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Chapter 96: AVA's Victory

ผู้เขียน: Evve
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-01-13 22:20:09

The car ride home was silent.

But it wasn't the heavy, suffocating silence of the past. It was a silence born of exhaustion and a strange, humming sense of peace.

Aurora sat in the back of the black SUV, her head resting against the cool leather. Her eyes were closed, but she could still see the lights of the gala. She could still hear the roar of the applause.

And she could still feel the phantom pressure of Liam’s arm around her waist as he walked her through the vultures.

Just save me a danc
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  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 421: PROPOSAL

    The power outage in TriBeCa was localized, inconvenient, and—Marcus Cross decided—the best thing that had happened all week.He stood in the kitchen of Sophia’s loft. The industrial space was usually bright, flooded with city light and the glow of her design screens. Tonight, it was a cave of soft, flickering shadows.Candles were everywhere. Beeswax pillars on the island. Tea lights on the windowsill. A candelabra on the dining table that looked like it belonged in a French château (it probably did)."It is not burned," Sophia said from the stove. "It is charred. It is a technique."She was holding a skillet. The smell of something that used to be chicken but was now carbon filled the air.Marcus smiled. He leaned against the counter, watching her.They had been together for three years. Three years of "cohabitating," of sharing keys, of him fixing her shelves and her fixing his wardrobe. They were a team. The General and the Contractor.But they weren't... this.He touched the pocke

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 420: WHAT WAS REAL

    The butcher paper made a harsh crinkling sound as Aurora smoothed it out on the duvet cover.It was 2:00 AM. The master bedroom was lit only by the bedside lamp on Liam’s side, casting a warm, yellow pool of light that felt too small to hold the darkness of the revelation spread out between them.Liam sat on the edge of the bed. He was wearing his pajama bottoms, his chest bare. He leaned over the paper, reading the timeline Aurora had drawn in the study.1980. 2004. 2019.His eyes tracked the black lines. The red lines. The arrows connecting Isabella to Evelyn to Aurora to him.He didn't speak. He read it once. Then he read it again.Aurora sat on the other side of the paper, her legs tucked under her. She was wearing the silk pajamas that she had worn for days, but she didn't feel numb anymore. She felt flayed. Exposed.She watched his face. She looked for anger. She looked for disgust.Instead, she saw a profound, devastating sadness."She wrote the script," Liam whispered.He trac

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 419: THE FULL CIRCLE

    The penthouse study was a glass box floating in the dark.Aurora sat at the desk. The only light came from the city below, casting long, skeletal shadows across the room.She wasn't looking at the view. She was looking at a timeline.It wasn't a digital file this time. It was physical. A roll of butcher paper she had taped to the mahogany surface, stretching from one end of the desk to the other. She had drawn a line in black marker.1980. 1990. 2000. 2010. 2020.She picked up a red pen.She marked 2004.The Fire.She drew a line down. Isabella executes. Henry orders. I survive.She moved her hand to the right. To the empty space of the lost years. The years she spent in boarding schools, in architecture school, building a shell around a hollow center.2004-2019.Why the silence? Why wait fifteen years?Aurora wrote: Leverage.Isabella held the ring. She held the secret. As long as Henry was alive, she owned him. She bled him dry.But then Henry died.Aurora moved the pen to 2019.The

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 418: THE FIXER

    The evidence board in the FBI briefing room was no longer a collage of conjecture. It was a map of hell.Aurora sat at the metal table, her hands resting on the cold surface. She felt strangely weightless, as if the gravity in the room had been turned off to accommodate the sheer mass of the truth hanging on the wall.Agent Rivera stood by the whiteboard. She held a black marker, but she wasn't writing. She was drawing lines.Thick, black lines connecting Henry Cross to Isabella Voss."We found the logs," Rivera said. Her voice was devoid of inflection. "Encrypted drives from the old Cross Industries server archives. They were supposed to be wiped in 2010 during the server migration. They weren't."She tapped a printed email taped to the board.FROM: HC_EXEC (Henry Cross)TO: IV_CONSULT (Isabella Voss)DATE: July 14, 2004 SUBJECT: The Obstacle.The acquisition is stalled. The target is recalcitrant. Fix it. Permanent solution authorized.Aurora stared at the date. July 14th. One month

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 417: THE FATHER'S SIN

    The study was cold.Liam sat in the leather chair that had once been his father’s favorite. It was a massive thing, upholstered in oxblood leather, designed to make the person sitting in it feel like a king.Tonight, it felt like an electric chair.On the desk in front of him lay the FBI file Rivera had left behind. The photos of the charred timber. The chemical analysis of the accelerant. The acquisition papers for Vale Tech, signed by Henry Cross in September 2004.Liam stared at the signature.It was bold. Looping. Arrogant. The signature of a man who believed he could rewrite reality with a pen stroke.I killed them, Isabella’s note had said.But Isabella was just the match. Henry was the hand.Liam closed his eyes. He tried to breathe, but the air in the penthouse felt thin, recycled, tainted.He thought about 2004. He had been twenty-one. A senior at Yale. He remembered driving a new Porsche. He remembered complaining to his father about his trust fund allowance. He remembered s

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   CHAPTER 416: THE MOTIVE

    The FBI Evidence Response Team didn't just bring boxes. They brought silence.It had been a week since the confirmation of arson. A week of forensic technicians swarming the site of the old guest house in the Hamptons, sifting through twenty years of dirt to find the ghosts of accelerants.But today, the evidence wasn't ash. It was paper.Aurora sat in the penthouse living room. Agent Rivera sat opposite her, flanked by a forensic accountant named Miller.Liam stood by the window. He was watching the river, his back rigid. He looked like a man bracing for a tsunami."We found the 'why'," Rivera said.She didn't soften it. She didn't offer a preamble. She slid a thick file across the coffee table.SUBJECT: JONATHAN VALE.ASSET VALUATION: 2003-2004.Aurora looked at the file. She remembered her father as a man who smelled of scotch and sadness. A man who built things but couldn't hold them together."My father was a developer," Aurora said. "A mid-level developer. He wasn't a target.""

  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 184: The Therapy

    The waiting room of Dr. Aris Thorne, Child Psychologist, was designed to be disarming.It was painted a soft, soothing blue. There were fish tanks bubbling quietly in the corners. The furniture was rounded, soft, and child-sized. It was a world away from the sharp edges of the Cross Empire tower or

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-30
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 173: Vanessa's Desperation

    The apartment in Queens was a tomb of dead ambitions.Vanessa Leigh sat on the floor, surrounded by the debris of her life.Cardboard boxes filled with expensive clothes she could no longer wear. Stacks of legal notices she couldn't pay. A half-empty bottle of cheap vodka that tasted like gasoline.

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-29
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 169: Liam's Longing

    The morning light in the AVA studio was unforgiving, but it couldn't find a flaw in Aurora Vale.She was standing on a ladder, adjusting the lighting rig for the final walkthrough of the "Alliance" show. She wore her work uniform—leggings, oversized sweater, hair in a messy bun—but to Liam, watchin

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-29
  • Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride   Chapter 164: The Proposal

    The contract with LVMH was a thick, glossy document that smelled of legal toner and global domination. It sat on the table of the conference room at the Cross Empire tower. Liam and Aurora sat on one side. The LVMH executives—a team of impeccably dressed French men and women—sat on the other. "

    last updateปรับปรุงล่าสุด : 2026-03-29
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