The CEO'S secretary 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 41 - 챕터 50

ELIAS’ POVThe office walls felt too thin, the ceiling groaning as if the building itself had joined in her game. Shadows bled at the edges of the light spilling from the single cracked window, each one twitching like it was waiting for her signal.Chloe’s face tilted into my hand, fragile and strong all at once, and it nearly undid me. But Gavin’s ragged cough snapped the moment apart.“We can’t stay here,” I said, voice iron, pulling my hand back before I lost my grip on everything else. “She’s waiting for us to stop moving.”Chloe’s gaze turned to Gavin, then back to me. Her lips pressed together, trembling. “He can’t walk far, Elias. He’s bleeding too much.”“I know.” The words burned like acid. I looked over at the weight of Gavin slumped in that chair. He had minutes….an hour at best. But I couldn’t tell her that. Not yet.I crouched, gripping Gavin’s jaw. His eyes fluttered half-shut, pain carving his face into something unrecognizable. Still, when he looked at Chloe, he tried

CHLOE'S POV The seatbelt cut across my chest like a hand trying to hold me in place even as everything inside me screamed to move. Smoke coiled up from the crumpled hood, burning and thick, mixing with the rain. My pulse hadn’t slowed since the ditch swallowed us, since metal had shrieked and earth had tilted like the world had been tipped on its side.Gavin groaned behind me. Elias was already moving…of course he was…shoulder shoving against the buckled door until it groaned and gave. His body filled the space like he could wrestle the whole nightmare into submission.But when he turned, when his hand reached for mine, there was something in his eyes that rooted me. Fury, yes. Rage, yes. But under it, a flicker of something rawer. Something that made my ribs ache with the want of it.“Come on,” he said, low and urgent. “I’ve got you.”My hand slipped into his before my mind caught up, skin sliding against his blood-slick grip. He pulled me free into the rain, the cold slapping me aw

CHLOE’S POV The van's roar faded into the distance, swallowed by the storm. What was left behind felt too quiet just the wreck hissing steam, the rain dripping on twisted metal, Gavin’s uneven breaths, and the hammer of my own heart.Elias stood there, every line of his body held tight, as if one wrong move would send him shattering. His hand was still against my cheek, and I didn’t dare move away. I needed that touch, needed to remind both of us that we were still here.“Elias,” I whispered. His name trembled in the air, more prayer than word.He blinked slowly, like though he just surfaced from a place too dark to measure. His thumb brushed my skin, the gentle motion from his hands that had just crushed my copies into nothing. “I almost….” His voice broke, the crack so human it cut me deeper than any strike. “She almost took you.”I wrapped my fingers around his wrist. “But she didn’t. I’m right here.”Behind us, Gavin coughed, dragging himself upright against the wrecked car. Bloo

CHLOE'S POV Outside, the storm lashed on, but within these thin walls, time felt slow and fragile, as though we’d stepped into the mouth of something huge and merciless.I should have slept. My body begged for it, bones aching, eyelids heavy. But every time I tried to close my eyes, I saw her. Isabella’s face. Her smile as the copies lunged. The flash of her tablet burning through the rain.Sleep was impossible.Elias didn’t move for a long time either. He stayed seated, shoulders bent, watching Gavin’s shallow rise and fall. His presence was like a wall at my side, solid and unyielding, but the silence around him was not calm….it was coiled, restless, ready to shatter.I whispered, “You should lie down.”His eyes flicked to me, then back to Gavin. “Not yet.”I almost argued, but the words hanged in my throat. Elias wasn’t a man you persuaded. He was a man you stayed beside until the fight in him softened on its own. So I didn’t press. I just leaned a little more into him, enough tha

CHLOE’S POVThe silence after the cart stopped was almost unbearable. No engines behind us. No boots splashing through mud. No echoes of Isabella’s voice. Only the horse’s tired snort, the faint drip of water sliding from the cart’s edges, and the hammer of my own pulse.Home.The word should’ve wrapped me in warmth, but all I felt was the tremor of it, as if even the walls in the valley below were holding their breath.Elias was the first to move. He climbed down, boots sinking into the gravel, and for a moment just stood there with his hand braced up against the wheel. His face was turned toward the house but his eyes weren’t soft. They were sharp, restless, like even here he was counting exits.I slid an arm around Gavin to steady him as he tried to push himself upright. His body was weak, trembling, but stubbornness made him reach for the edge of the cart. “I can walk the rest,” he muttered.“No, you can’t,” I whispered fiercely, tightening my hold. “Don’t you dare prove anything