Semua Bab Married to my ex-husband's boss: Bab 61 - Bab 70

RAYMOND I moved slowly through the room, my hand brushing over the bed sheets as if they would tell me where she went. But they only whispered her absence. She hadn’t left. She had been taken. I sank to the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress until my knuckles whitened. My chest tightened painfully, air dragging in shallow bursts. No. I couldn’t break down now. I had to keep looking. I forced myself up, checked the closet, the bathroom, the corners of the room. Nothing. It wasn’t until I went back downstairs that I saw it. A piece of paper. Folded neatly. Placed on the stand beneath where the flat screen had once been. Almost like it had been left for me. My stomach sank as I reached for it, my fingers trembling. Slowly, I unfolded the paper. The words made my blood run cold. “Raymond, I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired—tired of you, tired of us, tired of this life. Don’t come after me. I’ve taken what I deserve. Goodbye.” For a moment, I just stared. Th

ELLE The silence in the room was maddening. It wasn’t peaceful, not the kind of quiet that soothes. No, this silence pressed in on me like a weight, thick and suffocating, broken only by the faint hum of the overhead lamp and the sound of my own uneven breaths. Evans had been gone for hours. I didn’t know where. I didn’t know for how long. That uncertainty terrified me more than his presence. Because while he was gone, I had a chance. A chance to try. To do something, anything, before he came back and destroyed all my chances of leaving this hellhole. My wrists ached where the rope bit into them, but I shifted anyway, twisting enough so my foot reached the side of the old wooden drawer by the bed. My heart hammered as I braced my heel against it, teeth clenched, and shoved. Thud. The sound was small, dull, barely louder than a knock on the wall. I needed to make some sound, something loud enough to alert the neighbors that something wrong was going on here. I pressed harde

RAYMOND The boardroom was filled with voices—at least that was what I was hearing. Papers shuffled, slides clicked across the big screen, and one executive after another leaned forward talking. Words like profit margins, projections, and quarterly growth floated around me, bouncing against the walls like meaningless echoes. I sat at the head of the table, but I might as well have been a ghost. Their mouths were moving, but I wasn’t hearing a single damn thing. Because in my head, there was only silence. Elle’s silence. “…Mr. Orlando?” A voice cut through the fog. I blinked and looked up. Half a dozen faces were watching me expectantly, waiting for my approval or my judgment on whatever they were talking about. I had none. And that was when everything shattered. The pressure in my chest was unbearable, and my patience was shredded to nothing. The chair scraped violently against the floor as I shoved it back and stood. Gasps and whispers rippled across the room, but I didn’t

ELLE Tears streaked down my face and glittered in the sunlight as I screamed again, because now I could, because now someone was close enough to hear me unmistakably. “Please, please—help me! My baby—” The words dissolved into sobs and then into barking breaths as I forced myself to make noise that couldn’t be ignored. Hope had lit inside me like a fragile flame. I had heard them—voices, footsteps, the shuffle of movement close to the window. For the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn’t alone. Someone was out there. Someone had heard me. I held my breath, staring at the window with wide, desperate eyes, waiting for a shadow to fall across the glass, for someone to lean in, for rescue to come crashing through. My heart pounded so loud it echoed in my ears, drowning out everything else. But then—silence. The voices that had once been so close drifted away, swallowed by distance. The footsteps that had given me hope grew faint, then vanished entirely. No. No, it couldn’t

RAYMOND I hadn't realized how many steps the hospital had until I walked them back and forth until my soles ached. Waiting rooms blurred into one another—sterile plastic chairs, vending machines humming, faces too tired to ask the right questions. I paced until the carpet threadbare under my shoes felt like a map to nowhere. When the doctor finally emerged, his expression was careful in that professional way that tries not to terrify you while containing dread. “Mr. Orlando?” he began, as if I might snap. “We’ve stabilized her. The bullet passed through the soft tissue of the upper arm and—thank God—missed the artery and bone. There’s no permanent physical damage from the gunshot itself.” I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. Relief made my legs go weak for a second. “But,” the doctor added, and the ridge of worry returned, “she experienced significant shock. She’s still unconscious and we'll be keeping her under observation for at least twenty-four hours to mon