로그인Chapter 286KianSeven hours.Seven hours, forty-two minutes, and eleven seconds. It has been the most agonizing, soul-shredding stretch of time in my entire life. Every single tick of the clock feels like a jagged blade dragging slowly across my chest. I am suffocating in a world that suddenly has no air, because the woman who gives me breath is gone.I close my eyes, but I can't escape it. My mind relentlessly loops back to the exact moment our world fractured.Matteo and I had been separated from her for only a few minutes. I was speaking with the prosecution team, but my true focus was anchored entirely to Elowen. To the steady, beautiful thrum of her heartbeat that usually echoes in the quiet spaces of my mind.Then, it happened.The rhythm shattered. Her heart didn't just speed up; it spiked into a frantic, terrifying, erratic pace. It was a rapid, desperate hammering that practically screamed danger. Matteo who was on a call and just entering the room felt it too. Our eyes
Chapter 285Elowen A sharp, deafening crack exploded through the enclosed bay. Anna screamed, falling heavily to the floor as blood instantly began to bloom through the fabric of her trousers, just above the knee."Ah, God!" she shrieked, clutching her lap, her body curling into a ball of agony.The man instantly pulled me backward, his arm locking tightly around my neck, shoving the hot barrel of the gun directly against my temple. My hands instinctively flew to my stomach, protecting my child."Stand back!" the man yelled, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Tell your men to back the fuck off, or the next one goes right into the old woman's head! Back up!"In the chaos, the positioning had shifted. I was standing in a strange, agonizing pocket of space. The kidnapper had backed up against the open rear door of the SUV, but his grip on me had slipped slightly as he tried to keep his eyes on the sea of weapons pointed at him. I was essentially floating between the line of security a
Chapter 284ElowenThe relief in the courtroom was a living thing, thick and suffocatingly sweet. For thirty-five years, these men had hidden behind their wealth, their pristine suits, and the suffocating silence they had bought with hush money. But Kian had dismantled them. Piece by piece, entry by entry, he had forced their own arrogance to convict them.As the judge announced a brief recess before the defense began its final arguments, the heavy tension that had anchored my shoulders for months finally snapped.Matteo helped me guide my heavy, pregnant body out of the row, his hand steady against the small of my back. Caroline was right beside us, her face flushed with a mixture of tears and triumph."We need to get you off your feet," he murmured, his eyes scanning my pale face with that familiar, protective intensity. "You've been sitting in that rigid chair for three hours."Before we could cross the threshold of the courtroom doors into the buzzing corridor, his phone vibrate
Chapter 283ElowenAs we were about to leave the court room that day, Anna walked up to me.I thought she wanted to say something about how she was saying the truth. But surprisingly she hugged me immediately we got close and started crying.I froze not knowing what to do with that. Didn't know why she was this emotional.My hands that limped by my side uselessly moved up round her back. I tapped on it slowly."Do not worry about the case, Kain will win it. I promise." She cried more not letting go.At first I told myself it was just a hug but then it stopped feeling that way and started feeling like something more."I failed you. "I heard her say between sobs. "You went through all that and I wasn't there for you. I was wallowing in self-pity when you were going through all this." Ohh that was what she meant."I'm fine now, you do not need to..." I tried to pull away but she held me tight."I'm so sorry. This selfish woman that thought about herself and didn't for once think about h
Chapter 282Elowen I opened my mouth, then closed it. Because he was right about one thing... Anna had abandoned me. And I still didn't fully understand why, even after everything she'd told me."That child," Pembroke said quietly, letting the words sink in, "was you, Ms. Voss. You were abandoned by Ms. Ferretti. And now she's telling you a story about being raped, and you're believing every word of it without question. You're funding her legal battle. You're testifying under oath on her behalf. Doesn't that strike you as potentially problematic? Doesn't that suggest that your judgment might be clouded by your own desire to understand why she abandoned you?""She was trying to survive.""Or perhaps she was running from something else," Pembroke suggested. "Perhaps she's been running her entire life, reinventing her story to suit her circumstances. Perhaps she abandoned you because she was unstable. And now, when she needs money, when she needs to explain her life, suddenly there's
Chapter 281Elowen I took a step back and stared at my hand in disbelief.Not knowing what was going on. Different thoughts ran through my head.What If I had a deadly disease? But deathly diseases don't heal wounds.Or what if I was a vampire or witch? But this is real world and not movie. Such a thing can't exist.I should tell kane and Matteo but I can't, they're going through a lot of stress because of me. And they'll want me to drop whatever is going on if they feel I was stressing myself.Maybe it's stress. Yes, that's it. I came to the realization that I was stressing myself and needed to rest well. So, did what I wanted to do slowly and then went back to bed.I'll be fine after the whole thing Is settled. Nothing is wrong with me. ......By the third day of the trial, all four men were present in the courtroom.Richard Stratton sat next to James Ashton—a man in his mid-fifties with slicked-back dark hair and cold eyes that reminded me of a reptile. Marcus Bellamy was acros
Chapter 6Elowen I curled up on my bed still in the red dress and Matteo's jacket lying forgotten somewhere on the terrace.And I cried until there was nothing left inside me but emptiness.Maybe this was the point, maybe Adrian wanted to hollow me out completely until there was nothing left but g
Chapter 13 Elowen His words should have devastated me but instead they mixed with the brutal pleasure of his body claiming mine and I felt myself spiraling toward release despite everything, despite the pain, despite the humiliation, despite knowing that anyone in the villa could probably hear
Chapter 8Elowen"I'm just concerned about my wife," Adrian said smoothly. "Surely you can understand that."Kian's jaw clenched but he didn't respond, and Matteo continued eating his seafood risotto with deliberate focus.While I sat there feeling like I was watching myself from outside my body, w
Chapter 9Elowen The door opened before I'd even lowered my hand, and Matteo stood there in the frame looking like every dark fantasy I'd never let myself fully acknowledge.Wearing only low-slung grey sweatpants that hung on his hips in a way that should have been illegal and nothing else.His ch







