Semua Bab The Billionaire's Temporary Mistress : Bab 81 - Bab 87

Sophie's pov The Blackstone Plaza Hotel ballroom glittered, a cavernous jewel box filled with the city’s most polished gems. Crystal chandeliers rained light onto acres of marble, catching the sequins on gowns, the gleam of cufflinks, the frost on champagne flutes. The air hummed with a low, expensive thrum, the murmur of deals disguised as pleasantries, the rustle of silk, the cloying sweetness of orchids and perfume layered over something sharper, colder: ambition. Damien’s "Seeds of Tomorrow" gala, his passion project, his name emblazoned on everything. And beside him, I stood, a trembling secret wrapped in liquid silver silk.My hand, almost of its own volition, drifted beneath the soft drape of my gown, resting on the gentle, miraculous curve beneath my ribs. Fifteen weeks. “Our” fifteen weeks. A fragile, fiercely guarded ember of hope that had finally begun to thaw the perpetual winter in Damien’s eyes. Tonight, the ember felt warm, a tiny sun radiating pure, terrifying joy.

Sophie’s POV The sterile hush of the hospital room wasn’t silent. It was a vacuum, sucking at the edges of my consciousness, amplifying the roaring emptiness inside me. Three days. Seventy-two hours measured in the relentless “beep-beep-beep” of the heart monitor, a cruel metronome counting the beats of a life that wasn’t the one I craved to hear. The phantom flutters. The tiny, impossible drumbeat silenced forever.The ache was everywhere. A deep, hollow throb in my womb, a physical echo of the devastation. A sharper, biting pain radiated outwards with every breath, a constant reminder of the trauma inflicted. The drugs blurred the sharpest edges, turned the world slightly fuzzy at the periphery, but they couldn’t touch the core agony. They couldn’t fill the void where hope, life, and a future painted in soft yellows had resided for fifteen precious weeks. Every inhale felt like drawing shattered glass into my lungs.Damien was a monolith of grief and fury carved into the punishing

Sophie's POV The relentless "beep-beep-beep" of the heart monitor was no longer a countdown; it was a drumbeat of doom. "seventy-two hours." The number pulsed behind my eyes, a neon brand seared onto my consciousness, throbbing in time with the hollow ache in my womb. Three days until the Blackstone Heir Clause ripped everything away. Three days until Alister won.The District Attorney’s office had been a whirlwind of grim efficiency. Handing over the damning audio recording, hearing Alister’s smug, venomous voice fill the sterile conference room again, confessing to judicial corruption, corporate sabotage, and the casual dismissal of "my poisoning", "my child’s death" had been both cathartic and utterly draining. Seeing the shock, then the hardened resolve on the DA’s face had been satisfying. Warrants were being drafted for Alister’s arrest on a laundry list of charges: conspiracy, bribery, blackmail, attempted murder. The asset freeze was being challenged aggressively by Franklin

Sophie’s POV - Expanded The Blackstone penthouse, usually a monument to cool power and sleek control, felt utterly alien. Silence, thick and watchful, had replaced the city’s hum beyond the bulletproof glass. It wasn't peaceful; it was the silence after a bomb blast, the kind where every creak of the floorboards, every sigh of the climate control, felt like an intrusion. In the center of this unnerving quiet, radiating a silent storm of her own, sat Lila.Three days. "Sixty-nine hours." The numbers pulsed behind my eyes, a relentless counterpoint to the fragile rhythm of Lila’s breathing. She hadn’t spoken. Not a word. Not a whimper since that tiny, choked sound at the fire scene. She sat curled like a wounded fawn in the center of the vast, cream-colored sofa in the living room, dwarfed by its opulence. The grey blanket from the fire truck was still wrapped tightly around her thin shoulders, a grimy, char-scented shield against a world that had burned her twice over. Her dark eyes,