Semua Bab HEIRESS REBORN: Bab 171 - Bab 179

KAIA (ALINA) POV The rooftop is dead quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, this one feels sharp and dangerous. The wind cuts across the open space, pulling at my hair, cold enough to sting my skin. The city lights burn below us, but up here it feels like another world. A world made for endings.The first thing I clock is Vivian. She is sprawled near the edge. Her body looks small, fragile against the concrete, her wrists tied, her head lolling like she’s fighting to stay conscious. Her lips move like she’s trying to form my name, but nothing comes out. My chest tightens.Then Sasha steps out from the shadows.She is holding a pistol. The metal glints under the floodlight as she raises it, steady, aimed straight at me. Her eyes lock on mine. And they are wild, bloodshot, sharp, desperate. Her hair is whipping around her face in the wind, strands sticking to her lips, but she doesn’t flinch.“You ruined everything,” she spits. Her voice isn’t just angry. It’s broken, jagged, like it’s

The pounding drags me out of sleep like someone’s hammering inside my skull. My eyes snap open, the room still thick with shadows. For a moment I think I’ve dreamed it, but then it comes again,.three sharp blows that rattle the frame of my bedroom door.I look over to the clock in my desk and see it is past 3.In the fucking night.I lie there, waiting for one of the maids to answer. No footsteps. No hushed voices. Nothing.Of course. They’re gone. Every last one of them.My jaw locks as I push myself up, the silk sheets twisting around my legs. The house is too quiet, hollow in a way it never used to be. All the staff ran after the papers hit, after my name was dragged through every gutter in the city. They didn’t just leave, they looted. My grandmother’s comb. The diamond brooch. Even the loose cash I kept tucked in the desk drawer. Filthy ingrates. Years of feeding them, clothing them, protecting them and the first whiff of smoke, they bolt.My throat burns. Rage hits before the fe

NATHANIEL'S POV The call comes while I’m in the middle of tearing apart my home office. Papers everywhere, glass shattered on the floor. My secretary’s voice is trembling, like she knows I’m seconds away from snapping.“What?!”“Mr. Cross… I am sorry to bother you but I just got a call and the shareholders are having a meeting and they want to see you there.”“What? Who ordered that?!““I… I don't know. I just got the call.”I freeze. My pulse kicks hard. The shareholders haven’t dared summon me since the chaos started, since the stock nosedived, since the press turned every headline into a personal crucifixion. If they’re calling me in now, something’s shifted. Either I have got one last shot to fix this… or they are about to cut me out“Where is the meeting?”“In the boardroom. Now.”I straighten my jacket, even though it’s wrinkled from hours of pacing. My tie hangs loose around my neck. I don’t fix it. Let them see me like this. They should remember who I am. I grab my keys and m

ALINA’S POV The graveyard is smaller than I remember it to be. Or maybe it is me that is bigger now, or harder, or just older in ways that can’t be measured. The iron gate groans when I push it open, and I freeze halfway through, my hand still clutching the rusted bar like I need permission to go in. Nobody answers. Just the wind dragging across the stone markers, rattling the branches overhead.I step inside. Gravel crunches under my boots. Each step feels heavy, deliberate, like walking into a courtroom where the verdict is already carved in stone.I know exactly where the grave is. I have never needed a map. My body remembers it the way my lungs remember how to breathe. Left at the crooked tree, past the angel statue missing a hand, three rows down.Besides my parents graves There.My grave.Alina Rivers. Beloved daughter and a shining bright star. Taken too soon.I kneel. My fingers trace the grooves of my name, cold and unyielding. Whoever chose those words, probably my aunt L