All Chapters of Sips of Seduction: The Billionaire Heiress: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The café plunged into sudden darkness. One moment, the machines whirred and lights glowed bright; the next, the entire branch seemed swallowed whole. Gasps rippled through the customers. A spoon clattered against a ceramic cup. Someone’s phone flashlight flicked on, the beam jittering across startled faces.Only the emergency lights remained—a faint red glow above the exits, just enough to make everyone look like ghosts in a half-forgotten photograph. The smell of scorched coffee grounds hung heavy in the air, trapped in a silence no one dared disturb.Celine’s pulse spiked. Almost instinctively, her gaze slid to the expansive front windows. Beyond the glass, the black car was still there, headlights burning straight through the darkness. They cut across the café like two unblinking eyes, sharp and deliberate. She gripped the counter until her knuckles whitened.Liam noticed the way she stiffened. He didn’t look outside—not yet. Instead, he leaned against the counter, his voice pitche

The clock ticked louder than it had any right to.Celine sat on her couch, legs folded tight beneath her, staring at the envelope on the coffee table as though it were breathing. She had tried everything—made tea, reorganized her notebooks, even scrubbed down her counter with unnecessary precision. Still, the weight of the invitation pressed into the walls of her apartment.The city outside pulsed faintly through her window, headlights and neon bleeding together in a restless blur. Yet inside, time seemed to crawl. Each clock tick edged closer to midnight, carving a countdown she couldn’t mute.She picked up the envelope for the fifth time, running her thumb along its seam. She thought about striking a match, watching it curl into nothing. Safety, denial, silence. But when she closed her eyes, she saw Liam’s expression when he said, That isn’t a bluff. She heard Marites’s warning—No one walks into something like this alone and comes out clean.Her chest tightened. She didn’t want this

The hallway forked in two, one path humming with faint light, the other drowning in shadow.Celine’s breath fogged faintly as she stared down both directions. The left corridor throbbed with a low, insect-like buzz, as if electricity still pulsed through veins behind the walls. The right corridor, darker, carried a slower sound—long, uneven breaths, as though someone unseen was waiting in the dark.Her throat tightened. “Which way?”Liam didn’t answer right away. He studied both paths, his jaw set, his shoulders rigid. The buzzing on the left. The breathing on the right. Two traps, two kinds of waiting. Finally, he spoke, voice low but firm.“We stay together. Always.”The words should have been simple. Practical. But the way his gaze lingered on her and his voice softened at the last syllable made something unfamiliar stir in her chest.Celine nodded quickly, masking it with a shaky breath. “Together,” she echoed.They chose the left, toward the faint light.The corridor narrowed as

Celine woke to a sharp brightness that felt like needles behind her eyes. At first, she thought she was still inside the corridor—white walls, humming lights, the strange maze they had stumbled into. But as her vision cleared, she realized the air was different. Too sterile. Too clean. Too real.A hospital.The ceiling above her was flat, paneled, and humming faintly with the weight of fluorescent tubes. The sheets beneath her were stiff with starch, tucked too tight against her sides. The faint antiseptic tang stung her throat.Her hands twitched against the blanket, searching for bruises, cuts, burns—anything to prove last night hadn’t been swallowed whole by some hypnotic trick. But her skin was whole. Her chest rose and fell without pain. She felt drained but untouched, as if the horrors had been rinsed away in one long, merciless scrub.Celine turned her head. The movement was stiff, and her muscles were uncooperative. Beside her bed, a single chair was drawn close to the wall. E

Celine woke with the smell of antiseptic still clinging to her skin. For a long moment, she couldn’t tell if she was entirely back in the café or somewhere else. The ceiling above her wasn’t sterile white, not the flat brightness of hospital lights. It was the familiar ceiling of her apartment—faintly yellowed in the corners, shadow pooling in the edges.Her chest rose sharply as memory snapped back—or rather, failed to. Her last clear image was of light, blinding and absolute, consuming everything until thought unraveled. After that, nothing. Not the door, voices, or walk out of wherever they had been held. Just silence.She shifted upright, her head thick and sluggish. Something slipped against her arm: a folded paper, hospital discharge instructions, creased as if someone had stuffed them into her bag on her behalf. Her name was scrawled in block letters across the top. She didn’t remember signing it.Celine pressed the paper flat, her eyes catching on the line that read “no abnorm