Lahat ng Kabanata ng Belonging to Lockhart: Kabanata 91 - Kabanata 100

AMARIS POV “I need to tell you something important.” The tension in Theron’s voice sent a chill down my spine. Instinct told me whatever was coming wouldn’t be easy to hear. I had just finished preparing our coffee and placed the mugs on the table before taking my seat. Theron sat across from me, his shoulders slightly hunched. “Well?” I prompted, forcing a nervous smile. “Zinnia’s staying for another two weeks,” he said flatly. My shoulders dropped. The breath I didn’t realize I was holding slipped from my lips in a quiet exhale. Jealousy it’s an ugly, unwelcome emotion, and yet it curled around my chest, tightening. She had been his first love. The girl who had once made him cruel toward me. How could I not feel insecure with her back in his orbit? “We’ll get through it,” he said, his voice softer now. He reached across the table to take my hands. “We’ll handle this together. I’ll do everything I can to stop the merger” “Wait. What merger?” I cut in, snatchin

"I'm sorry it turned out this way." That made it the fifth time Theron had apologized since we left the Lockhart Digital building. He’d brought me to one of his friend’s restaurants for dinner most likely out of guilt for dragging me into the mess we were now neck-deep in. Not that I was going to turn down a good meal. He pulled out a chair for me, offering a faint smile that barely masked the tightness in his shoulders. Guilt etched itself into every movement he made. I reached for his hand, giving it a light squeeze as I smiled up at him. "Please stop apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong. This is all your father’s doing." His jaw flexed as he rounded the table and sank into his chair. "Still, it pisses me off that I couldn’t handle his ridiculous demand differently." "It’s not the worst outcome," I said with a small shrug, forcing a smile. "We managed to limit the damage. At least it’s only Zinnia and not a parade of her lackeys poking around our projects. One perso

Knowing the criminal code by heart was the only thing keeping me from ending this tour with blood on the walls. No one had ever tested the limits of my patience or my self-control quite like Zinnia. And yet, I managed not to kill her. I made a silent pact with my own brain: treat her like a delusional woman who didn’t fully grasp the weight of her words or the danger of her provocations. With that internal override in place, I uploaded new behavioral settings, redirecting my focus from her incessant babbling about how she’d soon be running the company to the task at hand showing her the key features of our project. “And that just about wraps it up,” I said with a strained smile as we stopped near the elevators. “That’s everything worth knowing about the Radiant App.” She lifted a finger and wagged it in the air with an infuriating grin. “I need one last thing. All the access codes. My specialists want to run tests see if we can enhance the app’s performance.” My self-cont

Three hours had passed since Nazzareno Bellotti left, and I still hadn't managed to pull myself together. Questions swarmed like wasps in my head, stinging and relentless. I kept sifting through memories, searching for anything any thread that might unravel this mess. At twelve, I’d been too young to be involved in corporate affairs, but I remembered that day. The day of the accident. My father had stayed home. That alone was strange. He’d been glued to his phone, shouting, cursing, his voice raw with rage at whoever was on the other end of the line. And now, all these years later, a terrible thought had taken root in my mind. What if it hadn’t been an accident at all? What if my aunt and uncle were murdered? Worse what if my own father had orchestrated it? I was still wound tight, nerves fraying, when I finally made it back to the penthouse. I needed to see Ami. At some point, she’d become more than comfort she was my balance, my reprieve, my center. And right now, I craved h

It felt just like that day when Theron’s friends had dumped a bucket of ice over my head only now, it was my heart taking the hit, freezing from the inside out. His embrace, once a sanctuary, now scorched like betrayal against my skin. I pressed both palms to his chest, shoving against him, desperate to free myself, but he only tightened his hold, wrapping his arms around me again. “Ami, please… let me finish,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to leave you. I never wanted to hurt you.” “Then… what are you saying?” The words cracked in my throat. He exhaled slowly, as if the truth were too heavy to carry. He dipped his head, burying his face in the curve of my neck. “I’m a bastard for starting it like this,” he said, kissing a trail up to my jaw, then lifting his eyes to meet mine. “But there’s no time left. We have to make it look like we’ve broken up. Publicly. Officially. It’s the only way to get my father to let his guard down. Once he does, I’ll f