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CHAPTER 7

Author: CagalieYula
last update Last Updated: 2025-02-28 21:16:06

Jeff Ortega had waited long enough.

It had been over five years since we first met, five years since I last saved his life, and exactly five days since he first tried to call me today. few hours of my unwavering silence.

And now, he had finally lost his patience.

I heard him before I saw him—the hurried footsteps, the clipped conversation with Brent at the door, the tension in Sabrina’s stance as she turned to me in warning. But I didn’t need her to say anything. I already knew what was coming.

“Demi,” Jeff’s voice rang out, firm but laced with something dangerously close to desperation. “We need to talk.”

Slowly, I looked up from my desk. The sight of him sent a familiar pang through my chest—an echo of something I had long buried. He looked the same, yet different. The years had carved sharper lines into his face, his once-boyish charm hardened by experience. But his eyes? Those dark, piercing eyes still carried the same fire, the same intensity that once had the power to make my he
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  • 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

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 226

    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

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 225

    The pollen fell like black snow over Manhattan.Jeff watched from a safehouse rooftop as people staggered through the streets below, their pupils dilating as the neural spores took root. A woman dropped her coffee, screaming as veins of black-gold bloomed beneath her skin. A traffic cop began laughing, his voice harmonizing with the roses' song in eerie unison."It's already in the water supply," Eva said, her hybrid eyes tracking the contamination spread on Lina's satellite feed. "Eighteen hours until global saturation."Lina's hologram flickered between them, her neon hair dull under the glow of emergency alerts. "Bad news: Lucian's corpse is gone from the lab. Good news?" She tossed up schematics of a subterranean complex beneath Montegreco's Swiss estate. "He left us a backdoor."The screen zoomed in on a single phrase etched into the foundation:LITTLE STAR, SHINE BRIGHTJeff's old wound ached.The Swiss bunker stank of wet earth and rotting roses.They found Lucian's corpse at t

  • RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK   CHAPTER 224

    I stood in the garden of white roses.My mother—the real Demetria Perez—waited beneath the largest tree. She looked like me. Like Omega. Like every ghost that had haunted my dreams."He’s hurting your friend," she whispered. "We can stop him."Beyond the garden, the real world flickered—Jeff fighting Omega, Eva seizing, Duchannes watching it all with clinical detachment.My mother reached for me. "Merge with me. Become me. Together, we’ll—""No."I stepped back."Then you’ll die," she said simply. "And so will your friends."I thought of Jeff’s hands steadying me through panic attacks. Of Eva’s laughter in the safehouse kitchen. Of Lina’s relentless, stupid hope.I reached into my pocket."There’s a third option."The neural drive glowed in my palm.Lucian’s final message played:"It’s a killswitch. For all of us."******Five Years LaterThe letter arrived on a Tuesday.Jeff Ortega knew better than to trust unmarked envelopes—especially ones that smelled faintly of bergamot and gunpo

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