Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 24
Evelyn’s limousine struck a fire barricade and disappeared into afternoon traffic before police reached it. Derek’s threat left Ivy shaking beside the ambulance, though she tried to hide it beneath contempt. The girl who once believed his attention made her powerful finally understood how quickly it could become a death sentence. She watched every passing car as though Derek might return before the sirens faded.
Hayden placed Ivy under protection at a Scott-owned residence Evelyn could not access without board approval. Arianna objected to using any property connected to his aunt, but Hayden explained that the house belonged to a separate trust established by his mother. It was the one piece of his inheritance Evelyn could not freeze.
The memory card gave investigators enough evidence to obtain warrants for Evelyn’s office, aircraft, and financial accounts. Yet the recording of the engagement forgery could be challenged because Victor had captured it illegally. Donald needed the original documents Evelyn had used to construct the false agreement.
Hayden believed they were stored in the Scott family archive. Evelyn had closed the building after returning and dismissed its longtime curator. Getting inside without company authorization risked giving her another claim that the Taylors controlled him.
Arianna suggested they enter openly. If Hayden requested his mother’s personal papers as her son, refusing him would reveal more than cooperation. Donald arranged for reporters to witness the request without turning it into a spectacle.
The archive occupied an old stone house behind Scott Global’s headquarters. Evelyn’s temporary guards blocked the entrance until Hayden read the trust provision granting him permanent access to his mother’s records. Faced with cameras and precise legal language, they stepped aside. Hayden entered without celebrating the small victory, aware that every locked door belonged to the family he might soon have to expose.
Inside, dust covered shelves Evelyn’s staff had searched too quickly. Boxes had been opened, but their contents were returned in the wrong order. Arianna recognized the haste of someone looking for a single dangerous page.
Hayden found his mother’s charity charter and the genuine signature later copied onto the engagement agreement. Tucked behind it was a letter to Donald. His mother had proposed a joint scholarship fund, not a marriage contract, and explicitly stated that their children must never be treated as business assets.
The words released anger Hayden had kept buried beneath discipline. Evelyn had transformed his mother’s respect for the Taylors into proof of a scheme she would have despised. Arianna reached for his hand, offering presence instead of an answer. Grief did not need to be solved before it could be shared.
He closed his fingers around hers. “I spent years believing loving you meant waiting quietly,” he said. “Maybe it should also mean letting you see when I’m not all right.” Arianna told him she did not need perfection from him; she needed the truth while it was still difficult.
In a locked drawer, they found the original land contract bearing Donald’s signature. A corner had been cut away precisely where the signature appeared. Beside it lay practice copies of the forged clause and a receipt from a document-restoration laboratory Evelyn controlled.
The evidence proved the agreement fraudulent, but Derek and Evelyn remained beyond police reach. Ivy offered to draw Derek out. She knew his pride would not allow her betrayal to remain unanswered.
Against Arianna’s warning, Ivy sent him a photograph of the memory card and claimed she had kept a duplicate. Derek replied within minutes. He promised to protect her if she returned the card and testified that Arianna ordered the school fire.
Ivy requested a meeting at the Taylor Foundation’s emergency board session the following morning. She said public testimony was the only way to make her accusation believable. Derek agreed, provided she entered alone and left the card beneath the witness table.
The board session offered them a controlled location with police hidden among hotel staff. It also placed Donald, Arianna, and Hayden in the room Derek most wanted to dominate. Every person understood that his agreement was too easy. They prepared for weapons, false testimony, power failure, and every trap his earlier victories might inspire.
That evening, Arianna studied the future cloud account for another warning. No new photograph appeared. The silence felt deliberate, as though the unseen force sending images wanted her to face this choice without instructions.
Donald reminded her that the future was no longer a script. The school fire had been smaller, Jeff had survived North Road, and Hayden had left Scott Global years before the first timeline required it. Their choices were creating a life even Derek could not fully remember.
Arianna found Hayden on the mansion terrace. She thanked him for surrendering his position, then made him promise he would reclaim it for himself rather than use sacrifice as another way to prove love. He agreed, smiling at the command hidden inside her concern.
They stood close enough for Arianna to hear his breath change. She kissed him gently, not because he had saved her in another life, but because he had trusted her in this one. The future no longer stood between them for those few quiet seconds.
Her phone vibrated before either could speak. Ivy’s protection detail reported that her bedroom was empty and the window alarm had been disabled from inside. On the pillow lay Derek’s silver ring and a note in Ivy’s handwriting: “I’m sorry. He remembers what happens to my mother.”
