Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE WHO STOLE MY FIRST NIGHT: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

Liam had said "I love you" seventeen times since the gunshot—whispered it during medical procedures, breathed it against Sophia's hair while she slept, spoken it like a prayer when their baby's heartbeat filled the ultrasound room—but standing in front of the hospital room at 3:07 AM, staring at the photo of them taken from an impossible angle by people they couldn't see, he realized he'd never actually said it in a way that counted.The previous declarations had been reactive, defensive, words spoken in moments of crisis when emotions ran too high to contain. But this—this required something different. This required him to look at his wife, at the woman carrying his child while invisible enemies circled closer, and choose to be vulnerable not because trauma demanded it but because love required it. Bec

The figure in the doorway was Connor Blake, and the phone in his hand wasn't sending messages to The Council—it was recording everything for the FBI task force already assembling three floors below.Liam saw him first, his body tensing to attack before recognition kicked in, before he processed the federal badge clipped to Connor's belt and the three agents flanking him in the hallway. Connor held up one hand in a calming gesture, his expression grave but not hostile, and Sophia felt the panic that had spiked immediately begin to recede into something more complex: confusion, hope, and the terrible understanding that their attorney had been playing a longer game than either of them realized."How long?" Liam asked quietly, his arm tightening protectively around Sophia. "How long have you been working with the feds?"

Elena knocked once, softly, and the sound echoed through the cottage like a death knell—polite, civilized, absolutely terrifying in its normalcy.Liam was already moving, his body operating on pure instinct honed from months of survival: phone dialing 911 with one hand while the other reached for the gun he'd sworn he'd never need again, positioned himself between the door and the bedroom where Sophia slept, pregnant and vulnerable and blissfully unaware that the woman they'd watched die three weeks ago was standing on their porch very much alive. His mind raced through possibilities—hallucination, lookalike, some kind of Council trick—but the security camera didn't lie, and the face staring back at him through the window was unmistakably Elena Morrison, looking healthier than she had in months, smiling with the kind of serene certainty that came from holding all the cards."I know you're awake, Liam," Elena called through the door, her voice carrying that familiar warmth that had onc

Sophia's hands were intact because Liam had knocked the phone away a microsecond before detonation, had moved with instinct faster than thought, had thrown his body over hers in the exact moment the device exploded—but the shrapnel that should have killed her had embedded itself in his back instead, and as Sophia felt his blood soaking through her clothes, she understood with crystalline clarity that the threat was never about destroying The Council or its operations or even eliminating witnesses.It was about killing their baby.Every device that exploded simultaneously across the globe—thirty-seven phones belonging to federal agents, Council prisoners, rescue coordinators, anyone who'd accessed Elena's drive—detonated with precision-calibrated force designed not for maximum casualties but for maximum psychological trauma. Most explosions cau

Liam's helicopter landed fourteen minutes later instead of nineteen, which meant he'd broken every aviation regulation in three states and arrived just in time to watch Sophia walking toward the landing pad against Dr. Chen's explicit medical orders—and the fury that exploded from him the moment he saw her upright and mobile wasn't protective concern but raw, primal rage that she'd dared to risk herself without his permission."What the hell are you doing out of bed?" The words came out as a roar that made security personnel flinch and Dr. Chen step protectively closer to Sophia, and Liam knew even as he spoke that this was wrong, that his anger was fear wearing the wrong mask, but he couldn't stop the avalanche of emotion that came from watching his pregnant wife—carrying a bomb, experiencing contractions, seven weeks from potential catastrophic detonation—standing on a helicopter pad li