Semua Bab The Billionaire's Reluctant Bride : Bab 211 - Bab 220

Some storms don’t knock firstthey tear the door off the hinges and drag everything into the open.By the time we reached Ava’s office, the air was thick with tension. Phones were ringing off the hook, screens flashing with headlines that didn’t exist twenty minutes ago. I’d seen chaos before, but this was different. This was war.Ava didn’t bother with a greeting. She shoved her phone toward me, jaw tight, eyes blazing. “Read it.”Alexander reached for it first, but I placed my hand gently on his wrist and shook my head. “I’ve got it.”The headline wasn’t just sensational was personal. An anonymous exposé painting Alexander as the true manipulator behind the company’s rise, alleging coercion, insider trading, andmost viciously, me as a puppet for his agenda.I read the entire thing in silence. When I was done, I handed the phone back, my chest hollow.“Who the hell wrote this?” Alexander asked, voice ice-cold.“It's not signed, but it’s getting traction,” Ava said. “And someone’s feed

Some ghosts don’t need to speak. Their name is enough to burn the whole room down.I stared at the folder Ava handed Leila, watching her expression shift from confusion to disbeliefthen something harder. Betrayal.“Nora?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.Ava nodded. “The timing matches. IP trails back to a shared workspace she’s been using under a shell LLC. She sold fragments of your old correspondences to a digital tabloid two weeks ago. They were baiting for bigger dirt.”Leila didn’t say anything. She just stood there, perfectly still, holding the pages like they might explode in her hands.I wanted to say something. Anything. But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t know what words could reach her.After Ava left, silence stretched between us like a tightrope.“She was my friend,” Leila finally said, almost to herself. “My first real one. Before all of this.”“She doesn’t get to define you,” I told her.She looked up at me. “It’s not about what she did, Alexander.

Sometimes the scariest conversations aren’t about betrayal or loss.They’re about what comes after the storm finally passes.The morning after we released our statements, after we watched the world dissect our vulnerability like vultures picking at a carcass, I woke up to silence.Not the heavy, suffocating kind that pressed in on your ribs.The strange kind. The kind that feels too calm after a war.Alexander was already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to me, elbows resting on his knees. His head bowed like he was praying or carrying some invisible weight.I watched him for a moment.Because even especially nowI still marveled at him. At the man he’d become.At the man he let himself become.“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked softly.He didn’t turn. “Didn’t want to wake you.”I pushed the sheets aside and crawled toward him, wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, pressing my cheek to his spine.“You didn’t wake me,” I whispered. “But you don’t have to carry this by you

Sometimes love isn’t about who protects who.Sometimes it’s about learning how to stand shoulder to shoulderespecially when the ground shakes.When I hung up with Ava, my hand shook, but I forced myself to keep my voice steady.“She filed the lawsuit.”Alexander didn’t respond right away. His jaw flexed as he processed the weight of the words, his entire body going still like it always did when something landed too hard to absorb immediately.“Nora’s not going to stop,” I said quietly. “Not until she feels like she’s won something.”His eyes finally met mine. “She won’t.”The certainty in his voice should’ve comforted me. And part of me clung to it. But another part that still remembered sleepless nights, empty betrayals, and how far we’d come felt the sharp sting of exhaustion.“She’s coming for my reputation now,” I whispered. “For my name.”“I know.”“And it’s not just about the past anymore. She’s trying to rewrite everything I’ve built.”Alexander stepped closer, his hand finding

Some steps don’t feel like walking forward.They feel like falling and trusting someone will catch them.The morning after Alexander proposed, the air between us buzzed with a quiet kind of electricity.There was no grand announcement. No flurry of calls or congratulations.Just us.Two people sitting across from each other at the kitchen island, sipping coffee like the world hadn’t just shifted beneath our feet.But it had.I studied him over the rim of my mug. He looked… calm. Maybe even lighter. As if asking me had peeled away a layer of weight he’d carried for years.“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this relaxed before,” I said softly.His eyes flicked up, a faint smile playing on his lips. “I think it’s because once I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”I raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying you’re not anticipating catastrophe? That’s growth.”He chuckled. “I’m not saying I’ve mastered inner peace. But maybe I’ve finally realized something.”“What’s that?”“That fear doesn’t