After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law-Chapter 210: Sleepover Negotiations Signed in Ink

Fifteen minutes later, Ken slipped into the recovery room, silently handed over a sleek, silver MacBook Pro, and sprinted back out.

Diana snatched the laptop eagerly. She propped it up on her lap, wincing slightly as it brushed against her bandaged thigh, but her victorious smile never wavered.

The rapid, aggressive click-clack of her acrylic nails hitting the keyboard filled the room.

Damien stood near the window, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his face a mask of stoicism. But internally...well, he wasn’t as calm.

He knew his sister. She was insane and profoundly obsessed with him.

He had literally fled the continent when he was eighteen just to escape her.

Damien had received early acceptance letters from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but he had intentionally chosen a university in Europe simply to put an entire ocean between himself and Diana’s suffocating, neurotic "mothering."

He loved her, she was the closest thing to a mother he had ever known, but her absolute refusal to let him grow up was a cage he had spent his entire young adult life breaking out of.

With a dramatic, theatrical flourish, Diana punched the final full-stop key.

"Done," Diana announced, her eyes gleaming with triumph.

She turned the laptop around and offered it to him.

Damien could hardly keep his hands from shaking as he walked over and took the device from her. He looked at the screen.

Diana had drafted a full, legally binding, meticulously formatted contract. It included clauses, sub-clauses, and a space for digital signatures at the bottom.

This was simply how negotiations were handled in the Sinclair family. Before they were taught how to ride a bicycle, they were taught how to draft an iron-clad legal document. They operated on the strict, generational belief that word-of-mouth promises were useless, sentimental garbage that wouldn’t hold up in court.

Damien began to read. His face betrayed absolutely nothing, but behind his golden eyes, his brain was actively rejecting the delusion radiating from the screen.

Clause 1: Diana Sinclair shall reside in the master guest suite of the Sinclair Penthouse for a mandatory period of one (1) month.

Clause 2: Diana Sinclair shall be permitted to conduct live interviews in the penthouse to hire her personal, full-time caretaker.

Clause 3: Damien Sinclair shall dedicate a minimum of three (3) hours of uninterrupted, daily bonding time to his sister.

Clause 4: Damien Sinclair shall attend a minimum of three (3) blind dates with women exclusively vetted and approved by Diana Sinclair.

Damien finished reading. He slowly lowered the laptop.

"No," Damien said simply.

Diana wasn’t fazed by his immediate rejection. That was just the opening volley. She watched with a smug, knowing smirk as Damien tapped the trackpad, highlighting entire blocks of text.

He aggressively hit the delete key.

He spent sixty seconds typing his counteroffer, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

When he was finished, he turned the laptop back around and handed it to her.

Diana’s smug smile slowly began to slide off her face as she read his revisions.

"Excuse me?!" Diana shrieked, her voice echoing off the walls. "Two weeks?! You cut my recovery time in half! And you moved my nurse interviews to the lobby?! They can’t come upstairs?!"

"You are not running a casting agency in my private residence," Damien stated coldly. "You will conduct the interviews in the lobby, and my security team will perform full, exhaustive background checks on every single candidate before they are allowed in my elevator."

"Fine! Whatever!" Diana huffed, waving a dismissive hand. She actually didn’t mind the background checks; she was just as paranoid as he was. "But you completely deleted Clause 3! Zero hours of bonding?! I am injured! I need emotional support!"

"I am a busy man, Diana," Damien deadpanned. "I run a global conglomerate. I do not have three hours a day to sit on a sofa and let you brush my hair."

"And Clause 4!" Diana pointed a manicured finger at the screen. "You deleted the dates! That is the most important part! You need a woman on your level, Damien! Someone who can actually handle your lifestyle without ending up on life support!"

Damien stared at her.

He genuinely could not fathom the depths of her stupidity.

"Diana," Damien said, his voice dropping into a low, calm register. "I want you to use the single brain cell floating around in your head and analyze the logic of your demand."

Diana blinked, insulted. "My logic is flawless!"

"You are currently blackmailing me," Damien pointed out, ticking the facts off on his fingers, "because you allegedly caught me cheating on my comatose wife with a mystery woman. You are threatening to leak that photo to TMZ to spark a massive, global PR scandal that would ruin my reputation."

He leaned forward, planting his hands on the edge of her mattress, looming over her.

"And your brilliant idea... is to legally force me to go on three highly public dates with other women?"

Diana froze.

"If I am seen at a restaurant having a romantic dinner with some socialite you picked out while my wife is in the ICU," Damien continued, his tone dripping with sarcasm, "the press won’t need your stupid little photo, Diana. I would be shooting myself in the foot."

Diana’s mouth opened and closed silently.

The realization hit her like a freight train. She was so blinded by her desperate need to set him up with Vittoria that she hadn’t even considered the actual consequences of her demand.

Her flawless logic was, in fact, entirely brain-dead.

But Diana was a Sinclair. She refused to lose a negotiation.

She yanked the laptop back, glaring at the screen. Her fingers attacked the keyboard again, aggressively rewriting the terms.

"Fine," Diana muttered, hitting enter. She handed it back to him.

Damien read the new terms.

She was still stubbornly demanding a one-month stay. The dates were gone, replaced by a single demand: he had to be her official, photographed escort to the upcoming Breast Cancer Awareness Charity Gala. And the zero hours of bonding had been bumped up to one hour of ’shared dinners’.

"Three weeks in the penthouse," Damien bartered, crossing his arms. "No shared dinners. I eat when I have time. I will escort you to the Gala."

"Three weeks, but you carry my plate to the table," Diana countered immediately.

"Deal."

They were finally in agreement.

The final, legally binding contract stated: Diana would reside in the guest suite for exactly twenty-one days. She would interview her caretakers in the lobby under the strict supervision of Damien’s operatives. He would escort her to the Breast Cancer Awareness Gala.

In exchange, Diana would permanently and completely eradicate the photo of the "mistress" sleeping in his bed from her devices and all cloud servers.

Damien pulled the digital stylus from the slot on the side of the MacBook.

He held it out to her. "Sign it."

Diana didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the pen and scrawled her elegant, looping signature across the digital line.

She handed the pen back.

Damien took it, swiftly signing his own sharp, angular name next to hers.

"Okay!" Diana chirped, her voice pitching up into that breathy, innocent register that always made Damien want to walk into traffic. "I’m ready to go home, baby brother."