Semua Bab The CEO’s Vengeful Bride: Bab 221 - Bab 230

The chamber was silent – thick with tension, the scent of blood and power still lingering in the air. I stood at the head of the long obsidian table, a throne behind me that I refused to sit on. Not yet. Not until they chose. Around me sat the last surviving commanders, financiers, and figureheads of Luca Moretti’s shattered regime. Men and women who had helped him build his empire of corruption, violence, and secrets. Now, their king was gone. And I was the one holding the sword above their necks.“You know why you’re here,” I said, my voice even, echoing through the marble-clad war room.They said nothing. Good. Fear still worked.“You served a tyrant who tried to burn this empire to ash. But this…..” I swept my hand across the room, across the table with the Montrose sigil embedded in its center, “—this is no longer his world. It’s mine.”One of them, a man with thick white brows and the scars of a hundred betrayals carved into his face, shifted in his seat.“You want our loyalty,”

*POV: Elena*---The chamber was silent except for the slow tick of the grandfather clock behind me.Across the long table, the faces of former traitors and reluctant allies stared back — uncertain, hungry, fearful. They thought the storm had passed. That Luca’s death meant safety. That I’d take my throne and forget.They were wrong.I stood, my fingers brushing the carved edge of the obsidian conference table. “This meeting is not a courtesy”, I said coldly. “It’s a reckoning.”A few dared to shift uncomfortably. Most stayed still, caught between survival and suspicion.“The house of Montrose was nearly burned to the ground,” I continued. “And now the final ember who lit the fire has returned, cloaked in family blood.”I turned my gaze to the man sitting at the far end — the one who had once bounced me on his knee when I was small. The one who vanished just before my father’s mysterious illness. The one who returned yesterday cloaked and smug, demanding his place at my side.My uncle,

*POV: Elena*The fire crackled low in the hearth, casting long shadows across the throne room walls. Ash hung in the air—not from battle, but from the ceremonial burning of old Montrose seals, crests, and doctrines. Symbols of the past. Ghosts, all of them.One by one, the relics of Luca’s fallen empire had been reduced to smoke.**It was done.**Aldric Montrose—my uncle, the last pretender was imprisoned in the northern dungeons under a no-visitation order. His supporters were exiled, hunted, or bent the knee. And Damien had personally overseen the final takedown of Luca’s military networks in the east.The war was over.I had won.But then… why didn’t it feel like victory?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The coronation chamber was nearly empty.There were no cheers. No thunderous applause. Just a private signing ceremony overseen by Montrose loyalists and House Blackbourne representatives. Even that had been trimmed — some

POV: Elena---The storm had rolled in fast—black clouds snarling over the city like a warning from the gods themselves. Rain pelted the palace windows with sharp insistence as if demanding to be let in.But inside, the air was colder than the storm outside.I stood in my mother’s old chamber, where time felt like it had stopped the day she died. The message Damien sent sat on the desk, the parchment slightly damp from my grip. Midnight. No guards. No lies. Just us.A cruel echo of what we used to be.Part of me wanted to burn it. Pretend it never came. Pretend he never came back. But I couldn’t ignore it. Not when he held the only scroll that could dismantle everything I’d built.And not when he was the only man who’d ever truly known me — and still walked away.I slid my palm across the velvet collar of my cloak, steeling myself. My reflection in the rain-streaked mirror caught my eye. Not the girl from before. Not even the queen they crowned. Something else entirely.I should’ve bro

*POV: Elena*---I used to think ruin came like a storm – loud, sudden, with warning winds.But the true kind — the kind bred in shadows and passed through generations was quiet. Surgical.And it was already inside my walls.The sigil beneath Marcus’s desk glowed faintly in the candlelight. A serpent’s eye, etched in old ironwood, the grooves filled with ash and something darker. Ancient. Familiar. Because I had seen it once before—On the locket buried with my mother.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“How long have they been watching us?” I whispered.The air had no answers.Just silence that stretched like a noose.It wasn’t just Marcus. It was deeper. It always had been. Viper wasn’t a rebellion or a rival faction.They were **legacy**.Rooted in blood oaths and old betrayal.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I locked down the palace that morni