Chapter 388
The area fell silent. Adrian turned to Audrey. “What are you thinking?”
‘We’ll be in New York for a while,” she explained calmly. “The longer we stay, the harder she’ll try to target me. If we ended this now, she’d just find other ways to come after me.”
She glanced toward the hotel. “I understand who Rachel used to be, but not who she is now. I can’t predict her next move. But this plagiarism issue? I can handle that.”
‘So you want her focused on the plagiarism until we leave?”
“Pretty much.”
She turned to me. “Mr. Parker, your fiancée says she’s in the right and doesn’t need your help. You won’t delete those plagiarism stories, will you?”
‘I won’t,” I promised.
“Thank you.” She brushed wet hair from her face. “You can dismiss your security. I need to go upstairs my hair needs drying.”
The breeze sent her damp hair dancing. She pushed it back, a simple gesture that held my attention completely.
She smiled at me, then walked toward the hotel entrance.
I watched her go, the afternoon light catching in her hair. She seemed more alive than I’d ever seen her.
I had to admit – she was stronger than I’d expected. Calmer. More decisive. Her handling of Rachel was brilliant.
The friendship between her and Rachel… she’d let it go completely. Just like her feelings for me. She’d cut them both away with the same clean stroke.
I couldn’t help but smile as she disappeared into the hotel.
Audrey’s POV
After blow-drying my hair, I called Astrid from the hotel bed and filled her in on everything.
“Rachel’s really going all-out to marry Blake,” Astrid sighed. “She’ll do anything for the Parkers’ approval.”
I stared at the ceiling. “The plagiarism thing is strange. I know I didn’t steal Audrey’s designs.”
“Twins often think alike,” Astrid said. “You’re both jewelry designers with identical DNA. Similar ideas make sense.”
‘Remember that design your sister created before she died? Almost identical to something you’d sketched.”
“Right. According to the dates, her design came about a year before mine, I confirmed. “But before waking in Sydney, I didn’t even know I had a twin.”
ཁྐྲ༔་ཌུ་སྒྲ་སྒྲ
I closed my eyes. Whatever others might believe, I truly thought twins shared some connection. The similarity in our designs couldn’t be mere coincidence.
“You know what’s rich?” Astrid said. “At Long Island, Rachel sought you out, going on about how your designs resembled Audrey’s. She wanted your design process to understand Audrey’s creative vision’ or whatever.”
“She didn’t even know about the twin thing then.”
“Now she knows, and suddenly you’re a plagiarist?” Astrid’s voice sharpened. “All this righteous defender-of-Audrey’s-legacy act is total crap.
“Face it – she’s pissed that you and Adrian knocked her and Blake off the front page. She can’t stand that you exposed the Sinclairs and embarrassed Rebecca
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Chapter 388
and Thalia in public.”
“This is just payback, plain and simple.”
She sighed heavily. “I just can’t believe Rachel – our Rachel – turned into… this. Four years in a hospital bed, and she comes out completely different.”
‘After everything you did to save her from the Rose family, this is what you get.”
1 let out a small, humorless laugh. “She’s just protecting her interests.
“To her, I’m probably just some dead friend who doesn’t matter anymore.”
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “But whatever. I’ve already died once. If she’s moving on, so am I.
“They should all be forgotten.”
“Good for you, Astrid said, the relief evident in her voice. “I’ve been worried sick this would mess with your head or your health or… I don’t know.”
“Seeing you handle this
A sweet little voice interrupted her. “Auntie, when are we going to Mommy’s?”
*Emma misses Mommy!”
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