Chapter 10
When the snowflakes fell into the moving company’s truck, Sienna was taping up the last cardboard box.
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There suddenly heavy object falling sound from the second floor of the villa.
Lewis rushed down, clutching a burgundy tie, with snowflakes sticking to his trembling eyelashes. “Aren’t you going to explain?”
The TH embroidery on the inside of the tie was torn, revealing the cold light of a miniature chip.
Sienna tore the tape with a sharp sound.
She kicked aside the cardboard box and revealed a stack of couple’s mugs. “When Mr. Mcclure was replicating himself into assembly line products, did he not notice that each counterfeit had the genuine master’s stamp?”
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Lewis suddenly grabbed her wrist and said, “So what is this Robert? A fiancé that appeared out of nowhere?” His voice cracked, sounding like it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
Sienna shook off his hand, the zipper of her down jacket scraping across his palm. “When you said ‘doubles are like out–of–season clothes‘ in Spanish in front of me, why didn’t you ask about this?”
Lewis was struck by lightning, that was three months ago when he was having a private conversation with Peruvian client Leon during a video call.
The snowflakes melted on Sienna’s collar. “Do you need me to repeat your original words with Leon?” Sienna was eight parts like Tracy, but her
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Chapter 10
eyes were rounder, like a well–behaved….
“Listen to me, I explained!”
Lewis’s watch knocked against her suitcase. “We were just discussing business strategies at that time…”
Sienna pulled out the stuck suitcase and said, “Do you need me to praise your successful strategy?”
She took out her phone and pressed the play button, and Spanish mixed with static exploded: “When the main character comes back, throw her away…”
Lewis’s pupils shrank to the size of a needlepoint.
That night, when he was passionately entwined with Sienna on the office. desk, the computer webcam was not turned off at all.
“Excuse me.”
Sienna’s suitcase rolled over the broken couple’s mug, Lewis’s scarf caught on her backpack zipper, and a yellowed notebook fell out of the torn hole.
A dense cluster of Spanish annotations, with the date frozen on the day they first met five years ago.
The snowstorm engulfed the taillights of the moving company.
Lewis knelt in the snow, listening to the faint boarding announcement coming from a distance, when he suddenly remembered Sienna’s thesis topic – “On the Substitution Burial System of the Inca Empire.”
