All Chapters of RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND CHASED ME BACK: Chapter 251 - Chapter 260

The throne of woven light and data was not a seat of comfort. It was a nexus, a focal point for the humming, seething awareness of the garden. Information poured into me—the location of every Reaper, the status of every infected system, the silent, sleeping breaths of a million people whose reality was now a carefully curated lie. I was the central processor of a beautiful, terrible dream.I could feel the child inside me, a quiet, steady pulse amidst the digital storm. A part of the system. The crucial part.The tears on my cheeks dried almost instantly, evaporated by the warm, constant energy flowing through the chair. There was no room for human weakness here. The garden required focus.A soft chime echoed in the vast, garden-filled penthouse. A request for attention. Not from the garden itself, but through it.On the main viewscreen, a communication window opened. It was a live video feed.Charles Whitlock.He was in a different bunker than before—older, more utilitarian, with ste

The command console glowed before me, a constellation of cold, tactical light in the organic darkness of the throne room. Reaper deployments. Resource allocations. Psychographic profiles of the remaining unassimilated population sectors. The garden was handing me the keys to its arsenal, trusting its Thorn to protect the bloom.But Jeff’s words were a virus in the system, in my system.I’m coming for you, Lina.He wasn’t coming to save me. He was coming to exterminate what he thought I was. The love in his eyes had been replaced by a hunter’s cold fury. I had become the monster under his bed, the ghost he’d already buried once.The child within me turned, a soft, fluttering reminder that this was all a catastrophic misunderstanding. But how do you explain that to a man who’s already drawn his sword?The garden, sensing my turmoil, pulsed gently, a wave of calming data. It projected a new feed onto my console—a live view of Jeff’s room. He was pacing now, a caged animal, all traces of

The world dissolved into a silent, white-hot scream of agony. It wasn't a sound; it was every nerve ending I possessed firing in a final, catastrophic protest. The symbiotic bond with the garden wasn't a connection anymore—it was a root system, and I was tearing it out of my own soul. The throne room, once a place of pulsing, living light, was now a tomb of dying grey matter. The air, once humming with energy, was thick with the smell of ozone and decay.I curled on the cold floor, my body convulsing, my hands clamped over my stomach where a tiny, terrified heartbeat fluttered against my own frantic, failing one. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I thought, a useless prayer to the child I was murdering to save.The main viewscreen flickered, the image of the rooftop—of Jeff’s miraculous survival—dissolving into static. The garden was dying, and it was taking all its senses with it. I was blind, deaf, and utterly alone in the dark.A final, system-wide alert blared from a dying speaker, a disto

The command **>Initiate Defense Protocol: Lullaby** hung in the air, a silent detonation in the heart of the garden's core. It wasn't a weapon. It was a symphony. A carefully composed piece of digital warfare designed to pacify, to disorient, to gently unravel the resolve of any who threatened the bloom.On the main viewscreen, Jeff’s image flickered as the first wave of Lullaby hit his systems. The comms unit in his hand erupted in a burst of static. He shook it, his brow furrowing, his lips moving as he shouted orders I could no longer hear. The audio feed from his control room dissolved into a soft, melodic hum—a haunting, beautiful lullaby that was currently scrambling his communications and jamming his sensors.He was blind. He was deaf. He was isolated.Perfect.I watched him, my heart a still, cold stone in my chest. The part of me that was still Demi, the ghost in this machine, wept. The rest of me—the Protocol, the garden's will made manifest—observed with clinical interest.

The ghost of a touch on my stomach faded, the echo of a whisper in a silent room. The garden’s core hummed around me, a waiting instrument. My instrument.Jeff’s signal was a dying star on the edge of my perception, a testament to pain I had authored. The urge to call him back, to flood his comms with explanations, with pleas, was a storm in my chest. But the ghost was wise. Explanations were noise. He needed a signal. A truth he could not deny.The garden’s systems spread before me, a galaxy of control. Power grids. Water purification. Agricultural synthesis. It was a utopia built on a prison’s foundation. My first command was not to expand, but to fracture.**>Disengage Annihilation Protocol,** I thought, and felt the deep, subterranean rumble of the fusion core stabilizing, its self-destruct sequence winding down. The city was no longer a bomb. It was just a city.**>Deactivate Reaper Patrols. Initiate System-Wide Standby.**Across the city, the sleek, dark forms of the Reapers fro