have your father’s documentation telling them exactly where to look. Irish is in custody. Slate is facing charges. Victoria is cooperating.” He looked at me. “He’s c

Kara’s company coverage

Kara’s POV. “Bigger than anyone thought,” Xavier read it over my shoulder. “He’s saying the machine predates your parents by twenty years.” “Which means my parents weren’t the beginning,” I said. “They were somewhere in the middle.” I sat with that for a moment. The morning was still grey and quiet outside the window and the apartment held the warmth of last night and Xavier was close and this new information sat in the center of the room like something that had arrived before we were ready for it. Which was fine. Some things arrived before you were ready. That had never stopped me. “I’m not chasing this today,” I said. Xavier looked at me. “The federal investigation is open,” I said. “Park is on it. The prosecutor is handling Graves. Whatever he has, whatever he’s claiming, it goes through the proper channels and it gets handled by the people whose job it is to handle it.” I put the phone down. “Today I go to my parents’ graves. That is what today is for.” He looked at me for

Jeremy makes another private appeal

Kara’s POV. “A mistake is something that happens. What you did was a choice.” I had said that to Jeremy weeks ago and I hadn’t thought about it much since. But sitting in the small plant shop three blocks from Xavier’s apartment, watching him seriously evaluate a row of succulents with the focused attention of a man making a structural decision, the sentence came back to me. Everything I had done in this second life had been a choice. Not a reaction. Not a response to what was done to me. A deliberate forward-facing choice made by someone who understood the difference between surviving and deciding. That distinction was the whole thing. That was what separated this life from the first one. “This one,” Xavier said, pointing to a small dark green succulent with a serious architectural shape. “It looks reliable.” “You’re choosing a plant based on how reliable it looks,” I said. “That’s exactly how I’m choosing it,” he said. I picked it up. Turned it over in my hands. The pot was p

Irish attempt to intervene at the inheritance hearing

Kara’s POV. “Someone built it before him,” I said out loud. “And that person is still alive.” Xavier read the message twice. Then he set his cup down very carefully the way he did when something required his complete and undivided attention. “Fifty years,” he said. “This machine has been running for fifty years.” “At minimum,” I said. “That’s just what Graves documented. The actual origin could be earlier.” I sat with the weight of that for a moment. Fifty years. Before my parents were born. Before any of the people I had spent months building cases against had made a single choice that hurt anyone. Something had been running in the background of multiple lives, targeting multiple families, and the people I had been fighting were not the beginning of it. They were just the most recent layer. “Who was before Graves?” Xavier asked. “I don’t know yet,” I said. “That’s what tomorrow’s meeting is about.” I looked at him. “Xavier. Whatever this is, it’s bigger than my case. Bigger tha

Kara prepares the full documented account

Kara’s POV. “She said I remind her of herself fifty years ago,” I said to Xavier after I hung up with Park. He was quiet for a moment. “What does that mean to you?” “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I intend to find out.” I sat at the kitchen table with my notebook and I wrote everything down. Not for the meeting, not for the federal prosecutor, just for myself. The way my father had written things down. The way he had documented the world around him so carefully that twenty years after his death his notes were still building cases. I wrote down what I knew about Margaret Calloway. Ninety-three years old. Corporate attorney in the seventies. Built the legal infrastructure for a scheme because she had been betrayed and decided to build her own system. Handed it to Graves decades ago. Still living in New York. Still watching. The woman who had built the machine that eventually killed my parents had been watching my case from the beginning. Had requested to meet me by name. Had said

Victoria and Damian’s plan solidifies

Kara’s POV. “You met my parents,” I said. “Once,” Margaret Calloway said. “At a professional event. Your father recognized something in the way I was navigating a room full of men who believed I was there to serve them coffee.” The corner of her mouth moved slightly. “He came and introduced himself and talked to me like a colleague. It was 1989. That was not a common thing.” I sat down across from her. She was watching me the way very few people had ever watched me. Not assessing. Not calculating. Something closer to recognition, the way you recognize the shape of something you already know when it appears in a new form. “You knew who he was,” I said. “Not at the time,” she said. “I found out later. When Graves told me that the Jones firm had been selected as a target.” She paused. “I told him to remove it.” I stared at her. “I told Graves to remove the Jones family from the list,” she said. “Your father had been kind to me when he had no reason to be. I did not want his family

Xavier tells kara he loves her

Kara’s POV. “Someone I’ve been trusting throughout this entire case,” I repeated. Xavier was already reading the message over my shoulder. His hand on my arm tightened slightly. “Who?” he asked. “Park didn’t say,” I said. “He said to come back in.” I looked at the message again. “Xavier. The list has names of people who benefited from the operation without directly participating. That’s not the same as someone who actively worked against me. It’s someone who knew and said nothing and took something from it.” “That covers a wide range of people,” he said. “Too wide,” I said. “It could be someone who invested in one of the shell companies without knowing the full picture. It could be someone who received a referral that came indirectly from the network.” I paused. “Or it could be someone I’ve been in the same room with throughout this entire case who knew more than they told me.” We walked back down the corridor. The possibilities moved through my head in the way they did when I

Turning point: The unanswered confession in silence

Kara’s POV. “A twelfth family,” I said out loud. Xavier read Amara’s message over my shoulder and went still in that specific way he had when something significant had just landed and he was deciding how to respond to it. “She found it in her parents’ records,” he said. “Which means her parents knew,” I said. “They found the same connection my father found. Another family in the network, another set of people caught in the machine, and they documented it before they died.” I typed back to Amara immediately: Don’t share this with anyone yet. Send me what you have directly. Tonight. Her response came in under a minute: Already uploading it now. I looked at Xavier. “Twelve families,” I said. “At minimum. The federal investigation has eleven. If Amara found a twelfth that Graves didn’t document, there may be others he doesn’t know about. Or chose not to include.” “Or wasn’t aware of,” Xavier said. “The machine had multiple layers. Graves ran one of them. Calloway built the legal st

...

4 5 6 7 8

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP