All Chapters of The Auctioned Bride: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

People stood from their seats.Several men…quiet, stoic…stood from the back rows. Syndicate representatives. The ones sent to watch the retrieval.Their eyes were on me.Not the bride.Not the woman.The asset.The property.The runaway project.Security reached for their earpieces.The guests panicked quietly.My heartbeat thudded violently.Valerio stepped closer, voice low, sharp, dangerous:“Everyone stands down.”But no one listened.They were waiting.For what came next.For who owned me.For who controlled me.For who would claim me.And suddenly I understood—I wasn’t just a bride.I was a spark.A weapon.A secret.A war.And this wedding…Was never meant to be a celebration.It was a battlefield.And I was standing in the center of it.I took flight to the other side of the mansion, tearing off part of my wedding dress to run freely. And I ran out.Ran out of the house.Ran out of the life he built.Ran away from the man I loved.Ran into the storm swallowing the world.Beh

I didn’t know how long I had been running.Minutes… hours… maybe an entire day. The only thing I knew was the burning ache tearing through my legs and the violent throb in my chest. The forest around me blurred into a spot of greens and shadows, the world tilting every time my feet struck the ground.Finally, my body gave in.I collapsed onto a thick tree branch hanging low enough to brace myself. My fingers dug into the rough bark as I dragged in breath after breath, each one sharper than the last. My vision wobbled, darkening at the edges. Sweat clung to my skin. My wedding gown…once ivory, shimmering, beautiful… was now a shredded, dirt-stained antique wrapped around my shaking body.The gown mocked me.Everything mocked me.I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and tried to put the pieces of the last twenty-four hours together… but they only cut me deeper.Yesterday…no, a lifetime ago…Valerio had held me in his arms. Whispered that he loved me. Promised me forever. Kissed me like

Valerio’s povI hadn’t slept in days.Weeks, actually.Time had stopped meaning anything the moment she ran…ran from me, from the truth, from the life I had so stupidly tried to build on buried secrets.The control room was a mess, but not nearly as broken as I felt. Her files were everywhere… on the floor, on the metal desks, on the screens. Every surveillance image of her, every medical report, every cryptic document tied to her origin. None of them helped me understand how to fix this. None of them told me where she was now.“I can’t lose her… not now,” I muttered again, my voice hoarse.I ran a hand through my hair, tugging hard. I felt feral, unhinged, like I’d swallowed fire and it was burning through my lungs.I know how it looks. Like I’m the villain. Like I trapped an innocent girl in a gilded cage and fed her lies until she mistook them for affection. But that wasn’t how it happened. Not for me.I knew who she was the moment I first saw her in that small, cold hall… the hall

Althea’s PovThe sky darkened as I approached the outskirts of the city, my ruined wedding gown dragging behind me like a ghost refusing to let go. I didn’t stop. Not when my legs shook. Not when my lungs burned. Not when every step reminded me that the world I thought I belonged to had never been mine.The city lights glowed in the distance….blurry, muted, like the world was separated from me by glass. I stayed in the shadows, cutting through an old industrial path, until I reached the safehouse Valerio’s father once used.It shouldn’t have been familiar, but the moment I stepped toward the metal door, a memory…no, a programmed trigger…clicked in my mind. A sequence. A code. I didn’t question why I knew it.I pressed my hand against the scanner.A soft beep responded.The door slid open.Inside, the safehouse smelled like dust and disuse. A cold, bare room with metal walls, dim lights, a single table, outdated monitors….yet it felt like the only place quiet enough for the chaos in m

I worked for hours. No breaks. No hesitation. A clone didn’t need emotional rest, and I wasn’t going to act human anymore.First, I retrieved the original property documents my father had signed before his death…ones showing his intention to leave everything to an unnamed heir, which everyone knew meant the child he never managed to register.Me.I scanned them, encrypted them, and prepared a digital copy that looked authentically confirmed.Next, I opened a folder labeled:SERA-K09: Financial Crimes / Embezzlement RouteThere were bank accounts, unregistered warehouses, laundered money disguised as charity donations. Seraphina was greedy, sloppy, unafraid. I used the Kane estate as her personal pipeline.I extracted everything…every transfer, every invoice, every falsified record.Then I moved to the next part of the plan.Destroy the luxury façade.Freeze her world.Pull the rug from under her heels.I created an anonymous identity and sent the files to three separate departments…I