แชร์

Chapter 124: Vanessa's Return

ผู้เขียน: Evve
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-01-22 00:18:34

The waiting room of the Legal Aid office in Queens smelled of floor wax and desperation.

Vanessa Leigh sat on a plastic chair, her legs crossed. She wasn't wearing red. She was wearing gray. A cheap, off-the-rack suit she had bought at a discount store. Her hair, once a sleek, expensive ponytail, was loose and slightly frizzy.

She looked like a ghost of the woman who had once ruled the 80th floor.

But her eyes were the same. Sharp. Hungry. Unbroken.

She had been out on bail for a month. He
อ่านหนังสือเล่มนี้ต่อได้ฟรี
สแกนรหัสเพื่อดาวน์โหลดแอป
บทที่ถูกล็อก

บทล่าสุด

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 453: THE MERCY THAT ISN'T

    The gun sat on the table between them. A black, ugly weight on the scarred wood.Isabella stared at it. Her chest heaved, the oxygen cannula whistling with every desperate breath. She looked like a gambler who had bet everything on red, only to watch the ball land on black."You coward," she hissed again. "You don't have the spine for it."Aurora stood over her. She felt tall. She felt like a spire that had weathered a hurricane and hadn't lost a single pane of glass."It isn't cowardice, Isabella," Aurora said. Her voice was ice. Clear. Transparent. "It's architecture. You don't build a future on a foundation of murder. That’s your design. Not mine."Isabella’s hands clawed at the armrests. "I gave you a chance. I gave you the ending.""You gave me a trap," Aurora corrected. "You wanted me to kill you so I would become you. You wanted to infect me with your violence so that every time I looked in the mirror, I would see your face."She leaned down. She placed her hands on the table,

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 452: THE FANTASY

    The gun was colder than the ring.Aurora’s fingers curled around the grip. It was textured rubber, designed for traction, for sweat, for the exact moment when a human being decided to stop being a person and start being a force of nature.She lifted it.It was heavy. Denser than a brick. Denser than gold.Isabella didn't flinch. She watched Aurora’s hand with a hunger that was almost obscene. She leaned forward in her chair, her breath hitching in the cannula, her eyes wide and black and glittering.Do it, Isabella’s silence screamed. Complete the circle.Aurora raised the barrel.She pointed it at the woman’s chest. At the cashmere sweater. At the heart that was failing but refusing to stop beating.For four seconds, the world dissolved.One.Aurora pulled the trigger in her mind. She felt the resistance of the metal spring. She felt the snap. The recoil kicking back into her shoulder, a physical jolt that traveled up her arm and into her spine.She saw the flash. The muzzle flare li

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 451: THE CHOICE OFFERED

    The phrase hung in the overheated air, vibrating against the wooden walls of the cabin.I want you to bury him.Aurora stared at the dying woman. "Henry is already buried, Isabella. He's been in the ground for twenty years.""His body is," Isabella wheezed. Her hand fumbled in the pocket of her cashmere cardigan, searching for something. "But his ghost... his ghost is sitting in this chair. It’s breathing my air. As long as I am alive... he isn't finished."She pulled her hand out.It wasn't a handkerchief. It wasn't a pill bottle.It was a gun.Small. Black. A snub-nosed revolver that looked heavy in her skeletal grip.Aurora didn't scream. She didn't scramble backward. She went perfectly, terrifyingly still. The Architect in her assessed the geometry of the threat instantly. Distance: three feet. Line of sight: clear. Caliber: lethal.Isabella didn't point it at her.She placed it on the table.It made a heavy, dull thud against the wood, sitting right next to the scorched gold ring

