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Chapter seventy-five

Penulis: Lily Grayson
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-07-23 08:44:17

Sophie’s POV

The penthouse, after the vibrant chaos of Lilian’s brownstone, felt like a vacuum chamber. The lingering scents of beef bourguignon, turpentine, and the warm, milky sweetness unique to baby “Mateo” had dissipated, replaced by the sterile, chilled air smelling faintly of lemon polish and Damien’s sandalwood cologne.

The silence wasn’t peaceful; it was a physical weight, pressing down, amplifying the echoes of Lilian’s joyful announcement, Mateo’s soft, snuffling breaths against my neck, and the seismic shift in Damien’s eyes as he watched me cradle his nephew.

He’d been… different. Since returning. Not distant, exactly, but profoundly still. He’d moved through the penthouse with a new kind of quiet intensity, his gaze often distant, lost in thought. He’d poured us both a nightcap, a smoky single malt but hadn’t touched his.

He’d stood by the window, staring at the glittering cityscape, the glass reflecting not the powerful CEO, but a man grappling with something immens
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  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-six

    Sophie’s POV The fragile peace forged on the nursery floor didn’t erase the countdown. “5 months, 24 days.” The numbers pulsed like a phantom heartbeat beneath the surface of our tentative new understanding. Alistair’s folio remained on the obsidian desk, its cream cover a malevolent eye watching from the periphery. Yet, the air in the penthouse had shifted. The oppressive dread had lifted, replaced by a simmering current of shared purpose, laced with the terrifying, exhilarating tremors of the decision made in moonlight.Damien moved differently. The crushing weight hadn’t vanished, but it had transformed. It was no longer the burden of inevitable failure or the icy grip of his father’s ghost; it was the focused intensity of a man marshaling forces for a chosen battle. He spent hours locked in his study, but the murmur was the steady rhythm of research, the crisp tap of keys outlining strategies for a future beyond Aurth Blackwood’s clause. He consulted discreet financial advisors

  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-five

    Sophie’s POV The penthouse, after the vibrant chaos of Lilian’s brownstone, felt like a vacuum chamber. The lingering scents of beef bourguignon, turpentine, and the warm, milky sweetness unique to baby “Mateo” had dissipated, replaced by the sterile, chilled air smelling faintly of lemon polish and Damien’s sandalwood cologne. The silence wasn’t peaceful; it was a physical weight, pressing down, amplifying the echoes of Lilian’s joyful announcement, Mateo’s soft, snuffling breaths against my neck, and the seismic shift in Damien’s eyes as he watched me cradle his nephew.He’d been… different. Since returning. Not distant, exactly, but profoundly still. He’d moved through the penthouse with a new kind of quiet intensity, his gaze often distant, lost in thought. He’d poured us both a nightcap, a smoky single malt but hadn’t touched his. He’d stood by the window, staring at the glittering cityscape, the glass reflecting not the powerful CEO, but a man grappling with something immens

  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-four

    Sophie's POVThe fragile peace woven after Damien’s raw confession about his father felt like spun sugar, luminous, precious, but terrifyingly susceptible to the slightest tremor. The Alistair folio remained on the obsidian desk, its silent countdown – “5 months, 26 days”– a constant, low thrum beneath the surface of our cautious reconciliation. We moved with deliberate care, conversations softer, touches infused with a newfound awareness of the deep wounds we’d bared. Evelyn’s recovery remained our shared anchor, her slow but steady progress a fragile bloom in the lingering winter of our anxieties.It was against this tender backdrop that Lilian called, her voice carrying a vibrant energy I hadn't heard in years, not since before the illness that had shadowed her childhood and adolescence. "Soph! Family dinner! Tomorrow! My place! And bring Damien! It’s… important!"Lilian’s world was a universe away from Damien Blackstone’s sleek penthouse. Her "place" wasn't a Brooklyn brownstone,

  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-three

    Sophie's POV The silence after the detonation wasn’t peaceful. It was the ringing, deafening aftermath of an explosion, thick with suspended debris and the acrid scent of scorched earth. The word "incubator" hung between us like shrapnel embedded in the very air, vibrating with the ugly echo of my own fear and the devastating wound it had clearly inflicted. Rain lashed the penthouse windows with renewed fury, blurring the city lights into streaks of liquid despair, mirroring the tears blurring my vision.Damien stood frozen, barely two feet away, his face a mask of ashen horror. The panic that had contorted his features moments before was gone, replaced by a dazed, hollowed-out shock, as if I’d physically struck him with that brutal word. His eyes, wide and wounded, fixed on mine, held a depth of hurt so profound it stole my breath. His lips parted slightly, trembling, but no sound emerged. The raw confession of his terror and desire "I wanted it so much... but I want it right... I w

  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-two

    Sophie's POVThe silence in the penthouse had evolved. It was no longer the suffocating tomb of mutual retreat, nor the brittle tension of Alistair’s visit. It had become a watchful, fragile thing,the quiet of two people navigating a minefield in the dark, painfully aware of every buried charge. Alistair’s folio sat on the obsidian desk like a malevolent toad, its cream cover seeming to absorb the weak afternoon light filtering through rain-streaked windows. “5 months, 28 days”.The digital countdown on Damien’s private calendar app felt like a physical pressure behind my eyes.He’d been distant since the lawyer’s visit, buried deeper in work, his presence a vortex of contained stress that pulled at the atmosphere. He spent hours sequestered in his study, the low murmur of tense calls bleeding through the heavy door. When he emerged, his eyes held a haunted, hunted look, fixed on some internal horizon only he could see the ticking clock, the empty nursery down the hall, the specter o

  • The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress    Chapter seventy-one

    Sophie's POV The silence in Damien’s home office wasn’t peaceful; it was the dense, suffocating quiet of a tomb holding something still alive, but barely breathing. Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, blurring the vibrant autumn colors into a watercolor smear of despair. It mirrored the state of my own heart ,once vivid with hope, now muted and running.Damien sat behind the vast, obsidian expanse of his desk, but he wasn’t working. He was staring, unseeing, at a single sheet of heavy, cream vellum paper embossed with the severe, gothic script of Blackwood Holdings' legal department. Moonlight, weak and filtered through the storm clouds, caught the sharp edge of a paperweight, a solid crystal block containing a fossilized fern, a relic from a time when life was simpler, buried under millennia of pressure. It felt apt.The document was a stark reminder, a ticking bomb disguised as legalese: “The Blackstone Heir Clause.” Two years. That was th

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