Crown and Consequences- Falling for the hunted billionaire의 모든 챕터: 챕터 161 - 챕터 170

Aria’s POVThe doors closed behind us with a sound that felt final.Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a soft mechanical whisper that sealed us into the dark.The floor we stepped onto was empty, but not abandoned. The air hummed faintly, like hidden servers breathing behind the walls. Motion sensors flickered awake, soft blue lights tracing our silhouettes across polished black marble.Rico’s hand found mine instantly.“Stay close,” he murmured.I almost laughed. As if I’d ever let go.We walked forward, our footsteps echoing too clearly. No furniture. No art. No signs of life. Just a vast open space and a wall of glass at the far end, revealing Manhattan spread beneath us like a living circuit board.Then the lights shifted.A single figure appeared in the reflection.Not in front of us.Behind us.I spun.A man stood several meters away, tall, dressed in an ordinary charcoal suit that somehow made him more unsettling. No guards. No weapons. Just calm, observant eyes and a face that could

Aria’s POVThe first thing that broke was the market.Not a crash Elias wouldn’t allow something so obvious. It was subtler. A ripple disguised as correction. Indexes dipped, recovered, dipped again. Analysts called it volatility. Juno called it a pattern.She arrived at the penthouse before sunrise, hair pulled into a messy bun, eyes already glowing with data reflections from her lenses.“He’s mapping reactions,” she said without preamble. “Stress-testing human behavior like an algorithm.”Rico poured her coffee. She ignored it.“He released three controlled leaks overnight,” Juno continued, projecting graphs into the air. “One about a pharmaceutical monopoly, one about a defense contractor, one about a climate fund laundering money. All real. All timed.”“To see what panics first,” I said.“Exactly. Elias is building a predictive model of collapse. Caspian does it through disruption. Elias does it through observation.”Rico crossed his arms. “So what’s the move?”Juno finally looked

Aria’s POVI didn’t sleep.Not because I couldn’t, but because sleep felt irresponsible like closing my eyes while standing on the edge of a collapsing bridge.Rico tried to make me lie down. Juno tried to sedate me with herbal tea that tasted like wet grass and false optimism. Even Caspian, through a secure channel, told me I needed rest before “the confrontation.”None of it worked.You don’t rest before you step into the mouth of a god.By dawn, the city looked different. Manhattan usually woke up loud sirens, horns, movement but this morning felt muted, like the world was holding its breath. Even the skyline seemed sharper, more artificial, as if I’d already crossed into a simulation where everything was technically functional and emotionally hollow.Juno had cleared the central broadcast room on the forty-second floor. Every screen, every channel, every global relay point we still controlled was routed into one interface. If Elias answered, the entire world would see him.Or at l

Aria’s POVThe first thing I noticed after Elias went quiet was how loud the world suddenly felt.Not alarms. Not chaos. Just… people.Phones buzzing. Voices overlapping in the hallway. Juno pacing like a caffeinated metronome, muttering about cascading systems and ethical fail-safes. Rico’s heartbeat steady against my back. Caspian arguing with someone on the secure line about transitional authority.For the first time in months, the silence wasn’t artificial.It was human.“Financial markets are stabilizing faster than projected,” Juno said, staring at her screen like it had personally betrayed her. “He didn’t pull out cold. He phased control in layers. That’s… smarter than we expected.”Rico exhaled. “So the world isn’t ending today?”Juno shrugged. “Define ending.”I stepped away from the console and walked toward the window. Manhattan stretched beneath us, glowing and restless, completely unaware it had just survived the closest thing to a digital god it would ever meet.Cars sti

Aria’s POVThe first dream I had after everything ended was painfully ordinary.No collapsing systems. No glowing servers. No omniscient voices asking me to define humanity.Just a grocery store.I was standing in the cereal aisle, staring at forty-seven variations of oats, and I couldn’t decide which one to buy.When I woke up, my heart was racing.It took me a full minute to realize I was safe.Rico was still asleep beside me, one arm draped lazily over my waist, his breathing slow and even. Morning light filtered through the curtains, painting his face in soft gold instead of the harsh blue of screens and crisis rooms.For the first time in months, the world had not ended overnight.I slipped out of bed quietly and padded into the kitchen. The apartment felt different in daylight less like a battlefield of memories and more like a place people actually lived. I opened the fridge, stared inside, and laughed.Empty.“Of course,” I muttered. “We saved civilization and forgot to buy mi