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 450: WHAT SURVIVED

    The silence in the cabin wasn't empty. It was crowded with the ghosts of twenty years of manipulation.Aurora sat in the wooden chair, staring at the fire. The logs were collapsing, glowing orange at the core, turning to gray ash on the surface.She felt like she was watching a time-lapse of her own life.Every decision she had ever made... every rebellion... every moment of "agency" had been a line of code written by the woman sitting three feet away.The investigation into her father’s death? Isabella’s breadcrumbs.The "chance" meeting with Liam at the gala? Isabella’s staging.The decision to marry for leverage? Isabella’s whisper.Aurora looked at her hands. They felt foreign. Were they her hands? Or were they just tools used to dismantle a dynasty?She closed her eyes. She felt the vertigo again—the terrifying sensation of falling through a floor she thought was solid.If the beginning was a lie, she thought, does the middle count?She searched her memory. She sifted through the

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 449: THE WEAPON

    The woodstove hissed. A log shifted, collapsing into ash.Aurora stared at the woman in the chair. The heat in the room felt physical, a pressure pressing against her temples, blurring the edges of her vision."Because he chose me," Aurora repeated Isabella’s last words. "That's why you hate him?"Isabella’s head lulled against the leather headrest. She looked exhausted, her skin gray and papery, but her eyes remained fixed on Aurora. Burning."Hate is too simple," Isabella whispered. "I don't hate Liam. I hate what he represents. The continuity. The happy ending Henry didn't deserve."She reached for the oxygen dial again. Her hand trembled, skeletal fingers fumbling with the plastic knob. The flow increased. Hiss-click."But I couldn't kill him," Isabella said. "Henry's son? The CEO of Cross Industries? If he died, the world would stop. The investigation would be... thorough. I would have been found."She smiled. It was a rictus of teeth and malice."No. To destroy a man like Liam..

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 448: WHAT LOVE MADE HER

    The fire in the woodstove snapped, a sharp, violent sound that made the silence in the cabin feel heavier.Aurora didn't flinch. She sat in the wooden chair, her hands deep in her pockets, her fingers curled around the emptiness where the ring used to be. She had left it on the table. A offering. A rejection.Isabella Voss watched the flames. Her chest rose and fell with a hitching, wet rhythm that the oxygen machine tried, and failed, to smooth out."You want the mechanics," Isabella whispered. "You have the architect's mind. You want to know how the load was distributed.""I want to know why they died," Aurora said.Isabella turned her head. The movement seemed to cost her something vital."Your father was a fool," she said. "A brilliant, moral, self-righteous fool. He didn't just refuse to sell the patent, Aurora. He was going to expose the foundation."Aurora went still. "What foundation?""Henry's," Isabella said. "The bribes. The zoning commission payoffs in midtown. The union i

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 79: Memories Resurface

    The Cross Empire tower was quiet, a silence that felt less like peace and more like the held breath of a storm.Liam sat in his office, the lights dimmed, a single glass of amber liquid untouched on the desk beside him. The "Anonymous Tip" from the last chapter—the text about Sophia, the betrayal,

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-22
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 81: The Private Meeting

    The office was silent, save for the steady, rhythmic thrum of the city fifty floors below. It was a sound Aurora had once found terrifying, a mechanical monster waiting to devour her. Now, it was just noise.Inside the room, however, the silence was a living thing. It was heavy with the weight of f

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-22
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 80: The Confrontation Setup

    The invitation was not printed on heavy cream cardstock. It did not come with a wax seal or a courier.It was a single, digital line, blinking on Aurora's phone screen.From: Liam Cross To: Aurora Vale Subject: CollaborationMy office. Tomorrow. 10 AM. Alone.Aurora stared at the message. It was

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-22
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 78: The Anonymous Tip

    The truce was fragile, built on sugar and silence.The "shirt incident" in the AVA flagship had not been a declaration of peace. It had been a pause in the hostilities. A moment where two enemies stood on opposite sides of a canyon and acknowledged that the other was... armed.And attractive.Auror

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-22
บทอื่นๆ
สำรวจและอ่านนวนิยายดีๆ ได้ฟรี
เข้าถึงนวนิยายดีๆ จำนวนมากได้ฟรีบนแอป GoodNovel ดาวน์โหลดหนังสือที่คุณชอบและอ่านได้ทุกที่ทุกเวลา
อ่านหนังสือฟรีบนแอป
สแกนรหัสเพื่ออ่านบนแอป
DMCA.com Protection Status