Semua Bab Divorced by my Billionaire Ex, Now He Wants Me Back! : Bab 221 - Bab 230

221Dane.The cold glow of the monitors washed the rented office in a flat blue pallor, a kind of underwater quiet that amplified every thought already circling my head. Seven screens, each split into mirrored quadrants, flickered with silent views of Pier Market: back lots, loading docks, a sliver of pedestrian walkway, two interior corridors, and—for now—four camera feeds from the basement cold room Sophie insisted we needed. I sat with my forearms braced on the metal desk, jaw locked so tight the muscle ticked against my cheekbone. I had told her from the beginning this needed to be surgical. Fast in, fast out. Minimal visibility. No theatrics. Instead she’d turned it into performance art. Calls to Stella. Photo drops. Breadcrumb theatrics meant to rattle.She enjoyed the sound of her own cruelty too much.Messy people got caught. And messy people took everyone down with them.I opened the ledger again even though I’d memorized every line. Cross-border payment authorizations, three

223Stella.Time moved in a strange way that night. Too fast when I tried to think, too slow when I tried not to. Every hour between Alex’s call and the countdown to three in the morning felt like it held a lifetime, and I hated how familiar that sensation had become. I used to think fear for my children had limits, borders, thresholds. Tonight, I learned it had none. It stretched and stretched until it didn’t even feel like fear anymore—just a constant thrum beneath my ribs, like a quiet, sick heartbeat.Anna and I sat on the floor of my office, surrounded by piles of papers, open folders, and the harsh glow of my laptop screen. Every document related to my mother’s files was spread out as if laying them bare would help me make sense of what Sophie wanted. The Eleanor investigation had been the one thing I’d guarded fiercely, even from myself sometimes. Now it felt like I was peeling away the last layer of protection I had left.I loaded the encrypted folders onto the first USB, then

225SophieVictory made my blood feel carbonated, a low humming effervescence beneath my skin. Everything about tonight moved the way I wanted it to. Stella walked exactly where I told her to walk. Alex, with all his inherited pride and Marwood polish, had been reduced to a distant, helpless shadow. And the drives—the precious, meddlesome little drives—would be in my hand within the hour. Proof of control. Proof that I had engineered all the right levers and watched all the right people twitch.In front of me, the still frame of the twins flickered on the monitor. The feed wasn’t live video—Dane had pulled the high-capacity bandwidth off the grid for another operation—but the stills refreshed every ninety seconds. Enough for me to track the rhythm of two small chests rising and falling under those oversized hoodies. Enough to admire how still they stayed when told. Stella had taught them that, the perfect irony. Her quest for order now served me beautifully.“They’re unharmed,” I told

227Dane.The distortion on the traffic cam feed always irritated me, a faint ripple along the bottom edge that the port supervisor never bothered fixing. I watched the grainy image anyway, elbows braced on the desk, breath held as the convoy reached the bend near the underpass. Two vans, identical models, identical routes. Then, like a magician’s trick, they split—one veering toward the Annex, the other gliding toward the pier-side bypass.My stomach tightened. That wasn’t the plan.I called Sophie. She picked up on the second ring, her voice already lacquered with the kind of confidence she wore like perfume.“Abort the Annex,” I told her, watching the vans drift apart like the halves of a severed thought. “The alarm changed the calculus. This is too exposed.”She didn’t even pretend to consider it. “Relax, Dane. We’re minutes from finishing. Go drink something expensive.”I could hear the noise behind her—the alarm tone mutating into full announcements, passengers shuffling in conf

229Alex.Smoke poured through Corridor G like a thick, crawling fog, burning the back of my throat with every breath. The shriek of the fire alarm drilled into my skull, louder than any stadium horn, sharper than any siren I’d ever heard. People were yelling somewhere behind us, their voices ricocheting through the steel passage as evacuation orders boomed overhead. None of it mattered. I wasn’t listening for them. I was listening for Stella.I caught her voice—one short cry, swallowed fast by the smoke—and ran harder. My boots slipped for a second on the polished floor but I corrected, shoulders low, body cutting through heat. I shouted her name once but it vanished, absorbed by metal and chaos.Rico kept pace a few steps to my right, a shadow in the haze with a blade flashing briefly in his hand as he cut through the thick plastic zip tie binding the van’s rear door handles. The hinge gave a metallic whine under his strength, but the lock was still engaged. Inside, the twins’ voice