Reborn to Ruin the Perfect Fake Heiress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Full Plate

Luka feeds Cadence and shows her the backups are safe; Savannah's anonymous account posts that Cadence faked the video.

Luka lived on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator, and he carried my suitcase up all four flights.

The apartment was one room, a galley kitchen, and a couch under a window full of streetlight.

Every wall was covered in shelves, and every shelf had too many books on it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the couch with my phone.

"Did she delete everything?" I asked.

"Everything on your drive." He opened his laptop on the counter and turned it toward me. "Not on mine."

The screen showed my own email, forwarded and timestamped.

The memo from four in the afternoon.

The three forms.

The camera clip I had sent him at 2:03 in the morning with a one-word message, "Proof."

"You told me to send it as soon as I had it," I said.

"I tell everyone that," Luka said. "You're the first person who did."

He pulled out a pot and started a sauce that smelled like garlic and tomatoes.

I watched his back and tried to remember the last time someone cooked for me.

My old life was no help.

"The deletion," he said, without turning. "Family iPad, Kitchen. Did you ever sign into your drive on it?"

"My mother set it up the week I came home. She said it would help me feel like part of the family."

"And the password?"

"She picked it. She said I'd forget one of my own."

He stirred.

"Savannah could have used it too," I said.

"She could have." He set a bowl of pasta in front of me. "Eat that before you decide."

The first bite hurt.

It was so hot and so salty that my whole mouth woke up.

I ate half the bowl before my stomach cramped, and I put the fork down with my hand pressed flat against my side.

Luka pulled a chair up and watched me.

"How long since you ate a full meal?" he said.

"A year, maybe."

"Cadence."

"The allowance covered bruised bananas," I said. "Oh, and bagels at nine at night, when the bakery marks them down."

His jaw moved.

"What?" I said.

"I'm trying to decide whether to be polite," Luka said. "I don't think I will be."

"You can say anything about Savannah you want."

"I wasn't talking about Savannah."

He took the bowl and put a slice of buttered bread next to it, and I ate that too.

Later he stood at the counter drying a pan, and he asked, without looking at me, how I had known.

"Known what?"

"That she'd plant it. That it would be the suitcase. You described it to me on the phone before it happened, down to the lining."

I turned the empty bowl a quarter turn on the table.

I could not tell him I had already been thrown out of that house once, and starved, and died.

"I'll tell you someday," I said. "I promise it's not a lie."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Someday's fine," he said. "Get some sleep."

He gave me his bed, which was a real bed behind a bookshelf, and he took the couch.

I lay on clean sheets listening to him move around in the dark, and I didn't feel hungry for the first time in months.

Around midnight my phone buzzed on the pillow.

It buzzed again.

Then Luka's voice came through the shelves, low and careful.

"Cadence, are you awake?"

I went around the bookshelf. He was sitting on the couch with his laptop open and the screen turned toward me.

"Do you know an account called pearlgirl_nyc?" he said.

I knew it.

I had read it under an overpass on a phone that was about to die.

The newest post had been up for ten minutes.

"My 'sister' just tried to frame me with a deepfake at a family dinner. She's been taking money from my parents since the day she moved in. Please pray for me."

It had four thousand likes already.

Under it was the photo of a thin wrist wearing a gold bracelet.

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