Semua Bab The CEO’s Temptation : Bab 81 - Bab 90

**************************Aliana's POV*********************My morning had started quietly. My mug of coffee was there on the coffee table, half-drunk. My laptop opened to a blank document. My fingers hovered above the keys, but no words came. It was like my brain had frozen somewhere between what I knew and what I feared.My restlessness had grown since Etian and Rowe's visit. The fragments of truth haunted me, I couldn't quite stitch them together. Sadie's name kept circling in my notes. I kept replaying our last conversation in my head. Her cryptic warnings. Her fierce, fueled eyes.Sadie might not be the best human being alive, but she hadn’t deserved what happened to her.And neither did I.I stood up and paced to the window barefoot. Spring sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtains, turning everything golden. Birds chirped. Cars passed below like everything was normal.That illusion was shattered when the knock came.Firm. Authoritative. Unmistakable.I froze. I wasn't expec

*****************************Etian's POV********************The sound of the coffee machine sputtering to life cut through the stillness of Rowe’s study. A soft hiss, a whir, and then silence again—just long enough to remind me how heavy the air had become. Morning had barely broken through the clouds, casting the city in a dull, indifferent gray. I sat hunched over Rowe’s desk, nursing the bruises that still throbbed under my shirt and scrolling endlessly through old files.The footage. The blurry image. Aliana’s half-hidden face. And now the new evidence… Too clean. Too convenient.I didn’t trust it. Not because I trusted her—but because this felt designed. Too perfectly placed. Rowe had said it first, and I had agreed. Now, I wasn’t sure.Rowe came in, balancing two mugs. He set one beside me and kept the other in his hand. “You slept?” he asked.I gave a weak snort. “That’s generous.”“Same,” he muttered, lowering himself into the chair across from me. He looked older today. Not

*****************************Claire's POV*******************Claire's Apartment, Later That NightI perched on the edge of the couch, my knees bouncing in a rhythm only anxiety could compose. The apartment was lit softly, all the harsh overheads off, leaving the place bathed in warm gold from the floor lamp and the muted city lights outside. Mrs. Amelia had cleaned earlier, not because it needed to be cleaned, but because everything felt dirty. Dirty like the news report on loop or replaying Aliana's face behind the car window.Mack sat beside me in the living room, his hand rested gently against mine. It wasn't much, but it anchored me. I glanced down at our fingers__ not quite laced, but close. Just close enough to keep my mind from wandering with thoughts.The door clicked open."They're here," I murmured as I sat up.Kelvin stepped in first, followed by Liz, her eyes shadowed and jaw tight. Daniel brought up the rear, closing the door behind them with a soft click. I hadn’t seen D

*************************Liam’s POV************************The city pulsed quietly beneath the veil of dawn, but my penthouse office was already alight, the amber glow from my desk lamp casting long shadows across walls lined with steel and silence. The news had broken fast—Aliana Moore, dragged from her home in her sleepwear, her face a mask of disbelief, splashed across every screen in the country. It had played exactly as i’d wanted. Almost too perfectly.I leaned against the edge of my desk, fingers drumming thoughtfully, a smirk just twitching at the corner of my mouth. The room smelled of leather, cold coffee, and ambition. This was what winning felt like—tainted by the bitter aftertaste of necessity, but sweet in its control.My phone buzzed on the polished marble surface behind me. Another update from the legal contact I'd bribed to quietly seed the evidence packet into the precinct’s system. Untraceable, scrubbed clean of metadata, and tied together in a perfectly sinister b

***************************Claire's POV******************** I was halfway through the work I had been doing on my laptop in the study when my phone buzzed. It wasn't the vibration that my stomach twisted__ it was the number flashing across the screen. Unknown.Blocked. And yet I knew.I knew before I even answered.My fingers hung in the air as I was about to continue, but I ignored the work and picked it up."Hello?" There was a beat of silence on the other end. Then—Her voice came in.“Claire.”Her voice was strained but unmistakable. Smoky, low, a little huskier than usual—like she’d been screaming hours before and had only just stopped. My heart stuttered in my chest.“Aliana?” I asked.Certainty hitting me.“I don’t have long. They only gave me a minute,” she whispered.I dropped into the nearest chair, gripping the edge of the table. “Where are you?” I muttered, pretending not to know where she was.“You saw the news,” she said quietly.I closed my eyes. “Yeah. I saw it.” My