Semua Bab WANTING MY BILLIONAIRE EX-WIFE: Bab 51 - Bab 60

The light wasn’t supposed to be on.Ximena blinked against the dim gold beam slipping under her bedroom door. The rest of the suite was dark, silent. She hadn’t touched a switch since stepping inside last night, hadn’t had the energy to even drink water. Yet now, at what had to be sometime before 5 a.m., light glowed where it shouldn’t.She slid out of bed without a sound. No robe. No hesitation. Just the sound of her bare feet against the floor as she reached into her vanity drawer and pulled out a slim utility blade, hidden beneath a folded silk scarf.The only person she ever meant to cut with it was herself—years ago, metaphorically, to open herself back up after the disaster of her marriage. Tonight, she might mean it literally.She approached the bedroom door slowly and opened it two inches.The lights were on above the minibar. Low but deliberate. A soft, deliberate spotlight—like a museum display.And then she saw the suite’s front door.Open.Not wide, not enough to trigger a

The ping came just after dawn.Ximena was still half-asleep when her secondary phone vibrated against the glass table beside her bed. She hadn’t intended to sleep at all—not after everything. The summit buzz, the stolen dress, the message in the hem… it had all knotted behind her eyes.She blinked against the early light and picked up the device.A secure message from Marco.**Marco:***Mic activated. 14 minutes. From inside your suite. Two nights ago.*She stared at the words. Her breath turned sharp.Mic?Her heart dropped.She threw back the covers, grabbed her robe, and strode across the suite to the wardrobe. Her black trench coat hung neatly where she’d left it, as if nothing had happened.But she knew better now.Fingers trembling, she reached into the inside seam, parting the fabric near the lapel.Gone.The mic—custom-built, encrypted, voice-activated—had been sewn discreetly into that pocket. She hadn’t touched it in days. She hadn’t needed to. It was there for emergencies.

Ximena sat in silence, needle in hand, the hem of her deep violet gown spread across her lap like a battlefield.This wasn’t fashion. This was war.The room around her was quiet, the Paris skyline stretching wide and gold through the balcony glass. No stylists. No press. Just her, the dress, and the final thread.She didn’t choose the gown for its elegance. She chose it for its history. Years ago, before the war between names and boardrooms, she had stitched this design on a scrap of sketch paper Miguel never saw. A quiet piece. He once complimented it unknowingly at a preview gala, not realising it was hers.Now, she chose it for another reason—it wasn’t loud. It was lethal.A whisper with an edge.Her fingers slid the needle through the hem, anchoring a near-invisible red thread—a single strand laced with Marco’s microtag. A sensor. A trigger. If someone tried to clone or scan the dress, she’d know. If they tried to replicate it digitally for another sabotage, she’d be alerted insta

The morning air inside Antonio Fashion’s Paris annexe was cold and sterile, the silence broken only by the hum of servers and the muted echo of footsteps on polished stone. Tucked away from the public, the annexe had been converted into a temporary command post—Ximena’s war room.She stood in the centre of the glass-walled strategy suite, arms crossed, watching Marco calibrate the projection screen. He barely spoke. He didn’t need to. They both knew what was coming.When the footage began, she expected something crude—a poorly generated AI voice or a barely animated face.What she saw instead made her jaw clench.A woman—her height, her frame, her posture—stood on the screen. Digitally constructed but disturbingly fluid. The voice was hers, the intonation eerily close. She even tilted her head the same way Ximena did when challenged. Blinked slower when thoughtful.The clone spoke.“Fashion doesn’t begin with fabric. It begins with silence,” the voice said. “You stitch survival into s

The knock came just as Ximena lifted her first cup of coffee.Three sharp taps, then silence.She opened the door to find no one—but a slim envelope lay on the floor, weighted by a small USB drive. No markings. No return slip. Just her name written in all caps across the front.She didn’t pick it up immediately. Her fingers hovered, hesitant.Then she scooped it up and walked to her desk.A message from Marco pinged her phone just as she slid the USB into her offline tablet.**Marco:***“I didn’t send that. But I’m about to.”*Another message followed instantly.**Marco:***“Do not react. Just watch.”*She tapped the tablet’s screen. The video opened automatically.And her heart stopped.It was her.Not the AI. Not a mimic.**Her**, sitting in her suite two weeks ago—alone, hunched over her sketchpad, wearing her navy wrap robe. The camera was static, angled from above. It must’ve been placed near the chandelier or the smoke alarm.No sound. Just faint city light filtering in behind h