All Chapters of RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK: Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

The Plaza Hotel ballroom glittered like a gilded cage.I stood at the top of the grand staircase in a custom Vera Wang mermaid gown—onyx silk so tight it felt like a second skin, the slit up my thigh revealing the dagger strapped to my leg. My father’s diamond choker weighed heavy around my throat, its hidden microphone transmitting every word to his security team."Smile, little star." Daniel’s hand pressed against my lower back, steering me toward the champagne tower. "The cameras love a reluctant heiress."Flashbulbs exploded. Across the room, Omega held court in a blood-red Valentino, her golden eyes tracking my every move. She’d spent the past week adjusting to my new role—leaving dead roses on my pillow, switching my birth control pills for sugar tablets, whispering in Jeff’s ear when she thought I wasn’t looking.Speaking of traitors.Jeff stood rigid by the ballroom’s service entrance, his tuxedo masking the bandages beneath. Daniel had allowed him to stay as my head of securi

I stood in the garden of white roses.My mother—the real Demetria Perez—waited beneath the largest tree. She looked like me. Like Omega. Like every ghost that had haunted my dreams."He’s hurting your friend," she whispered. "We can stop him."Beyond the garden, the real world flickered—Jeff fighting Omega, Eva seizing, Duchannes watching it all with clinical detachment.My mother reached for me. "Merge with me. Become me. Together, we’ll—""No."I stepped back."Then you’ll die," she said simply. "And so will your friends."I thought of Jeff’s hands steadying me through panic attacks. Of Eva’s laughter in the safehouse kitchen. Of Lina’s relentless, stupid hope.I reached into my pocket."There’s a third option."The neural drive glowed in my palm.Lucian’s final message played:"It’s a killswitch. For all of us."******Five Years LaterThe letter arrived on a Tuesday.Jeff Ortega knew better than to trust unmarked envelopes—especially ones that smelled faintly of bergamot and gunpo

Jeff traced the thorn-carved names on his floor with a combat knife, the blade scraping against the grooves. Each name pulsed faintly with black-gold residue—like the roses had injected something into the wood."They're not just names," Eva murmured, crouching beside him. "They're coordinates."She pressed her palm to the largest cluster. The gold in her irises flared as neural patterns surfaced—Lina's last thoughts before she vanished:—A hand reaching through the glass——The scent of white roses——A whisper: "She's waiting."Jeff's knife stilled over the name at the map's heart:DEMI x 2The letters weren't etched.They were rooted.Tiny black tendrils writhed beneath them, alive.The coordinates led to a derelict psychiatric hospital outside Prague—one with a notorious history of Cold War-era neural experiments. The overgrown courtyard was littered with glass shards that reflected the moonlight wrong, showing a different sky. A different time.Eva knelt, brushing her fingers over a

The garden isn’t a garden anymore.It’s a wound.A jagged, bleeding tear in reality where the roses scream and the sky peels back like burned skin. I stand in the center of it, my hands slick with something that isn’t blood—black-gold code, writhing, alive—and the original stares at me like I’ve just set the world on fire.Maybe I have.Behind her, Jeff is shouting, but the sound is muffled, distant. The only thing I hear clearly is the hum in my veins, the whisper of the system unraveling around us."You shouldn’t be able to do that," the original says.I flex my fingers. The code follows, twisting like smoke. "

The first thing I feel is the scream.It’s still echoing in the metal chamber, a raw, dying sound. My throat is torn from it. The black-gold vines have receded, slithering back into the walls like snakes, leaving behind a pattern of burns on my skin that pulse in time with the garden’s heartbeat.Silence, thick and heavy, crashes down.Jeff is the first to move. He stumbles toward me, his face a mask of horror and confusion. “Demi? Demi, talk to me. What did she do to you?”His hands reach for my shoulders, but I flinch back. His touch feels like a brand. Everything does. The air, the light, the memory of the knife—it’s all too much.“She didn’t do anything,” I whisper, and my voice is wrong. It’s mine, but there’s a gravelly undertone to it, a memory of static. “She just… turned on the lights.”From the shadows near a sparking console, Eva pushes herself up, one hand clutching her head. Her golden eyes are dim, flickering. “Define ‘lights.’ Because from here, it looked like she downl