Semua Bab The Billionaire Who Bought Me The Moon: Bab 171 - Bab 180

"He's at the safe house," Franklin whispered. "He drugged the guards. He walked right past them like they were statues. He sent me here to give you a message, Jason. He said he’s disappointed."The air in the small room suddenly felt very thin. Jason felt the world tilt. His grandfather, Silas Hale, was the stuff of legends. He was a man who didn't believe in love, or loyalty, or family. He believed in systems. He believed in building machines that could last for centuries. To Silas, people were just parts. And if a part was broken, you threw it away."What did he say?" Jason asked, his voice a ghost of itself."He said you were a 'small vision,'" Franklin replied, reciting the words like a death sentence. "He said you let a woman and a university researcher take down an empire because you were distracted by your own emotions. He said you were a liability."Jason felt a surge of primal anger. "I built the company into a global powerhouse! I tripled the net worth! I did everything—""Y

The apartment was small, cramped, and smelled of stale coffee and hot electronics. It was located on the third floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, hidden behind a neon sign that flickered in the rain. Inside, there were no lights except for the glow of twelve computer monitors; this was the "nest" of the Disconnect: a group of people who lived in the spaces between the rules.Jax sat in the center of the glow. He was twenty-four years old with messy hair and eyes that hadn't seen a full night’s sleep in a week. To the rest of the world, Jax didn't exist because he had no bank account, no driver’s license, and no social media profile; however, to those who knew where to look, Jax was the best "eye" in the city.On his main screen, a simple graph of weather data from Oakland was dancing. The wind speed was jumping in a pattern that made no sense for a storm."Did you see that?" Miri asked. She was sitting at a desk made of old wooden pallets, her fingers flying across a keybo

The elevator ride down into the heart of the bunker felt like it would never end. The air grew colder, and the faint, sweet smell of recycled oxygen filled my lungs. I leaned against the back wall of the small metal box; my hand automatically went to my stomach.I hadn't spoken about the child in days. In the middle of the gunshots, the high-speed chases, and the digital wars, I had tried to push the reality of my pregnancy into a quiet corner of my mind. I had treated the baby like a secret I had to protect, even from myself. But now, in the silence of the elevator, the baby moved. It was a small, sharp kick: a reminder that while I was fighting for my life, I was also a vessel for a life that Silas Hale already claimed to own.The doors slid open. We weren't in a dusty basement or a rough tunnel anymore. We were in a space that looked like it belonged in a high-end hospital. The floors were white, the walls were glass, and the lights were soft and blue."This way, Samantha," Silas s

The stairs felt like they were miles long. Every step was a battle against the weight of my own body and the thick, white gas that still clung to the fabric of my clothes. Nora was under my arm, her shoulder acting as a crutch, her breathing coming in ragged, terrified gasps. We were climbing out of the belly of the beast, leaving the blinking red lights and the melting servers behind, but the air above didn't feel any safer. It felt like we were trading one cage for another, one made of rain and concrete and the prying eyes of a thousand strangers.Then, the first real contraction hit.It wasn't a kick. It wasn't the dull ache I had been carrying for weeks. It was a white-hot ring of fire that tightened around my waist and pulled everything inward. I stopped dead on the concrete landing, my fingers digging into Nora’s arm so hard I knew I would leave bruises. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The world narrowed down to the sensation of my own muscles betraying me, forcing the fut

Silas Hale did not mind the smell of bleach or the scratchy texture of the thin, white sheets in the prison infirmary. To a man who had spent forty years living in the shadows, a prison cell was just another room. It was a space with walls, a floor, and a ceiling. It was a controlled environment, and Silas Hale had always been at his best when the boundaries were clearly defined. He lay back against the stiff pillow, his eyes closed, listening to the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor attached to his finger. He knew the doctors were watching that monitor in the other room. He knew they saw a frail, elderly man whose heart was struggling under the stress of a federal arrest.He had faked the chest pains the moment the handcuffs had touched his wrists. It was a simple, logical move. A man in a high-security cell is a prisoner, but a man in a hospital bed is a patient. A patient has rights. A patient has visitors. A patient is allowed a level of privacy that a common criminal is denied.