บททั้งหมดของ Hired My Ex's Sister as Wife: บทที่ 241 - บทที่ 250

SavannahI laid on my back, staring at the ceiling in the dark. The house was quiet, but my head was anything but. Gloria’s voice replayed over and over, like a cruel echo I couldn’t silence. “Someone you love dies.”I wanted to believe she was bluffing, that this was just another one of those scare tactics people used. But then I saw Luke’s face in my mind again, bound, guarded, helpless. That wasn’t a bluff. That was real. And no matter how much I wanted to tell myself that this wasn’t my fault, deep down I couldn’t shake the guilt. Luke had told me it was his choice, that he knew the risks. But still… it felt like I had put him there.The thought of accepting Gloria’s deal made my stomach twist. Oversee Tyrant’s zone? Become part of the same machine I’d sworn to expose? The very idea felt like betraying not just myself but everything I stood for. Yet every time I thought about refusing, the image of Luke being dragged away or worse snapped me back. No matter how ugly the choice was

SavannahThe night that followed was quite a chaotic one. I had barely slept that night. Gloria’s words kept chopping through my thoughts, reminding me that Luke’s life was in danger, and also of the promise that I had one shot. Morning came and went in a blur of coffee and restless pacing. I felt like my head had been hollowed out and refilled with one thing: find the rat.And so I started where it made sense to start: with people who owed me favors and hated Tyrant enough to talk. I felt like somehow this was all connected to him. He was in jail, yes, but he still had people who listened to his command in this city. People who worked for him.The mole had given me names, and one of them was a kid who sold for Tyrant on the docks. I found him in a run-down apartment above a closed laundromat. When I approached him, he didn’t look guilty or afraid like most people who find out they’re a suspect of a crime usually do. He answered my questions in bits and starts, the whole time, refusin

SavannahAfter the conversation with Noah, I didn’t waste another hour. There was a lot that needed to be done, and so that morning, I met Jack at a diner that smelled like burnt coffee and old grease, the kind of place where people said things they didn’t mean to and nobody cared. He gave me a look that said he’d already lost more sleep than was healthy, but he didn’t ask for details. He didn’t need to.“We start at the docks,” he said, sliding a paper cup of coffee across the table. “Burner phones. Who sold what to whom. If Tyrant set this up, someone on the inside moved information. We find that trail, we find who called the cops.”It sounded simple when he said it. It never was. But it was a place to begin, and that’s often the most important thing.We hit the docks that afternoon. The air smelled of fish and oil and diesel, and the whole place moved on its own rhythm. There were men moving, forklifts groaning, tarps shifting in the wind. We talked to bartenders who worked the lat

SavannahThe night after Gloria’s arrest, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face again, the calm, almost smug look she wore as the cops dragged her out of the café. It wasn’t the face of a woman who thought she had lost. It was the face of someone who was already planning something after the arrest. And I could tell that revolved around me.And she wouldn’t even be wrong to come after me. I had set her up and made her take the fall. It was better them than me. But if Gloria managed to slip free, which I had no doubt she would eventually, she’d come at me with everything she had.That left me with one clear thought: if I wanted out of this, really wanted to get out, I couldn’t keep reacting to their plays. I had to make one of my own. And that gave me an idea.By dawn, the plan started taking shape. Gloria had told me about The Others, the shadowy council that kept the balance of the city’s underworld drug business. She had told me about how Tyrant and

ZionI drove through the city without paying much attention to the streets I was taking. The lights were blurring past me like flashes of a memory, and the only thing I could really focus on was Ellen’s voice echoing in my head. I kept replaying the last conversation I had with her, almost word for word, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how wrong it all sounded. She had been careful, like she always was, but not careful enough this time. I could tell. I had seen the way her eyes shifted, the way her smile froze just for a second too long when I pressed her with questions she didn’t want to answer.It was strange because for years, Ellen had been someone I could count on. She was someone I never thought would do anything to hurt me or someone I loved. She had always been there, steady and calm, and was always the one person I thought I didn’t need to question. That was probably why I ignored Aria when she first told me Ellen was the one behind all of this. I did not