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Chapter 19: Not Too Late
publish date:
2026-05-22 11:56:54
Latest chapter
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 20: What She Left Behind
Lyra POV Martin arrived at ten in the morning.I heard the car before I saw him, the sound of tires on the drive pulling me away from the window where I had been standing with a cup of coffee gone cold in my hand. I had been awake since six. I wasn't sure I had actually slept before that, not properly, not the kind of sleep that restores anything. I had lain in the dark of the room Alexander had shown me to and stared at the ceiling and thought about my mother's fingers moving in her sleep. The way she had said my name without waking.I set the cup down and went to meet him.Martin looked like he hadn't slept either. He was wearing a grey shirt and dark jeans and that particular expression he gets when he's holding something carefully, the way you hold something you're afraid of dropping. Under his arm was the box.It was smaller than I had imagined. That was the first thing. I had built it up in my mind into something large and definitive, something that looked like the weight it ca
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 19: Not Too Late
Lyra's POV We landed just before four in the morning.I went to the facility before I went anywhere else. The night staff met us at the entrance, and a security team I recognized from the mansion flanked the corridors. The building was quiet and clean and smelled like recycled air and something faintly medicinal. I hated it a little. But it was safe, and "safe" was everything right now to me.My mother's room was at the end of a corridor on the second floor.I pushed the door open slowly. She looked smaller than I remembered. That was always the thing that hit me hardest, the shrinking. The woman who had once seemed like the largest and most permanent thing in my world, lying under hospital sheets looking like something that needed protecting. Her breathing was steady. The monitors beside her beeped in their slow, reliable rhythm. Her hands rested on the blanket, thin-fingered and familiar. I pulled a chair close and sat beside her. I didn't wake her; I only sat close to her.I looke
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 18: Her Hidden Past
Lyra's POVThe jet home felt nothing like the one we had taken to Monaco. That one had felt like the beginning of something. It was tense and uncertain but forward-moving, the way the first page of a story feels before you know how it ends. This one felt like the middle of something going wrong. The cabin was darker. The silence had edges. Even Alexander sat across from me with his phone pressed to his ear for the first forty minutes of the flight, speaking in low, controlled sentences to people I couldn't see about things I could only half understand.I sat with my hands folded in my lap and stared at nothing. The photograph kept coming back. The white walls, the monitoring equipment. The specific angle of the shot told me whoever took it had been standing inside that room. Not outside nor in the hallway. But inside. Which was close enough to touch her.Close enough to do anything they wanted.My mother had no idea. She was lying in that bed, fragile and healing and completely unawar
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 17: The Spot
Alexander’s POVI found her at twenty past eleven.She was standing near the far end of the corridor where the windows looked out over the water, her back straight, her arms loosely folded. She had one hand pressed flat against the glass, the same way she pressed her palm against the jet window this morning. Like she was taking the temperature of something. Like she was deciding whether it was safe.I had watched Celeste walk away from that corridor fourteen minutes ago.I had given Lyra the time she needed. Now I crossed the corridor and came to stand beside her. She didn't look surprised. She didn't look rattled either, which I had half expected. Instead, she looked the way she looked when she was processing something, quiet and inward and working through it with that relentless private determination that I had come to recognize as distinctly hers."What did she say?" I asked."A version of the truth," Lyra said. "Wrapped in a warning.""Which part do you want to know is real?" I as
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 16: The Other Woman
Lyra's POVShe moved like the room belonged to her.Not the way Alexander did, where the space simply adjusted around him without asking. Celeste Varro moved like she had personally decorated every corner of this ballroom and was now doing everyone the favor of walking through it. Her gown caught the candlelight as she approached, ivory and structured, and the people she passed turned to look the way people always turned to look at something beautiful and slightly dangerous. I stood my ground. It was the only thing I could do. And I had never been very good at running."Alexander." Her voice was low and warm and precisely calibrated. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to each of his cheeks in that European way that managed to feel both formal and intimate at the same time. "I didn't know you were coming until this morning. You're getting harder to track.""That's intentional," Alexander said.She laughed softly. Then she turned to me.Up close, she was even more striking. Her eyes were
The Billionaire's Hidden Price Chapter 15: Monaco
Lyra's POVThe jet smelled like leather and money. It was obvious. I had never been on a private jet before. I didn't know what I expected, something flashy maybe, gold fixtures, and a flight attendant who looked like a model. But it was quieter than that. Much calmer than I expected. The kind of luxury that didn't need to announce itself. Cream seats, soft lighting. A silence so complete you could hear yourself think, which was the last thing I wanted right now. I pressed my forehead against the cold oval window and watched the runway disappear beneath us.Somewhere below, in a private medical facility I had never visited, my mother was sleeping in a bed she hadn't chosen, in a building paid for by a man she had never met. And Martin was sitting in his small apartment with a locked box under his bed that neither of us fully understood yet. And I was here. On a jet bound for Monaco.Wearing another outfit I didn't pick, carrying a bag I didn't buy, sitting across from a man I had marr
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