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CHAPTER 76

Author: CagalieYula
last update Last Updated: 2025-04-12 19:25:58

The day started off normal enough—well, as normal as it could when your best friend was plotting a relationship stress test and your ex-husband had confessed he wanted you back.

Chelsea hadn’t given me details yet. She said it had to “feel natural” to work. That if Jeff caught even a whiff of setup, it would ruin everything.

So instead, I did what I always did when things got too real.

I buried myself in work.

Meetings. Emails. Approvals. Damage control from one of our junior designers who accidentally sent the wrong pitch deck to a client. It was the kind of chaos that usually kept my head clear. But today?

Jeff’s face kept slipping into my mind.

The soft way he looked at me lately. The way he listened—like every word I said mattered. The way he smiled when he saw me, like it was the only part of his day he was looking forward to.

And worse?

The way my chest fluttered when he did those things.

"Damn it," I muttered to myself, slamming my laptop shut as Chelsea walked back into the ro
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    The world narrowed to the woman in the doorway. My face, but harder. Colder. Her eyes weren't the fractured mirrors mine had become; they were flat, polished obsidian, devoid of the storm raging inside me. The pulse rifle in her hands didn't waver.“Identify yourself,” the other me said, her voice a chillingly perfect copy, stripped of all the fear and static that roughened mine.Before I could form a thought, let alone a word, Jeff was moving. He placed his body between the rifle and me, his hands raised in a placating gesture, but his stance was that of a cornered animal. “Stand down,” he commanded, his voice dropping into a register I’d never heard—a tone of absolute, unassailable authority. “That’s a direct order, Prime.”Prime.The word hung in the air, heavier than the weapon aimed at us.The woman—*Prime*—didn’t lower the rifle. “The asset is compromised, Sir. The risk is unacceptable. Protocol demands—”“I am well aware of the protocol,” Jeff snapped, cutting her off. The bill

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 230

    The first thing I feel is the scream.It’s still echoing in the metal chamber, a raw, dying sound. My throat is torn from it. The black-gold vines have receded, slithering back into the walls like snakes, leaving behind a pattern of burns on my skin that pulse in time with the garden’s heartbeat.Silence, thick and heavy, crashes down.Jeff is the first to move. He stumbles toward me, his face a mask of horror and confusion. “Demi? Demi, talk to me. What did she do to you?”His hands reach for my shoulders, but I flinch back. His touch feels like a brand. Everything does. The air, the light, the memory of the knife—it’s all too much.“She didn’t do anything,” I whisper, and my voice is wrong. It’s mine, but there’s a gravelly undertone to it, a memory of static. “She just… turned on the lights.”From the shadows near a sparking console, Eva pushes herself up, one hand clutching her head. Her golden eyes are dim, flickering. “Define ‘lights.’ Because from here, it looked like she downl

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 229

    The first thing I feel is the scream.It tears out of me before I realize it’s mine.The garden isn’t justawake—it’shungry. Vines of black-gold code erupt from the walls, the floor, the air itself, lashing around my limbs like chains. The more I struggle, the tighter they coil, burning where they touch skin.The Woman in White watches, her peeling lips curved in something almost like pity."Stop fighting it, Demi. This is what you were made for."Jeff’s shouting, but his voice is distant, warped—like he’s underwater. Or maybeIam. The garden pulses around me, breathing in time with my racing heart.And then&md

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 228

    The garden isn’t a garden anymore.It’s a wound.A jagged, bleeding tear in reality where the roses scream and the sky peels back like burned skin. I stand in the center of it, my hands slick with something that isn’t blood—black-gold code, writhing,alive—and the original stares at me like I’ve just set the world on fire.Maybe I have.Behind her, Jeff is shouting, but the sound is muffled, distant. The only thing I hear clearly is thehumin my veins, the whisper of the system unraveling around us."You shouldn’t be able to do that,"the original says.I flex my fingers. The code follows, twisting like smoke."

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 227

    Behind her, Lina stirs in her glass cage, her neon hair flickering like a dying light. The others—the names from Jeff’s map—float in their coffins, their chests rising and falling in perfect sync.A network.A system.A protocol.I look down at my hands. They’re shaking."Then what am I?"The original exhales, almost pitying. "A backup."Jeff’s between us before I can process the word, his knife drawn, his body taut with fury. "Enough. Whatever this is, you’re not walking out of here."The original laughs. "Neither are you."She snaps her fingers.The garden screams.The roses whip into a frenzy, their thorns elongating into razor wire. The coffins shudder, the black-gold vines surging like serpents toward us.Eva yanks Jeff back as a vine lashes at his throat. "They’re tied to her!" she shouts. "The original—she’s the anchor!"I don’t think.I move.The knife sinks into the original’s stomach before she can react.Or maybe she lets me.Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t bleed. She j

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    Jeff traced the thorn-carved names on his floor with a combat knife, the blade scraping against the grooves. Each name pulsed faintly with black-gold residue—like the roses had injected something into the wood."They're not just names," Eva murmured, crouching beside him. "They're coordinates."She pressed her palm to the largest cluster. The gold in her irises flared as neural patterns surfaced—Lina's last thoughts before she vanished:—A hand reaching through the glass——The scent of white roses——A whisper: "She's waiting."Jeff's knife stilled over the name at the map's heart:DEMI x 2The letters weren't etched.They were rooted.Tiny black tendrils writhed beneath them, alive.The coordinates led to a derelict psychiatric hospital outside Prague—one with a notorious history of Cold War-era neural experiments. The overgrown courtyard was littered with glass shards that reflected the moonlight wrong, showing a different sky. A different time.Eva knelt, brushing her fingers over a

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