After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law

For exactly thirty seconds, Aria allowed herself to panic. She envisioned the orange jumpsuit. She wondered if the Sinclair lawyers could get her placed in a minimum-security facility with decent thread counts. She mentally drafted a letter to Damien’s grandfather, which was mostly just the word ’Oops’ written in cursive.

Then, the thirty seconds were up.

”Okay,” Aria whispered to the empty kitchen, rolling her shoulders back. ”If you’re going to do the crime, you might as well control the narrative.”

She grabbed Bella’s glittery iPhone from the marble island. She opened the hidden folder, selected the alleyway video of Lucas and the redhead, and tapped the share icon.

AirDrop to: Aria’s iPhone.

Her personal phone pinged. She accepted the transfer.

Aria watched the little blue circle fill up. The moment it completed, she exhaled a sharp breath of satisfaction. She opened her own hidden, password-protected gallery.

She now possessed the Holy Trinity of Blackmail:

Proof of Lucas paying off a sex worker. High-definition footage of Bella screaming about Lucas cheating on her and breaking up. And Zoe’s video of Lucas and Bella hooking up in the backseat of a car while Aria was technically still engaged to him.

It was enough ammunition to nuke Lucas’s career from orbit.

She locked her phone and slipped it into her pocket. She needed to handle the TMZ crisis immediately, which meant she needed the Sinclair PR machine. She needed her husband.

”Damien?” Aria called out, turning out of the kitchen. ”Damien, I need your fixers. I’ve become a meme.”

Silence.

”Damien?”

She walked into the sprawling living room. Empty. She checked his home office, the doors standing ajar. Empty.

Aria frowned. She walked down the long corridor to the master suite.

The room was perfectly pristine. The bed was made. His suit jacket, which had been draped over a chair, was gone.

He had left. He had actually left the penthouse entirely without a goodbye.

Aria stopped in the doorway.

He had kissed her in the kitchen—a deep, desperate, mind-scrambling kiss that had left her breathless and dizzy—and then he had just... vanished. The emotional whiplash was giving her a secondary headache.

’Why is he acting so weird?’

Aria sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing her temples, trying to force her hangover-riddled brain to rewind.

She groaned, burying her face in her hands. ”Oh god. What did I do?”

Did she barf on his shoes? Did she cry? Did she try to fight him? The anxiety clawed at her chest. He must have been disgusted by her. That explained the ice wall this morning. The kiss was probably just his way of shutting her up because he felt sorry for her.

Her phone began to vibrate violently in her pocket, saving her from her spiral of self-loathing.

Incoming Call: Zoe Chen

Aria took a deep breath, pasted on her best unbothered expression even though no one was in the room, and answered.

”Please tell me you know a lawyer who specializes in high-glamour burglaries,” Zoe shrieked the second the line connected. ”Aria, I’m pacing my apartment. I just googled extradition treaties. We have to flee to Switzerland! I don’t look good in horizontal stripes!”

”Zoe, breathe,” Aria commanded, walking back toward the living room. ”We don’t have to flee to Switzerland. It’s a misdemeanor at best, and only if Bella presses charges.”

”Oh, she’s going to press charges!” Zoe wailed. ”She’s probably dialing 911 right now while feeding Lucas a strawberry!”

Aria paused. ”Feeding Lucas?”

”Yes!” Zoe cried. ”I was just on DeuxMoi. Someone spotted them at Balthazar an hour ago getting brunch! They were holding hands over avocado toast! The breakup is off. They reconciled last night!”

Aria let out a dry, cynical laugh. ”Of course they did. They deserve each other. They’re a match made in toxic heaven.”

”Aria, focus! If she has her man back, she has her confidence back. She’s going to use this TMZ photo to play the ultimate victim. ’My evil sister broke into my car!’ She’s going to have us arrested!”

”No, she won’t,” Aria said, dropping onto the white sofa and crossing her legs. ”Because we aren’t going to hide. If we go silent, we look guilty. If we lawyer up, it validates her victimhood.”

”So what do we do? Turn ourselves in?”

”We own it,” Aria said, a wicked, brilliant idea crystalizing in her mind.

She put Zoe on speakerphone and pulled up the TMZ article on her screen. She took a high-resolution screenshot of the photo.

”Zoe, listen to me,” Aria said, her fingers flying across her keyboard. ”A crime is only a crime if there’s malicious intent. But if it’s just two sisters having a funny, relatable misunderstanding? If it’s an inside joke that the paparazzi took out of context?”

”I’m listening...” Zoe said, her breathing slowing down.

Aria opened Instagram. She created a new post.

”I’m posting the photo to my main grid,” Aria narrated as she typed. ”Caption: ’When you accidentally lock your favorite lip gloss in your sister’s car and she’s not answering her phone. Thanks for the boost, @ZoeChen! We got the gloss!’”

Zoe gasped over the speaker. ”Oh my god. You’re gaslighting the entire internet.”

She added the hashtags: #SunroofSeason #ShortGirlProblems #SisterThings #TheStruggleIsReal

”If Bella goes to the cops now,” Aria explained, hovering her thumb over the ’Share’ button, ”she looks absolutely insane. She’ll be the bitter, dramatic sister trying to get me arrested over lip gloss. The internet will roast her alive for not having a sense of humor.”

”It’s a masterstroke,” Zoe whispered in awe. ”It’s brilliant. Post it.”

Aria hit share.

Within three seconds, the notifications began to roll in like a slot machine paying out a jackpot.

@PopCultureDaily: LMAOOO ARIA SINCLAIR IS SO UNSERIOUS

@MakeupGuru: Which gloss was it tho?! Drop the link!

@AriaStan4Ever: The fact that she’s in full glam breaking into a G-Wagon is peak. We have no choice but to stan.

Aria watched the likes hit fifty thousand in under a minute.

”Narrative secured,” Aria said, leaning her head back against the cushions.

”You are the scariest person I know,” Zoe said, sounding immensely relieved. ”I’m going to go make a mimosa.”

”Wait, before you go,” Aria interrupted, a sly smile touching her lips. ”Last night... did you and Kai hook up?”

There was a sudden, deafening silence on the line.

”Zoe?”

”I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zoe’s voice pitched up two octaves. ”I don’t remember anything. The tequila was very strong. Total blackout. Who is Kai? Anyway, I have to go.”

”Zoe, you didn’t drink that much—”

”I have to go water my puppy!” Zoe blurted out in a panic. ”Goodbye!”

Click.

Aria pulled the phone away from her ear, staring at the screen.

”Water your puppy?” Aria repeated out loud.

Zoe didn’t own a puppy. Zoe was allergic to dogs.

’And you don’t water a puppy.’

Aria snorted, shaking her head. Her best friend was a terrible liar.

But right now, the humor faded as she looked down at the glittering rose-gold phone resting on the coffee table.

The Instagram post was a brilliant band-aid, but it wasn’t a cure. Bella was vindictive. She could still try to spin the narrative, claim the phone was stolen, or cause a scene.

Aria needed to return the phone. And she needed an ironclad agreement from Bella that the matter was closed.

But dealing with Bella directly when she had just reconciled with her toxic boyfriend was like negotiating with a feral cat. Aria needed a mediator. Someone who had a vested interest in keeping Bella quiet and the press away.

Aria sighed, picking up her own phone.

She opened her contacts and scrolled all the way to the bottom to the blocked list. She stared at a name she had sworn she would never tap again in this lifetime.

She hit the call button.

She put the phone to her ear, listening to the dial tone echo in the empty penthouse as she waited for Lucas Sinclair to pick up.