로그인The week after Dr. Aris confirmed the possibility of twins changed something in Salma. Every time she remembered what Dr. Aris had said, she found herself staring at her stomach as though it might somehow explain how two tiny lives had managed to turn her entire body against her.The nausea alone was enough to make her question every decision that had led her there. She sat on the edge of the bed, breathing through another wave of nausea.“This is bullshit.”A minute later, she reached for the glass of water waiting beside her. She took a sip. Then another. She was learning to do everything carefully now.Dr. Aris had made it very clear that dehydration, exhaustion and poor nutrition were not things she could afford anymore. Not with one baby. And certainly not with the possibility of two.So she ate.Not always willingly. But she tried.Nurse Emma had started leaving small meals and snacks within reach throughout the day, choosing foods she was most likely to tolerate. Crackers, frui
A week passed. Salma had stopped going to the underground office after the gunshot incident. She had stayed glued to Aria's side with her laptop working on whatever her assistants, Joyce from Wellington Tower and Marcus from Wolfe Mafia, sent her. At first, she missed one evening meeting. By the fourth night, Marcus had stopped asking when she would return. The North Atlantic corridor was still being traced. The companies connected to Arthur's old network were being investigated one by one. The shipment was still under surveillance, and every piece of information recovered from the man Salma had killed was being cross-checked against the records they already had. And whenever something required Salma's attention, they brought it upstairs. Medical monitors hummed beside the bed while business reports lay open across the small table near Salma's chair. Specialists came in and out quietly. Nurses checked Aria's vitals. Joyce called about meetings, contracts and executives who app
Sammy was able to arrange with the doctors to bring Aria to the estate two days later. By eleven that morning, Salma had made enough phone calls to know that another call wouldn't make Aria arrive any faster. She made it anyway. “Where are they now?” She stood beside the long windows overlooking the eastern lawn, one hand wrapped around her phone while the other rested against the edge of the console table. She listened to the update, asked another question, then ended the call. The Wellington estate had been awake since before sunrise. The private fertility wing had been cleared within hours after Sammy's call that night. Two adjoining rooms were opened into one larger area so the cardiac team would have enough space to work if Aria's condition became unstable after arrival. Portable monitors had been positioned beside the hospital beds, and sealed cases containing oxygen equipment, medication and emergency cardiac supplies, a team of four cardiac doctors and five nurses
Salma remained at her desk for another few minutes after placing her phone facedown. The disappointment was quieter now, but it was still there. She had stopped expecting Aria to call. That didn't mean some part of her didn't still hope she would. Eventually, she pushed the thought aside and gathered the files she needed for the evening. There were matters waiting for her downstairs. She locked her office in a way that would still allow Joyce to unlock it from the outside if documents required her attention. Salma stepped towards the wall behind her desk, entered the security code into the keypad and the door opened, she stepped inside and closed the panel behind her. The lights came alive along the narrow passage as she moved toward the transport waiting farther ahead. The system carried her from the Tower deep beneath the Wellington estate, where the Wofie Mafia operated out of sight of the world above. When it finally stopped, Salma stepped out and found Marcus waiting. “Yo
Two weeks after Aria left, Salma had stopped expecting her phone to light up. Not completely, because there were still moments when her hand reached for it before she could stop herself, usually after a long meeting, but the habit had begun to lose its hold. She no longer spent hours staring at the screen, convincing herself that the silence was temporary or that the next notification might somehow change everything. She had work. Wellington Tower had continued without her. The company had not collapsed because its CEO needed time away, and Salma had never expected it to. Still, returning to it reminded her just how much of herself she had allowed to disappear into everything that had happened. By eight-thirty that morning, she was seated in the executive conference room with the chief financial officer, the heads of property, legal and communications, two senior advisers and several other department heads. Joyce sat farther down the table with her tablet open, quietly keeping t
For the first few days after Aria left, Salma moved through the Wellington estate as though she were only half present. She woke, showered, changed, attended to whatever small matter Devon or the others placed in front of her, and then found herself staring at her phone again, waiting for a notification she knew might never come. She still caught herself thinking that maybe the silence was temporary. That hope was becoming harder to maintain and her pregnancy wasn't helping. The nausea that had begun as an unpleasant inconvenience had become increasingly unpredictable. Some mornings, Salma could manage tea and a little toast without much trouble. On others, the smell of food was enough to turn her stomach before she'd even left her bedroom. That morning was one of the bad ones. She had barely finished brushing her teeth when her stomach twisted violently. She dropped the toothbrush into the sink and hurried to the bathroom, where she wrenched the contents of her stomach into the







