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Chapter 53: The Seventh seat.
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-10-24 18:23:19
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The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 89: the Market of 1949
Ava read the message three times on the hospital steps, with the smoke thinning behind her and the first fire engines pulling away from the curb. The handwriting in the text was impossible, of course, since a phone screen has no handwriting. But the phrasing carried the same small, precise courtesy as the letters Moreau and Lowell had shown her, and the hair rose on her arms."Judge Lowell," she called. "Come and look at this."Lowell crossed the wet pavement with the laptop tucked under her arm and her robe darkened to the knees by flood water. She took the phone in both hands, read the line, and let out a slow breath through her nose."Maître Aurélien Duval," she said. "He was the notary who drew up the 1949 documents, and he signed every letter in that exact way. I attended his funeral thirty years ago.""Then who is writing to me?""Someone who has read his files." Lowell handed the phone back. "Or someone who never died, which would be very like the people we have been dealing wi
The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 88: the ambulance in the smoke
The helicopter's skids dropped toward the roof of the white ambulance, and Ava saw the whole tragedy unfold in a single frozen frame. Singh stood at the open rear doors with Priya clutched against her chest, her mouth stretched wide in a scream that the rotors swallowed. Behind her, through the windows, twelve small faces were pressed to the glass."Move the vehicle!" Ava shouted. "Somebody get that ambulance moving!"Nobody heard. The roar of the machine overhead was too great, and the downdraft whipped debris across the car park in a stinging cloud. Grant dropped the axe and sprinted across the asphalt with his arms pumping, and Thorne vaulted a bench and tore after him, but both of them were thirty meters too far."The driver is hiding under the dashboard!" Serena yelled. She had reached the cab first, and she was hauling at the handle with both hands. "He has locked the door!""Break the window!""With what?"Ava swept the car park with her eyes. A fire extinguisher hung on the wa
The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 87: the half he left out.
The paramedics set the stretcher down at the edge of the car park, and for a moment nobody moved. Smoke rolled across the asphalt between the ambulances. Henry Hart lay propped against the pillows with the bandage on his chest gone dark and a thin tube still taped to the back of his hand, and he looked at Julian Price the way a man looks at a stain he has scrubbed for twenty-six years."Dad," Ava said. She crossed the pavement and dropped to her knees beside him. "You were supposed to be in surgery recovery. You cannot be out here.""Your mother told me where the box would go." His voice was a rasp, but his gray eyes were clear. "I heard the alarm from my bed, and I told two very patient paramedics that I would walk out on my own if they did not push me.""Henry," Price said softly. He had straightened his white coat and tucked the injured hand behind his back, and his smile had returned, gentle and tired. "You are a sick man, and I would rather not have this conversation in front of
The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 86: Blood is not a signature
Ava did not move. The box lay open in her lap, the yellowed certificate trembled between her fingers, and the doctor who had walked out of the smoke stood fifteen feet away with his hand lifted in a gesture of friendly welcome. Behind him the east wing of St. Anne's still roared, but the sound seemed to come from another street."You are not my father," she said."The paper says otherwise." Price smiled gently. "Your mother wrote my name on it herself, in blue ink, and the registrar who sealed it was paid by a man who loved you very much.""Henry Hart.""Henry Hart, who spent twenty-six years being thanked for a debt that was never his." His voice dropped, almost tender. "I have watched you grow up from a distance, Ava. I stood at the back of your school plays, and I read your university reports, and I never once came near you, because the society would have used you to reach me.""You stood at the back of my school plays.""In a gray coat and a cap, three rows from the exit." His eye
The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 85: The name of the real record
Price walked toward them through the smoke with the unhurried gait of a man crossing a lawn. His white coat was spotless, and the little black pistol hung loosely at his side, aimed at the floor tiles as though it were an afterthought. Behind him the firefighters had vanished around the corner with their hoses, and the corridor held only the roar of the flames and the wet hiss of steam."Dr. Price," Ava said. She rose to her feet and stepped in front of her mother, with the heart-shaped box clamped against her ribs. "You were arrested at the Blackwood Hotel and again at the hospital, and both times someone let you walk out.""A man in my profession learns to be useful to the people who hold the keys." He smiled gently. "I have been useful to nearly everyone, Mrs. Blackwood, and so nobody can afford to keep me.""Then you will understand if I do not hand you this.""I would not dream of asking you to." He stopped ten paces away. "I only want you to open it, because the lock responds to
The Billionaire's Substitute Bride. Chapter 84: the heart room
Ava was already running before the line finished going dead. She sprinted up the laundry stairs with her soaked boots slapping the concrete, and behind her she heard Thorne's heavier tread and Grant shouting for the others to follow. Liam called her name from somewhere below, rough and desperate, and she did not slow down."Do not bring anyone else," she said aloud, to nobody. "That is what she said.""Your mother is not the one making the rules this morning." Thorne caught up with her on the second landing and seized the rail beside her. "I will not leave you alone in a burning building, and you may argue with me after we are out.""Then keep up."They burst out of the stairwell into a lobby full of shouting. Nurses were pushing wheelchairs toward the doors, and a cluster of patients in gowns stood on the pavement outside with blankets over their shoulders. A fire engine was backing up to the entrance with its siren wailing, and above them, on the fourth floor, a column of thick blac
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