The Billionaire's Substitute Bride のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

Amelia's POV I didn't know anyone had recorded it.The phones had been in the pouches. The approved cameras were press credentials, still photographers, not video. Torres had confirmed the room was controlled before we went in.What I didn't account for was the venue's own security system.Not a breach. Not something hostile. The building's standard internal recording, the kind that ran continuously in all public event spaces for liability purposes, covering every corner of the room from four fixed ceiling cameras. High definition. Clear audio from the room's own speaker system which my voice had gone through when I used the mic.Diana told me at eleven that night.She called while I was still in the hotel suite with Jade and Alexander and Torres, working through the immediate aftermath, and she said: "The venue footage is already out. Someone on the building's management team released it to a press contact within an hour of the show ending. It's on four platforms and it's moving ver

Amelia's POV Alexander's lawyers filed the counter-claim at eleven.I know the exact time because I was sitting at the suite table with Diana going through the interview framework when his lead attorney called and confirmed it with the particular professional calm of someone delivering good news in the flattest possible voice.The counter-filing used the full Aurora evidence package. Every timestamped document, every piece of Nadia's original files, the correspondence from Ethan's drive detailing his explicit instructions to Vanessa, the USB drive materials, Ms. Holt's testimony, Rodriguez's formal case documentation. All of it attached, all of it referenced, all of it submitted to the same New York court where Vanessa and Ethan had filed their defamation claim forty minutes earlier.The attorney said: "Their claim becomes very difficult to sustain when filed concurrently with this volume of counter-evidence. Any competent judge will see the defamation filing for what it is.""What i

Amelia's POV Rodriguez called at eight that evening."She'll speak to you," she said. "Ten minutes. Video call, secure line. She's calm but she tires easily right now. Keep it brief.""I will," I said."And Amelia." Rodriguez's voice was the same flat careful tone she always used, but something underneath it had shifted slightly. "She has something to tell you. I've asked her to tell you herself rather than having me relay it. It will be better coming from her."I held the phone for a moment."Alright," I said.The secure call connected at eight fifteen.Nadia looked smaller on the screen than she had in her flat. Not physically, she was the same slight build, the same careful way of holding herself. But the flat had given her a context, her work table and her fabric samples and her organised corkboard, the infrastructure of a life she had built carefully around herself. The safe house room behind her had none of that. A plain wall. A functional lamp. The temporary, provisional quali

Amelia's POV I told Alexander I was going at midnight.Rodriguez had confirmed the extraction was set for two AM. A car from her team to the safe house, Nadia out and into the secondary location before the compromised address could be acted on by whoever had been watching it.Simple. Contained. Professional.I told Alexander I was going to be in that car.He looked at me from across the suite table with the expression he wore when he had already calculated the answer to something and was deciding how to deliver it."No," he said."She doesn't know Rodriguez's team," I said. "She knows me. She sat across from me in her flat for forty minutes and made a decision that changed the entire case. I am not going to let her be moved to a secondary location in the middle of the night by people she has never met.""Rodriguez's team is trained for exactly this," he said. "Your presence adds a variable that the operation doesn't need.""My presence adds a person Nadia trusts," I said. "Which is n

Amelia's POV They discharged him at five.The bruising was significant but the joint was intact, no structural damage, rest and anti-inflammatories and a follow-up with a specialist when we returned to London. The attending physician said it with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone who had seen far worse at this hour and was calibrating accordingly.Alexander accepted the instructions, put his jacket back on with the careful movement of someone managing pain he had decided not to perform, and thanked the nurse at the desk.I watched him do all of this.I had been watching him differently since the curtained bay and I was not trying to stop doing it. The watching was not the careful cataloguing kind I had been doing for months, the reading of silences and jaw movements and the managed surface. This was different. Simpler. The watching of someone who had stopped conducting a study and was simply looking at a person they had feelings for.It was unfamiliar and not uncomfortable.Vi