Broken Promises (Epitome Series #2)

Kabanata 52

The first few months in France felt like I was living inside a silence I didn't ask for.

Not the peaceful kind. The kind that echoes.

Every morning, I would wake up in an apartment that looked too clean, too organized—too empty for someone like me who used to live in chaos disguised as comfort. The snow outside had already melted into spring, but something inside me stayed frozen.

I stopped asking about Chester.

Not because I didn't care anymore...

but because caring felt like reopening a wound that had just started to scab.

So I let it be.

No calls. No updates. No questions to Althea. I drew a line so clean even I was afraid to cross it.

 And then I rebuilt. 

Slowly.

Painfully.

Quietly.

At first, it was just survival. Meetings. Emails. Apologies from people who betrayed me when I wasn't looking. The magazine company I lost under Miss Thalia's hand became a headline that followed me everywhere like a ghost I couldn't outrun.

But ghosts don't scare me anymore.

People do.

So I learned how to become colder than them. Stronger than them. Smarter than them.

I started again with a small editorial team—just five people who still believed in me when my name was being dragged through court filings and rumors. We worked out of a modest office near Lyon. Nothing like the glass building I once had in Makati or the luxury office I lost in Paris.

But it was mine.

And slowly, the name Venice stopped being attached to "fallen heiress" or "failed publisher."

It started becoming something else.

A comeback.

It happened on a rainy Tuesday when everything changed again.

Althea called me, her voice shaking.

"Venice... may nahanap kami."

I froze.

"About Thalia?" I asked quietly.

There was a pause. Then—

"About everything."

That was all she said before sending me a secure file.

When I opened it, my hands went cold.

Not because of what I saw...but because of how long it had been hidden.

Emails. Bank transfers. Coordinated messages between Miss Thalia and a private investigative group I had never heard of. Documents tied to the original case of Leilana's death.

At first, I couldn't breathe properly.

I read it again.

And again.

Until the truth finally stopped feeling like denial.

Miss Thalia wasn't just involved in taking my company.

She had been pulling strings long before that.

Even before I left France the first time.

Even before Chester and I fell apart.

Even before I thought my life started breaking.

And then I saw it.

A report marked suppressed evidence.