2025-06-16 22:24:36
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The night had folded softly over Varadele; a silver calm stretched across the city where the Callahan–Fiona Foundation stood, steady and luminous in the dark.Inside, most of the lights were dimmed; only the top floors still glowed faintly, like the last embers of a long day refusing to die out.Aimee sat alone in her office; the documents on her desk looked untouched, though she had been staring at them for hours. The room smelled faintly of coffee and rain. Beyond the glass wall, the city pulsed in quiet rhythm; headlights streaked the wet roads below, dissolving into the night.Her fingers toyed with the edge of a pen, but her mind was somewhere else—on Kasper’s voice, steady and low, echoing from earlier that evening.Welcome aboard, he had said, and something in the way he said it had unsettled her calm. It wasn’t his tone; it was the warmth beneath it, the sincerity he didn’t try to hide.She hadn’t realized how long she’d been staring at nothing until the door clicked open behi
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The archives of the Callahan–Fiona Foundation were a study in organized chaos, a labyrinth of white files and black binders housed deep beneath the main corporate tower. Aimee sat at a large mahogany table, the only light source a small, focused lamp casting a yellow pool over the documents. She was officially reviewing the pre-merger humanitarian expenditures, a task she had volunteered for to better understand the groundwork of the organization. However, her true search was for echoes of the past, for any mention of the woman whose presence in her life had always been a ghost, the worst part of it is even the woman whom she thought was her mother that she was working for turns out to be her mother's friend pretending to her mother so she thought it's best to find more details of what her mother did in the past in order not to make any mistake Aimee turned the page of an annual report from nearly two decades ago, her fingers brushing the brittle paper. The early sections detailed th
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The morning sun poured through the tall windows of Varadele University, tinting the lecture hall in a soft golden hue. The air buzzed with anticipation. Students, journalists, and scholars filled every seat, some standing at the back, holding cameras or notepads.At the center of the stage stood Dr. Diana Callahan, her silver-streaked hair neatly tied back, her white suit immaculate. She looked poised, but her heart was pounding in a rhythm that echoed both nostalgia and fulfillment.Today marked the end of an era — her final lecture before retirement. The announcement that she would be awarded dual honorary doctorates in Medicine and Ethics had spread across the world. She was now the first woman in Varadele’s history to hold both honors simultaneously.Caleb sat quietly in the front row, a familiar figure among the audience. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes followed every move she made. Time had left gentle marks on his face — faint lines at the corners of his eyes, silver at h
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Months later A car rolled up the long driveway, its headlights cutting through the mist. Diana, who had been standing by the large bay window of the living room, froze when she recognized the way the door opened lslow, deliberate, cautious.And then, there he was.KJ.He stood under the drizzle, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, his coat soaked, his expression unreadable. The boy who had once run from the shadows now looked like he had walked through them and come out on the other side — older, leaner, and quiet in a way that only pain could teach.For a moment, Diana didn’t move. Then she stepped outside, the rain touching her hair and shoulders.He looked up and met her eyes.“You’re late,” she said softly, trying to hide the quiver in her voice.He smiled faintly. “Traffic was bad,” he murmured and it was such an ordinary answer that Diana couldn’t help it; she let out a small, shaky laugh.They stood there for a long while before she whispered, “He’s inside.”KJ nodded. “I k
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Diana stood slowly. For the first time in the conversation, she spoke without an edge of control. “Does Aimee know any of this? Does she know who you are?”Cathy’s throat closed. She exhaled with a sound that was closer to grief than to breath. “yes She does . but I could not bring myself to tell her. I thought it kinder to step away. That was the second cowardice. She doesn’t know the real me.”Caleb’s hand, when he reached for the small paper cup, trembled. He had the impression that Cathy’s confession was a wall being dismantled brick by brick that each brick had the grain of a life’s worth of choices. He also felt the precise, simple fact that a human life had been kept from his family’s knowledge.“You should have told us,” Kasper said, voice low. “We could have done something.”“You could have been destroyed,” Cathy whispered. “I could not risk that. I thought silence was shelter.” She laughed a short, humorless laugh. “Shelter for me. Not for you.”For a long while there was on
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. At night it had been a place of hushed machines and the faint scent of disinfectant. In the morning it was a place where the light came through the high windows and showed dust on the sills, where the cleaners’ carts crept quietly down the hall and the staff moved with rehearsed efficiency. The quiet was less menacing by day; it felt practical and ordinary.Cathy sat in the visitor chair by the small table in the hospital room. The IV drip beside her made a soft, methodical sound. She had declined the offered hospital gown and instead had a plain sweater pulled close to her throat. The skin at her temples was thin; she kept her hands folded in her lap. She had the posture of someone who had learned to make herself small in public. The bruise marks at the line of her wrist from the hospital band were almost faded now.Caleb was awake. He had insisted on seeing her again before she left. He watched her without speaking. Diana hovered near the doorway, her face unreadable. The twins ha
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