Semua Bab The Billionaire's Dirty Secrets: Bab 51 - Bab 60

CHAPTER 52 Ronan’s POV Her hand on mine was a brand. Not of ownership, but of fragile, provisional trust. She hadn’t taken the flash drive. She’d sealed my hand around it. Together. It was a start. A thread across the abyss. But as she withdrew her touch and turned to go upstairs, I saw the shadow pass behind her eyes again. Not the anger over Elira, not the betrayal over the contract. Something deeper. A secret fear she was carrying alone. The lie of the tests hung between us, a ghost only I could see. I let her go. Pushing now would break the thread. Instead, I focused on the tangible problem in my hand. The silver drive was cold, heavy with consequence. Elira’s data. A final, vicious gift from the queen of the underworld, buying her freedom by betraying her last allies. It was the master key to the kingdom of filth. I went to the bunker—not the sterile command center, but the small, soundproofed planning room adjacent to it. I inserted the drive into an air-gapped, forensic

CHAPTER 54Ronan’s POVThe bunker, once a sanctuary of control, was now a tomb of screaming data. Red lights from the panels reflected in Calla’s wide, horrified eyes. The Cerberus worm wasn't just an attack; it was a homing beacon, and its target was pulsing from our very walls.Finn was a statue of shock, fingers frozen above the keys. “It’s… it’s adaptive military-grade code. From the Cold War era. My God, they weaponized their backup.”“Solutions!” My voice was a whip-crack. “Not history!”He jolted, hands flying again. “I can’t stop the trace! But… I can try to divert it. Funnel it into a dead-end server, a sacrificial lamb. But I need a physical disconnect at the exact moment of reroute, or it’ll jump tracks and follow the original signal anyway.”A sacrificial lamb. A server to take the hit, to be corrupted and exposed instead of us.My mind raced through our assets. There was one. A dummy corporate server farm we maintained in Berlin for precisely this kind of misdirection. It

CHAPTER 56Calla’s POVThe pressure in the house was a physical weight, pressing down on every surface, every breath. Elira’s debriefing in the bunker had stretched for hours. The names, the accounts, the shadowy networks she sketched out for Finn were like tendrils of a dark, deep-rooted weed. We were no longer just cutting off the heads; we were trying to dig out the roots, and the soil was full of poison.Jade found me in the library, where I’d fled to escape the oppressive air of the command center. I was staring at a shelf of leather-bound books, seeing nothing.“Hey,” she said softly, coming to stand beside me. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes. “This is… a lot.”“That’s one word for it,” I murmured.“You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin.” She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Come on. You need to come down from the ledge. Just for a minute. Let’s have a drink.”She said it like a lifeline, a moment of normal sisterhood in the insanity. The

CHAPTER 58Calla’s POVThe hospital room became my world. A world of beeping monitors, hushed voices, and the relentless, terrifying focus on the tiny, flickering heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. They’d moved me to a high-risk maternity ward, a gilded cage with better security and softer blankets. Dr. Vance was a calm, commanding presence, but her updates were always hedged with warnings. Stable, but fragile. Rest is crucial. Absolutely no stress.A joke. The stress was a living thing in the room with us, wearing Ronan’s face.He was everywhere. He’d converted the adjoining family suite into a command post. His quiet conversations with Beck and Finn were a constant murmur through the wall. He was a king guarding his most vulnerable treasure, and his kingdom was on high alert.He was meticulous in his care. He ensured my meals were perfect, adjusted the lighting, brought me stacks of mindless novels. But his touch, when he helped me to the bathroom or adjusted my pillows, was careful

CHAPTER 60Calla’s POVThe silence after my refusal was a living thing. It filled the sunlit penthouse, thick and charged with everything we hadn’t said. The weight of the ring on his finger felt like it was on mine, a secret anchor threatening to drag us both under.Ronan didn’t argue. He didn’t rage. He just… absorbed my words. The storm in his eyes receded, not into calm, but into a deep, unsettling focus. He rose from his knee, his movements fluid and controlled, and helped me to the plush sofa, tucking a blanket around my legs with a tenderness that contradicted the intensity of his gaze.“Rest,” was all he said, before retreating to his study.For hours, I drifted in the quiet. The fear was a dull background hum—fear of the enemies he was unleashing upon, fear for the tiny life inside me, fear that I’d wounded him in a way that couldn’t be mended. Dr. Vance’s warning—your body is the battlefield—echoed in my head. I felt like a trespasser in my own skin, a fragile vessel on a st